Linux force feedback wheel support

[thelusiv]

I've just finished coding something that I think should work for force feedback in Linux for VDrift. If you have a working force feedback device please try it out.

Prerequisites:
* a steering wheel supporting constant force effects (like my Logitech Momo Racing force feedback steering wheel)
* Linux
* HID_FF is enabled in your kernel
* your device's USB ID is in kernel-source/drivers/usb/input/hid-ff.c
* the ff-utils test program ffcfstress works for you. Note the device name you use with this program (should be /dev/input/eventX).
* VDrift SVN r1547 or later

Once you've met the prereqs, now recompile vdrift like this:

Code:

scons force_feedback=1

Now open your VDrift.config. Find the section [ joystick ] and add the following line to the joystick section somewhere:

Code:

ff_device = /dev/input/event0

change event0 to whatever device you should use (the one that worked with ffcfstress).

Start up VDrift. Start a practice game. You should feel a force effect on your steering wheel based on the aligning moment force from the front tires.


The code is adapted from the ffcfstress program into a class which is initialized by VAMOSWORLD. I only added support for Linux now but adding Windows support should be easy, since the driver support there is much better. I'm not sure what to do about OS X or FreeBSD...

I haven't tested it yet. It took me a while to test out force-feedback at all, and after I found it worked, coding the force feedback class was easy. However something is broken with my NVIDIA driver; since I had to compile a custom kernel to enable HID_FF in Ubuntu, I've had to recompile the NVIDIA driver, and while X starts OK, I get "Couldn't find matching GLX visual" errors when trying to run 3D apps...anyway I'm pretty sure that the force-feedback support should work. Somebody please give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Thanks to stenyak and jdeneux for help figuring out how to set this up, and also to Oliver Hamann who wrote the ffcfstress program.