[Libff-devel] Vegastrike and Force Feedback

[Alexander R. <ale...@us...>]

Hi,

I am a Co-Developer to Vegastrike vegastrike.sourceforge.net, a 3D space 
fight sim.

I have written the joystick support for Vegastrike, and now I own a new 
force-feedback joystick, so I'll do also the Force Feedback support for 
Vegastrike.

I've already got contacts to Johann Deneux, but I'm now also on the 
libff-devel and linuxconsole-dev mailing lists.

My job would be, to help write a high-level force feedback library, and then 
make Vegastrike use it.

What has been done in writing such a high-level library already?
Any concepts yet etc?

Currently, I've installed  kernel-2.4.12 and using Johanns patch for this 
kernel.

I've read through the docu, and got my system to recognize the joystick.

I've got an AVB Top Shot Pegasus (connected to the serial port):

[alex@jungle vegastrike-current]$ jstest /dev/js0
Joystick (ttyS1/serio0/input0) has 6 axes and 13 buttons. Driver version is 
2.1.0.
Testing ... (interrupt to exit)
Axes:  0:     0  1:     0  2:     0  3:     0  4:     0  5:     0 Buttons:  
0:off  1:off  2:off  3:off  4:off  5:on   6:off  7:off  8:off  9Axes:  0:     
0  1:     0  2:     0  3:     0  4:     0  5:     0 Buttons:  0:off  1:off  
2:off  3:off  4:off  5:on   6:off  7:off  8:off  9

Some questions:

the right 'eight way' hatswitch is recognized as axes 4&5 - why is that 
hatswitch an axis - and not maybe a row of buttons?

The Button Nr.2 and Button Nr.3 (in terms of my joysticks manual) are somehow 
'swapped' - at least, 'Button 2' is button nr. 2 in jstest, and 'Button 3' is 
button 1 in jstest.

The eventtest util also works fine for me:
[alex@jungle ff-utils]$ ./evtest /dev/input/event0
Input driver version is 1.0.0
Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x5ef product 0x20a version 0x0
Input device name: "ttyS1/serio0/input0"
Supported events:

[etc]


ffset -a <whatever>

seems also to work fine - the autocenter gets set from 0 to 100.


What doesn't work is fftest:

 [alex@jungle ff-utils]$ ./fftest /dev/input/event0
Force feedback test program.
HOLD FIRMLY YOUR WHEEL OR JOYSTICK TO PREVENT DAMAGES
 
Device /dev/input/event0 opened
Axes query: Axis X Axis Y
Effects: Constant Periodic Spring Friction
Number of simultaneous effects: 20
Enter effect number, -1 to exit
1
Enter effect number, -1 to exit
2

Nothing happens at all.

How can I use the other ff-utils (no docu?)?

Do I have to switch the joystick on at boot time to get it recognized by the 
driver?

What has stopped working is my old-analogue joystick:

[root@jungle /root]# modprobe ns558
/lib/modules/2.4.12/kernel/drivers/char/joystick/ns558.o: init_module: No 
such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including 
invalid IO or IRQ parameters
/lib/modules/2.4.12/kernel/drivers/char/joystick/ns558.o: insmod 
/lib/modules/2.4.12/kernel/drivers/char/joystick/ns558.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.12/kernel/drivers/char/joystick/ns558.o: insmod ns558 failed

Before I used 2.4.12, I tried using 2.4.2 with it's non-force-feedback 
'iforce' drivers.

With 2.4.2, my analogue joystick became js0 and the Pegasus was js1.

Now, with 2.4.12, the loading of ns558 doesn't work anymore - I dunno why?

I don't think that's a problem with the force-feedback-drivers - any idea why 
it doesn't want my ns558 module (haven't changed anything in BIOS or 
interrupts).

See here my loading script:

echo "Loading Sound modules"
 
modprobe es1371 joystick=0x200
 
echo "Loading Joystick modules"
 
modprobe joydev # userland interface
modprobe ns558 # gameport driver
modprobe analog # analog-joystick
 
modprobe serio
modprobe serport
modprobe iforce
modprobe evdev
 
/usr/local/bin/inputattach --iforce /dev/ttyS1 &


Any ideas or comments?

I'll hope I'll be able to update on 2.4.17 soon.



Alex

-- 
                   Alexander Rawass
          Email: ale...@us...
http://tuxfleet.sourceforge.net http://qtreemap.sourceforge.net
...but some day you'll be a STAR in somebody else's SKY...