Hardware: steering wheel and pedals?

[jdeneux]

First of all, i'm no expert in these issues, so correct me if i'm wrong.

Ok, I'll correct you

The FFB provided by linux kernel (the one i've used at least) works for all i-force (Immersion Techs) devices.

Actually the term I-Force is misleading. It is used for devices that speak different protocols.

The first driver I wrote was for I-Force devices (I have a wheel from AVB that uses this protocol). This driver is quite complete and supports many effects (springs, periodic force...).

The second driver I wrote was for Logitech devices. These devices are much dumber and support only constant force effects and springs. All other effects must be simulated by the application using periodical updates. This driver also supports two cordless rumble pads from Logitech.

There are also other drivers written by other people which I'm not familiar with.

I think Immersion has patent for all force feedback systems (isn't that why the ps3 default controllers don't come with ffb?), so i guess all devices with ffb support adhere to i-force api, making it a sort-of standard.

Judging by what the hacker who coded i-force support says, it looks like this api could be used as a standard (of course not an open standard); but i guess it's easier to directly use Immersion SDKs on windows (which we don't have in linux).

This document describes the protocol to communicate with the device. It's of no interest to application writers, only driver writers.

The force feedback API of linux is device-independent. You use ioctls and writes to /dev/input/eventXX to send and update your effects.