How to use the quick menu with a digital 4-way HAT

When setting up my good old poverty HOTAS setup, the Thrustmaster HOTAS X, I saw that egosoft included a quick menu to use with controllers that dont sport many buttons. I thought to myself "hey thats me!" only to soon realize that the quick menu controls are specifically designed for use with conventional twin-stick gamepads.

While the 2 quick menus can be triggered with a simple button press, the actual selection demands to be bound to an analogue axis. Since my specific HOTAS setup does not feature an analogue HAT, my only option was to bind the selection to one of the sticks very own axis, thereby making the quick menu extremely annoying to use.

Not willing to be bested by a cheap piece of plastic, I got it to work by emulating a virtual joystick and making the game read digital HAT inputs as analog axis inputs, which allowed me to use both quick menus without letting go of the controls.

Now if you want to do the same thing, you will need 2 things

• A virtual joystick emulator such as vJoy[github.com]
  
• An app that would translate the inputs from your digital input into an analog output such as Universal Control Remapper[github.com]

The third, more sinister thing you need is a flightstick with a digital HAT to use it with, but you probably already have that taken care of.

After you have installed vJoy, open its config utility (Configure vJoy).

• A default device in tab [1] should already have been created, and if not, press "Add Device" at the bottom in order to generate a new device.
  
• Make sure that axis X and Y are checked.
  
• Make sure that "Enable vJoy" is checked at the bottom left corner.

Check with vJoy monitor utility if your "vJoy Device #1" is showing up.
Thats it for configuring vJoy.

Heres that step that actually makes vJoy do anything.

• Open UCR.
  
• Create a new profile, call it something like "vJoy HAT to axis".
  
• Check your physical stick as an input device, and your "vJoy Device #1" as your output device.

Now here comes the somewhat tedious part.
You will have to manually assign every direction of the HAT, so Up, Down, Left and Right, to their respective directions on the X/Y axes. The window for editing your new profile will be opened by default after creating the profile, but you can also close it and edit your profile later.

• Add a "Button to Axis" mapping, name it "UP"
  
• As input choose your physical device, and assign it to "POVs, POV#1, UP"
  
• As your output choose "vJoy Device 1", and assign it to "Axes, Y"
  
• Set "Axis when pressed" to 100. What this means is that when you press the UP direction on your HAT, the emulated axis Y goes full tilt into positive.

Next

• Add a "Button to Axis" mapping, name it "DOWN"
  
• Choose your physical device as input, and assign it to "POVs, POV#1, DOWN"
  
• Choose "vJoy Device 1" as your output, and assign it to "Axes, Y"
  
• Set "Axis when pressed" to -100. What this means is that when you press the DOWN direction on your HAT, the emulated axis Y goes full tilt into negative.

Then do the same for LEFT and RIGHT inputs on the X axis and youre done.

Assuming you have your physical device is plugged in, UCR is running and your UCR profile is activated:

• Start the game, go to "Manage Controllers/Joysticks", enable your physical stick in slot 1 and your vJoy device in slot 2.
  
• Go to "Controls: Menu Navigation", scroll all the way down and assign both "Radial Menu Selection" axes to your HAT (the native digital inputs from your physical hat will just be ignored and only the virtual axes will be read).
  
• Go to "General Controls", you should have 4 tabs at the top, go to tab "Joystick 2", and make sure to remove any existing button assignments.
  
• Here you can also assign the functions you want on your radial menu to one of the 16 possible quick menu slots
  
• Go to the tab "Joystick" and assign your preferred joystick buttons to "Open Radial Menu" and "Open Radial Menu 2". For me its the 2 buttons at the back of my throttle.

Troubleshoot whether the axes have been assigned correctly, and adjust them in your UCR profile accordingly.

You have now jumped through enough hoops to be able to actually use a feature this game has.