Hi, fellow LFS drivers out there, it seems that the XBox 360 Controller is fairly popular among the racers out there who can not afford a [good] wheel!

I have searched around this forum about the controller, and finally pieced together a solution, i just want the next newb that comes around to have an easier time with this game pad...

so i am going to make a thread to sum it all up!

now first of all, by reading this thread you probably realize by now, the original microsoft driver is utter, complete, rubbish! time to get you a new driver!

but to start, you have to have the microsoft driver installed

when your finished, follow this link and download the XBCD 1.07 software:
http://www.redcl0ud.com/files/XBCDv107.exe

after you downloaded it, go ahead and run the exe

Then download this packet to patch in some missing files so your computer recognizes the driver!
http://matt-land.com/xbcd/

unzip that packet then run install.bat

go to the start menu and right click on my computer

go to properties

go to hardware tab

go to device manager

expand "XBOX 360 Peripherals"

right click "xbox 360 controller for windows"

click update driver

select "install from a list or a specific location"

select "don't search, i will choose the driver to install"

select"XBOX 360 GAME PAD" and then click next

when a popup ask about driver certificates, ignore it and click "continue anyways"

restart your computer and you are good!

now, open setup utility in "all programs/XBCD"[/COLOR]


now in the setup utility...
For separate triggers on the XBox360 Controller:

LT- slider(-)
RT- RZ (-)

For the analog sticks:
Left analog stick: set deadzone to 18, because anything larger would make your analog stick bi-polar!
Right analog stick: no deadzone, and have the 2 axises be on one axis
so that up=right, down= left; you will see why in a sec

set rumble to 80, i find anything harder will make you loose blood to ur hands
and get blood accumulation somewhere else *wink**wink*
now, to have this properly saved, just click "apply" THEN save... or else you would not have saved your settings
now that you have the controller configured...
go into the game and you can set the control scheme!
here is a setup that i find very effective!
RT-throttle
LT-brake
X- horn
A- ebrake
B- personal message
Y- personal message
start- ignition
select- Car Reset
left analog stick(side to side)- steering
right analog stick- clutch
back- look back
left- look left
right- look right
up- a personal message synonymous with "get the hell out of my way, n00b!"
left shoulder- shift down
right shoulder- shift up

this way, when you have to pull ebrake or ignite car... you can reach the button while you have the clutch depressed! and note: you have to pull the clutch back to disengage the clutch!

i stole the setup from Forza and modified it to accommodate a clutch and have the shifters be aligned on the controller like a paddle shifter

the benefits of using this control scheme is that you get to have all four essential controls(steering, clutch, brake, and throttle) on a car to be analog on the controller.

note: there are several reasons why i didn't chose to have an analog control.
a) if i where to include it as an analog control, the only place i can place it is the horizontal axis of the left analog stick, but that would disturb steering, since you have to have the stick at the absolute top or bottom to disengage it
b) the technique of slowing down the rear wheels[to regrip] when you are slipping is so advanced that your brain wouldn't be able to handle so much data output on top of using 6 digits to control a WHOLE CAR... so it's useless anyways.

Hope this helps you, and good luck with driving with your fingers!

ps: please sticky!
Wireless Controller Guide Section, comming soon

i now have the xgi file for the xbcd uploaded, so if your lazy, you can now just download that and rename it .xgi and boot it up in XBCD

I know there is a way to set up a PS3 controller for LFS but i don't no how. can anyone tell me?

Nice guide!

I have a 360 elite, which comes with a wireless controller.

Is there anyway i can use that on my pc? I use a G25 but im just curious how a LFS would feel on controller. To connect it, would i need to use the charger and then plug into a USB port?

I'm sure that if people checked the LFS wiki, that my little guide would work the same. Especially because it bares a very bad similarity to my own, although mine is shorter, because it doesn't require the patch to the XBCD drivers. The only thing that mines missing is a deadzone, becuase that's pretty user specific.

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

Nice guide!

I have a 360 elite, which comes with a wireless controller.

Is there anyway i can use that on my pc? I use a G25 but im just curious how a LFS would feel on controller. To connect it, would i need to use the charger and then plug into a USB port?

thank you!

and if other people own the wireless version and the sixaxis, please post the guide on this thread!

and @ dawesdust, i thought that the no-deadzone MS driver was twitchy, couldn't drive... and i hate the "drive by wire" i get with the original driver, and i just want to help people out, since there are many people that play LFS with an XB360 Controller

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

Nice guide!

I have a 360 elite, which comes with a wireless controller.

Is there anyway i can use that on my pc? I use a G25 but im just curious how a LFS would feel on controller. To connect it, would i need to use the charger and then plug into a USB port?

No, the charger doesn't have any input functions, it's just allows an AC current.
You need to buy the dongle, it's cheap, $20 I believe I got mine for at Walmart.

As for the scheme, that wouldn't work out good if you plan on racing with a manual gearbox, thus I have mine set (well besides completely different), but A as shift down, and B as shift up
I guess it depends on how you hold it, apparently some people hold it with two fingers on the top, it gets to cramped up there for me so I can't do that.. but whatever floats your boat, I need to check out that XBCD thing though.

^lol, i guess i just have "piano fingers"!

Quote from XCNuse :

No, the charger doesn't have any input functions, it's just allows an AC current.
You need to buy the dongle, it's cheap, $20 I believe I got mine for at Walmart.

Hmm. Well i was keeping my hopes low, as i did'nt think it would work anyway but it was worth an ask i suspose .

I will have to look into getting a "dongle". I would just like to try LFS with a joypad, it would be interesting. But also, it would be good with other games like GTA:SA. I hate using keyboard...

