29 replies to this topic

[Rashhaverak]

Anyone out there have any advice on setting up Saitek Pro Flight Pedals?

I got them for xmas and I want to see if there is an easy way to set them up to handle the left and right turn, and use the toe brake for jump jets.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Rashhaverak]

I've tried to use the SST software that comes with the pedals, but it does not appear to work as advertised. Even went to their website and downloaded everything new. Still no joy.

Do I have to use xpadder, or is there an easy way that I just don't seem to be able to understand?

[Rashhaverak]

When I try to play, the game seems to see the tow brakes as mouse up and left, and down right. Doesn't work at all....

[evilC]

xpadder, x360ce, ppjoy etc all do not work with MWO.
If you cannhot get the game to recognise it, you are out of luck at the moment.

[Rashhaverak]

evilC, on 06 January 2013 - 01:24 PM, said:

xpadder, x360ce, ppjoy etc all do not work with MWO.
If you cannhot get the game to recognise it, you are out of luck at the moment.

I'm not sure I buy that answer. I think that there are people using the same pedals I've got... I just need to know how they got them to work.

[evilC]

I think people who have stuff like that working probably have saitek sticks etc and the saitek software to make the pedals appear to be part of the stick.
Software that comes with hardware (eg Logitech Setpoint, Thrustmaster software etc) all work because they program the device and the device then generates low-level signals that the game will recognise. However higher level stuff such as PPJoy, X360ce etc are all not fully recognised by the game.

For example, with X360ce, if you emulate an XBOX controller, the emulated controller will move the mouse around in mechlab, but the bindings menu will not recognize the input.

[Rashhaverak]

The pedals come with the Saitek SST software. I'm guessing that someone probably has figured out a configuration that will work with the game, and I just need to copy their config and I'll be up and running.

[Hammerhai]

Give me some time as I have the combat pedals, running with a warthog. Bit busy right now, so give me about 3 days? PM me if I forget. I do remember having that on the G 940, it is just that MWO sometimes does not read virtual keystrokes reliably. The first thing though you need to do is start a new profile in the software. Whatever you are doing now is wrong with the mouse movement.

[Hammerhai]

Ok, here is what I did.

Click on Programming.
Click on Clear Profile.
Click on Profile editor.
Click on (Left|Right) Toe Brake. Choose "Bands" as an option
You should now see three bands which are empty
Leave 0-33% empty
With both the other bands click on the arrow pointing right and fill in space as the command to be used when in that range.
Do the same for the other toebrake.
This gives you a dead zone so you do not fire the JJ's accidentally. Anything else should fire the JJ's

Alternatively: Click toebrake. Click on Bands. Click on edit bands. Drag band no 3 up to band no 1, so you are left with 2 bands.

Edited by Hammerhai, 07 January 2013 - 07:39 AM.

[Rashhaverak]

Hammerhai,

That was the fastest three days ever!

I already did as you described, yet I still get the unwanted cursor movement. Did you modify any settings in the actual MWO game menu or config file? For some reason the game is reading the toe brakes as mouse movement.

Edited by Rashhaverak, 07 January 2013 - 09:16 AM.

[evilC]

If you plug in an XBOX controller, the left stick will control the mouse cursor.
So there is some code in the game that will translate stick movements to cursor movements.
Also, if you use an emulated xbox controller (eg X360ce), the emulated controller will move the mouse pointer, but the game does not register the input in the control bindings.
So do not assume cursor movement equals something mapping to the mouse.

[willrnlds]

I have the Saitek rudder pedals as well. I had terrible luck with the saitek profiler, it ended up glitching horribly. Ditched it and use joy2key, works great.

Speaking of pedals, I heard someone say that analog turning was confirmed as a requirement before the game leaves open beta, but didn't see any source for that... Anyone know? That's pretty high on my "must have before putting a dime towards the game" list, along with actual look controls instead of freelook.

[Rashhaverak]

Okay... I set the toe brakes to bands, set the tow brakes to the letter "l" on the keyboard, and set the letter "l" to be a center torso command. Next, I tried to set the left and right turns on the options menu to the joystick setting to the left and right turn on the rudder pedals. Then I started the game.

The result was that I could only turn to the right, no matter what way I moved the pedals. The game was recongnizing the pedals, but not accepting the input correctly. Also, when I hit the tow breaks, the mech acted as if the "center torso - l button" was being depressed continuously, so I couldn't torso twist at all.

Not exactly a resounding success... but hey, at least I got the mech to turn using my pedals!

p.s.

While I absolutely believe that this game will someday be great (it's awefully addictive now), it will be so much better when they get some real peripheral support!

Edited by Rashhaverak, 07 January 2013 - 03:32 PM.

[Rashhaverak]

I am completely convinced that the Saitek SST software is one of the worst pieces of programming ever invented. Can't get the keys I want to repeat to repeat, and can't make the ones I don't want to repeat to not repeat.

I'm thinking that the only way I'm going to get the pedals to work is to either wait for the devs to add the support (no offence devs, but I'm not waiting until next Christmas), or go to third party software.

Edited by Rashhaverak, 07 January 2013 - 05:28 PM.

[CyBerkut]

Rashhaverak, on 07 January 2013 - 02:48 PM, said:

Okay... I set the toe brakes to bands, set the tow brakes to the letter "l" on the keyboard, and set the letter "l" to be a center torso command. Next, I tried to set the left and right turns on the options menu to the joystick setting to the left and right turn on the rudder pedals. Then I started the game.

The result was that I could only turn to the right, no matter what way I moved the pedals. The game was recongnizing the pedals, but not accepting the input correctly. Also, when I hit the tow breaks, the mech acted as if the "center torso - l button" was being depressed continuously, so I couldn't torso twist at all.

