I am using a xbox 360 controller for years now. I have my throttle and brake combined, because lfs recognizes the two shoulder triggers (LT and RT) as one single axle, rather than two. Now I know that there are additional program(s) you can download to fix that issue and to separate the axles, so you are able to give throttle as well as brake. (for doing a burnout, or for pro driving or whatever)

But I don't think it doesn't have to be so cumbersome. If a small program can fix this problem, why not include in within LFS? If other games like BeamNG and what else dont have this problem, why does LFS?

So my suggestion is to make LFS see the LT and LR as seperate axles so throttle and brake don't have to be combined.

Here the problem comes from the actual gamepad itself and not lfs. In gamepad firmware/hardware the pots on trigers LT and RT are connected together in series and tied to a single Z-axis.

However, I've also seen this separation done by software in updated RBR by rally sim fans. I have no idea how they did it, but it is actualy possible through the magic of coding.

I support the idea and would very much love to see such option for Xbox controlers in lfs. At this moment, I'm not able to help more, but I have the Xbox controler and could help to come up with an algorithm to extract two independent axis out of a single one.

What makes it possible is the fact that one trigger, LT or RT moves axis from 0 to half way. If you hold let's say keep LT pressed, axis is at 50% and then start pressing RT the axis goes from 50% to 100%. The tricky part now is if you start releasing any triger from here the axis goes down and I have no idea how they know which one it is. Will do more tests and thinking about it and will let you know here my findings.

It's fixed in xinput (which pretty much exists just for Xbox Controllers) but XInput lacks a ton of features which LFS relies upon for input (like FFB).

Other sims implement both DirectInput and XInput and only use the latter for Xbox devices which is a reasonable solution to the issue.

For "compatibility reasons" though, Windows exposes the Xbox controller with combined triggers and many of those external apps basically just access the Xbox Controller as a XInput device and then proxy that back as a virtual DirectInput device.

Tnx for this info man.

Well, does that mean that LFS can use Xinput? I mean it cetrainly does to some extent because my Xbox controler works fine, ofc except for ffb but it is not relevant here.

After some googling, I found that there exist some custom driver for Xbox controller made by some japaneese guy, but this is not something I would recommend to anyone, as this can be very fishy and dangerous for security reasons. There also seem to be some 3rd party programs that are able to convert Xinput devices into DirectInput along with some axis/bitton remapings and this I would recommend, but it is a hassle.

Seeing this feature in other games gives me hope that it may also be implemented into LFS. How I don't know, I'm working on finding it out, but as I see it seems that Xinput protocol has the 2 triggers as separated axis natively. We "just" need to find a way to utilize it.

Scawen would need to implement XInput for control inputs along side directinput.

Probably not a huge priority as it would genuinely only apply to Xbox Controller as there's few other devices that would use XInput over DirectInput.

There is a more modern Microsoft input API as well called GameInput but I don't think it's really been battle tested. It was secretly deployed as a Windows update 6~ months ago and wrecked havoc becuase both device drivers and games weren't expecting it and it would hijack things like FFB from the game on window focus change and the best way to fix it was to disable the Windows Service for GameInput Runtime. Currently it's also not yet available in Windows SDK, just the Xbox GDK (also available on Windows) which I'm sure Scawen doesn't want to link against.

Yeah, then it really seems like a dead end, not worth spending time on it.

I talked with the developers of RBR - Rally SimFan update, where they have this feature implemented.

They said Xinput has to be implemented, as with it this controller already reports triggered as a separate axis.

Is that not simply a matter of setting brake/throttle to "seperate" instead of "combined"?
The fourth option in your screenshot.

It's not because Xbox controller reports the 2 triggers under a single Z axis. We explained in more details above.

LFS has the option to combine 2 axis into one, but not the vice versa.

Quote from Gutholz :

Is that not simply a matter of setting brake/throttle to "seperate" instead of "combined"?
The fourth option in your screenshot.

Only when used with XInput does the Xbox Controller report its triggers as separate axis.

With DirectInput (what LFS uses), it's a combined single axis.

Most games work around this by implementing XInput solely for Xbox Controller (and then DirectInput for every other input device).