Quote from atlantian :

thank you!

and if other people own the wireless version and the sixaxis, please post the guide on this thread!

and @ dawesdust, i thought that the no-deadzone MS driver was twitchy, couldn't drive... and i hate the "drive by wire" i get with the original driver, and i just want to help people out, since there are many people that play LFS with an XB360 Controller

Mine wasn't the MS one, mine was the XBCD driver also, I wasn't implying that you copied, I just was saying that maybe you might want to merge (MERGE! NOT OVERWRITE) your guide with mine.

lol, that would be cool, though... we can start a new thread that is "The Official Controller Guide" and we can discuss the guides here, and there will be nothing but guides on the offical thread.(no comments)

we can get guides for g25's, dfp's, XB360 con's(both wired and otherwise), six axis's...ect...

hi everbody, updated! i now have attached an xgi profile file, just rename it .xgi and you can load it up in XBCD

Nice guide . Since the steering springs back to the center instantly, I have found a way to steer smoothly . If you download the program called "Xpadder", you can set the analog stick to act as a mouse, with that, under the the axis menu in lfs, change the steering axis to mouse x. You will then be able to steer smoothly like using a mouse, but still have throttle/brake control.

To do this i set the deadzone in xbcd utility to 0, and adjusted the deadzone within Xpadder.

Before I did this, I was using xpadder to use the gamepad as a keyboard, and was able to use keyboard stabilized in LFS with my gamepad, it also allowed smooth steering as it worked exactly like a keyboard, so I didnt have throttle or brake control.

Those are just a few ways you can steer smoothly with your gamepad, currently I am trying to learn how to drive with the mouse settings, but mouse steering is a bit hard for me , spin alot =/. I really like using Keyboard Stabilized on gamepad, but I need to find a way to use it and still have pressure sensitive triggers.

Hi Folks
I can't get this to work! Every time I plug the controller in it just shows up as the default MS controller, and not the XBCD one.

I'm a bit confused by the guide though. It says:

"but to start, you have to have the microsoft driver installed"

but the first thing the XBCD installer says is:

"if the installation is not an upgrade, you will need to uninstall the controller in Device Manager"

So do I have to have the MS driver installed or not?

I've uninstalled the controller in device manager and restarted my computer. But the first thing that happens is that windows recognizes the pad and installs the default drivers for it again. When I try and update the driver in device manager the only entry is the old MS driver.

It's driving me nuts! What am I doing wrong?

help!!!
i have installed all the stuff needed but when i open the setup utility on the xbcd i cant change nothin cause when i go to 'device' it doesnt detect anything but my controller is definatly connected!!!
help plz

Do you have an official 360 controller or a third party one (eg. MadCatz)?

I've got a MadCatz 360 Pro. I had the same problem as you but I managed to fix it by adding a line to the .inf file included in the download at http://matt-land.com/xbcd/

Basically you have to go into Device Manager and find your 360 controller entry. Then right click and go to properties. Go to Details. Select 'Compatible IDs' from the drop down list, and select the third entry down or the one that looks most similar to the ones in the .inf file. Mine was:

USB\Class_ff&SubClass_5d

Now ctrl+c to copy that text. Open up the xbcd .inf and add a new line. My entry looks like this:


Then save & close. Run the Install.bat in the same directory and then update your controller drivers in the device manager as detailed above. Worked for me!

Good luck!

Hi guys.

I have the Xbox360 wireless controller. Will this guide work?

Really nice guide. I was having a bit of an issue setting up my new 360 pad (wired so I don't confuse the 360) and this got it working a treat. I voted +1 for a sticky, and I don't care how old the thread might be or how banned the OP was, it works. If I repost it, would it get a sticky then?

The website for XBCD says it won't work with wireless controllers BTW, but I don't know if there's been any new versions since the last website update.

i used to use a 360 controller back in the day, and since my wheel is broken (and have yet again gotten back into playing lfs) this guide has helped out a lot. the issue i was having before was getting the throttle and brake on two seperate axis' (sp?), and this worked perfectly.

only one question tho. does anyone know how to change the sensitivity of the steering with the 360 controller? i can't seen to figure out for the life of me how to find a way to turn it down a tad. (tad being a frigging lot =/)

It never gets totally smooth (which is a shame), but I've got mine bearable. Here's how:

Firstly, set up the LT deadzone as above. 15-20 seems to be okay. Too little and tiny pad vibrations will steer you all over the place. If you make it so high that only big movements are noticed, the car will react like you're using a digital control.

Secondly, make sure you set the wheel rotation in LFS to 90 degrees. It's still technically too much for a pad, but it's as low as the bar goes. It'd be nice if it went down as far as 60 or even 45 to make it friendly for those of us stuck with pads, but LFS isn't really designed for us.

Unfortunately it makes driving some of the OWs a little hard (read: nigh-on impossible) because the smallest movements we can make is still like a quarter turn on the wheel, but I think it's as good as we can expect. And most of the tin tops can still be driven.
I did a bit of testing last night and found that I can just about match my previous PBs in the tin tops, but some of the lighter/faster cars are really twitchy.

yeah, that's about how i have mine set up. it's a shame that there isn't a way to edit a config file to set a custom wheel rotation, but eh. not really any complaints here.

why he was banned?

This is a pretty cool guide, but one problem, the link to the driver is wrong.

The OP's linked driver is for standard xbox controler, this is for the 360 controller.

Im running windows vista and having problems configing my wired 360 pad al the driver downloads are either only go upto windows xp or the xbcd360 websites seems to time out!

Any ideas or a working direct link to a driver for vista would be very helpful

Quote from tikshow :

why he was banned?

is strange he is from here & here too?

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I voted No.

C'mon people, really need some help with making a gamepad less twitchy.