Not exactly a resounding success... but hey, at least I got the mech to turn using my pedals!

p.s.

While I absolutely believe that this game will someday be great (it's awefully addictive now), it will be so much better when they get some real peripheral support!

OK. First of all... In the MWO Options menu, do NOT set items in the joystick (3rd) column on the upper section where the keyboard type entries are. Scroll down to the bottom section for the axis area. Set the Rudder axis to whichever game axis you prefer (I use it to do the leg turning). Yes, currently the game is handling the leg turning axis as digital on-off [similar to using the A and D keys] *internally*... but you don't want to compound the problem, and miss out when they finally convert leg turning to proper axis analog behavior.

Second... make sure you are not creating/leaving conflicts between the MWO Options and the SST.

To get the toe brakes to send a command, use the bands in SST as described by Hammerhai. Choose the function(s) you assign to the toe brakes wisely... If you are not accustomed to using toe brakes already in other sims, you may not have developed a good habit of staying off of the toe brakes, so you would not want to assign a function to them that would be fighting against other important controls (ie. torso twisting), or that could have bad consequences to unintended actuation (ie. weapons firing). [Accidently shooting the Atlas standing in front of you, in the back at the beginning of the match, will not make you popular...] Jump jets could be a good choice for the toe brakes.

The SST software works fine with the latest versions installed, once you wrap your head around how it works and learn to avoid conflicts with game settings.

Due to the way MWO works, I recommend setting your axis assignments in the MWO Options menu. Leave the axis settings in SST "unassigned" unless you are using the bands feature to send keyboard outputs (or to send advanced commands).

[Rashhaverak]

If I don't set the pedals in the third column, then which column should I be using?

Is there a way to delete a keybind in the MWO options menu after it has been set? There doesn't seem to be a delete option available.

When you say to scroll down to the axis area, can you be more specific? What is the name of the line that the rudder setting should be placed in, and in which column should it be set?

When I tried to set the pedals without the SST software the MWO game registered the rudder left and rudder right as the same command, so I couldn't set them... One just over wrote the other.

[evilC]

Rashhaverak, on 08 January 2013 - 03:45 AM, said:

Is there a way to delete a keybind in the MWO options menu after it has been set? There doesn't seem to be a delete option available.

Without editing game files, the only workaround is this:
Bind each mapping you want to clear to the same thing - eg map throttle to button 1, then map torso twist to button 1 - this will "clear" throttle.
You will always be left with one binding, but you could then map that to something inane like override shutdown.
You could also look in the actionmap xml file to see what all the ones you have cleared are set like and mimic the one left item (eg the override shutdown mapped to button 1) to look like that, which would probably clear that also.

[CyBerkut]

Rashhaverak, on 08 January 2013 - 03:45 AM, said:

If I don't set the pedals in the third column, then which column should I be using?

You use the third column... you just don't use the upper part of the third column to bind an axis control. The upper rows are keyboard / button type commands, and already have default keyboard bindings assigned in the first column. If you have a joystick, you can assign joystick buttons in the third column for those upper rows as desired.

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Is there a way to delete a keybind in the MWO options menu after it has been set? There doesn't seem to be a delete option available.

Yes. evilC describes it well above.

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When you say to scroll down to the axis area, can you be more specific? What is the name of the line that the rudder setting should be placed in, and in which column should it be set?

With the exception of "Invert Throttle", the bottom 5 rows are axis type entries. If you wish to use your rudder pedals to turn your mech's legs, double click into the the row for "Turn" in the third column. It will flash green. Move your rudder pedals (While NOT depressing a toe brake !!!). It will assign that axis control. It will insert something like j0_rot_z, or j1_rot_z, depending on what controller number it has detected your rudder pedals as.

Now... you may find that the rudder pedal turning is the opposite direction from what you desire. If so, you will need to edit an entry into your USER.CFG file, which is a simple text file (that is empty/blank by default) that can be edited with Windows Notepad.

cl_joystick_invert_turn = 1 // Invert turn axis

Make sure the file is saving as USER.CFG and NOT as USER.CFG.TXT ...

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When I tried to set the pedals without the SST software the MWO game registered the rudder left and rudder right as the same command, so I couldn't set them... One just over wrote the other.

That is almost certainly because you were attempting to do it in the upper rows, in the "Turn Left" and "Turn Right" rows. The commands in those rows are keyboard button (1st column) / mouse button (2nd column) / joystick button (3rd column). As you have seen, and axis input can only be assigned to one row. I'd recommend you use your rudder axis for the "Turn" which will turn your legs. Alternatively, you could assign the rudder to "Torso Twist", but that is better left to your mouse or joystick, in my opinion.

[Rashhaverak]

Well, another night, and another attempt to make the pedals work.

CyBerkut, tried to set the pedals to any column but the third column, but that doesn't work. The only column that MWO will recognize the pedal input from appears to be the third column. Scrolled down to the line labelled "turn" and set the rudder pedals to that. Started the game and result: the game thinks I want to turn forever to the right! If I push the pedals to try to turn left I can turn left, but as soon as I take my foot off of the pedals it immediately starts turning right again.

I know that it's not the SST software interfering because I turned it off. The game doesn't seem to recognize when I'm at zero rudder.I know it's not the pedals, because I can check that input, and the positive and negative are working just fine, so it's definitely a problem with the game somehow not interpreting the input correctly.

Does anyone know how agravating it is to try and play this game while forever turning to the right?

Edited by Rashhaverak, 08 January 2013 - 03:05 PM.

[Rashhaverak]

Okay, I've tried all that I can think of for tonight. Three games with the right turn permanently jammed. I probably looked like a lunatic out there in my mech with a mad and constant right twitch.

It's very frustrating to be so close to making the pedals work. I'm sure Paul Inouye is probably laughing his *** off...