Overview
Enabling control through both the T500 wheel and TH8 shifter. Could be relatively easily adjusted to probably any wheel/shifter combo. NOTE: making this work will require considerable effort.
Introduction (nothing really important, feel free to skip)
I was anxious to play Spintires on full real, so I put in the effort to make it possible. Note, this exact solution works only for the T500RS wheel in combination with the TH8 shifter. With some changes it can be made functional for Fanatec or anything else probably. Also, some things are system specific (device ID) and you will need to find those out on your own. I’m just trying to help out fellow players, so please be considerate when commenting.
Short version
If you’re familiar with Python, vJoy and FreePIE, this may be enough for you:
Install and set up vJoy (set up a minimum 21 button Joystick) and FreePIE and then run this code in FreePIE:
Change the parameters according to your setup and preferences. Run Spintires, chose vJoy as wheel and set up the bindings. Voila!
This basically enables all controls on the T500 and the TH8 on a single virtual controller.
Detailed description
Get some coffee, beer or whatever is your drug.
I’ll first describe what are we trying to do. We will use vJoy which is a virtual joystick emulator and FreePIE which is an app that can run Python code and communicate with vJoy. Our goal is to create a virtual joystick/wheel that will “merge” the controls of the wheel and the shifter into a single controller, so Spintires can recognize all inputs.
I will not describe every single detail, because most of the stuff you will find here:
[link]
That post deals with the general idea and this guide is how you implement that if you have a T500+TH8.
So, make sure you installed and set up both vJoy and FreePIE as in that thread.
Open FreePIE and copy this code:
This code maps our T500+TH8 controls to a virtual joystick. Now this is important and it won’t work if you don’t enter the correct values for the folloving variables:
At the top, you will see dev=0. If you made only one vJoy controller with ID=1 then this is fine. Otherwise, you should use the vJoy device ID minus 1 as dev.
The next two variables are wheelID and shifterID which are the controller indexes of the T500 and the shifter. If you use only the wheel and the shifter, on your PC as the controllers, there is a good chance wheelID=0 and shifterID=1 is your setup. I have a Saitek joystick as 0, so that’s why my IDs are greater by one. The system recognizes the Saitek, then the wheel, then the shifter. Notice that if you unplug your controllers often, this order may change, so you’ll need to re-check these IDs every time. Sorry, but no solution for this currently.
Once you entered the proper values, save the script, run it (F5 in FreePie) and then run vJoy monitor. As you use various controls, you should see proper signals in vJoy monitor. If this is working proceed to the next paragraph. If it doesn’t work, don’t worry just yet. As of January 2015, the latest FreePIE isn’t
compatible with the latest vJoy. Here’s what to do. Close both vJoy Monitor and FreePIE. Download http://sourceforge.net/projects/vjoystick/files/Beta%202.x/SDK/vJoy205SDK-190115.zip/download (a vJoy project) and copy and replace vJoyInterface.dll and vJoyInterfaceWrap.dll in your FreePIE folder. Make sure you actually replace both those files with these. This will enable communication between these two apps again. I usually don’t download just anything from the net, but honestly, these apps are safe. Anyway, proceed at your own risk. Your other option is to play with keyboard or wait for Oovee to fix this. When you replaced those two dll’s, start FreePie and vJoy Monitor again and now you should see your inputs in vJoy monitor. Make sure you run the script again in FreePie.
Okay, now we mapped the controls to vJoy. Now all that remains is that you start Spintires, choose wheel and make sure you select vJoy as the controller. Enter your desired controls, save, and happy playing!
Remember, you need to have the script in FreePIE running before starting Spintires, for the controls actually to work.
Optional: there is a variable sens which is used for adjusting steering wheel sensitivity. My preference is 2 (which is 450 degrees of steering). Feel free to change it to your liking. The value of 1 is the original setting. You can also play around with the sensitivity of the other controls like accel, brake and clutch, but I’d suggest you leave them as they are, because with that setting, they use full range.
See you in the mud!