Cannot get plunger working in Pinball FX

[Petruzzo73]

I configured Xinput and gamepad section this way:

 xInput: {
     enable: true,
     xLeft: "nudge.x",      
     yLeft: "nudge.y",      
     yRight: "plunger.z",      
 },

gamepad: {
    enable: true,       
    x: "nudge.x",       
    y: "nudge.y",       
    z: "plunger.z",     

Plunger is configured as this:
plunger: {
source: "pico_adc",
autoZero: true,
autoZeroTime: 5000,

In joy.cpl plunger is asoociated to Y Rotation:

In PinballFX or FX3, accelerometer works fine but plunger does not move at all. What could be wrong here?

Thanks

[mjrgh]

If it's working as far as joy.cpl, you probably have everything configured right on the Pinscape side, so it's probably just something on the PinballFX side, maybe setting an option somewhere to enable the plunger. I'm not a PinballFX user myself so I can't help you there - it seems to be fairly popular on the forum sites (vpforums, vpuniverse), so you might try posting on one of those.

[Petruzzo73]

Since plunger is assigned by default to Y Rotation in Xinput, none of the steam emulators work (PinballFX/FX3, Zaccaria, etc.). Same behavior for all emulators that use an Xbox controller. It only works in VPX because you can assign Yr axis to plunger explicitly.
Is there a way to assign a different plunger axis in Xinput/gamepad? Otherwise plunger won't work for Xinput.

Thanks

[mjrgh]

You can assign it to any axis you want - just change the axis assignments in the config.

[Petruzzo73]

Can you please point me to that config part?

How to assign Z Axis instead of Y Rotation in XInput?

Thanks

[Petruzzo73]

UPDATE: as in old Pinscape I used x360ce to map right thumb Y-axis to Inverted Axis 3 (IAxis3) for plunger and everything works as expected:

It would be very useful to have this feature (mapping of Axis3/Z-Axis to left/right thumb sticks in XInput) added in Pinscape Pico, to avoid usage of 3rd party apps and make it fully working with XInput and on every device.

[mjrgh]

You can already map any input to any axis. Go back and read the JSON Config Doc section on xinput.

[Petruzzo73]

Sorry, but I don't understand. I read that part lot of times and I configured the following way, but right stick is not associated to Z-axis:

 xInput: {
     enable: true,
     xLeft: "nudge.x",      
     yLeft: "nudge.y",      
     yRight: "plunger.z",   
 },

It's associated to Y-Rotation instead on joy.cpl.

What's wrong?

[mjrgh]

Sorry, but I don't understand. I read that part lot of times and I configured the following way [...]

Here's a little experiment you can do that might help you understand what's going on:

1. Disable or uninstall X360CE, so that it doesn't confuse you by feeding in other inputs
2. Replace the ENTIRE xInput: { } section in your Pinscape JSON configuration with the following:

xInput: {
   enable: true,
   xLeft: "plunger.z",
},

3. Save the config to the device
4. Run JOY.CPL and open the Pinscape XBox controller view.
5. Move the plunger back and forth. Observe the effect in JOY.CPL and note which axis is moving. Write this down; now you know what xLeft: means to JOY.CPL.
6. Exit JOY.CPL. Run PinballFX. Move the plunger. Observe the effect (if any) on PinballFX as you move the plunger. Pay close attention because the effect might be something OTHER THAN THE PLUNGER in PinballFX. For example, it might be left/right or front/back nudging. Yes, the PLUNGER DEVICE might cause NUDGE EFFECTS in PinballFX, because PinballFX doesn't know the DEVICE TYPE, it only knows the AXIS ASSIGNMENT OF THE DEVICE, so it'll interpret the plunger motion according to its idea of what the assigned axis means. Write down the effect you observe; now you know what xLeft: means to PinballFX.
7. Repeat steps 2-6 above, but this time, in step 2, change xLeft: to yLeft:. When you complete this iteration, you'll know what yLeft: means to JOY.CPL and PinballFX.
8. Repeat steps 2-6 above, but this time, in step 2, change xLeft: to xRight:. When you complete this iteration, you'll know what xRight: means to JOY.CPL and PinballFX.
9. Repeat again, changing xLeft: in step 2 to yRight:, so that you can see what yRight: means to the other programs
10. Repeat again, changing xLeft: in step 2 to leftTrigger:, so that you can see what leftTrigger: means to the other programs
11. Repeat again, changing xLeft: in step 2 to rightTrigger:, so that you can see what rightTrigger: means to the other programs

Hopefully this will clarify for you what I said earlier about how you can map the plunger to any XInput axis, and at the same time help you figure out how PinballFX expects to take its plunger input, so that you can tell WHICH axis to map to "plunger.z".

[Petruzzo73]

Thanks! Will try that

[Petruzzo73]

UPDATE: This is what I get in joy.cpl and PinballFX:

xleft-->nudge right PFX-->Nudge right
yleft-->nudge up PFX-->Nudge up
xright-->x-rotation PFX-->nothing
yright-->y-rotation PFX-->nothing
lefttrigger-->Z-Axis(half) PFX-->left flipper
righttrigger-->Z-Axis(half) PFX-->right flipper

For unknown reasons right-thumb stick is not assigned to anything in Pinball FX and other emulators; that's why plunger doesn't work.

What can we do here to avoid using an external mapping tool?
Thanks

[mjrgh]

I'm afraid I don't have any ideas. It sounds like it's a configuration issue on the FX end - according to your tests, it's just not configured to take plunger input on any of the XInput axes. If you're convinced that FX DOES accept plunger input on xLeft or xRight, but you're still not seeing any input in this test, I'd probably repeat the test to make sure you didn't miss anything, particularly for the axes that didn't appear to respond to any input (xRight and yRight). It pretty much has to be one of two things: a testing error, or FX just doesn't accept input on that axis.

If you want to rule out anything flaky about the plunger sensor input, you can use "sin(1000,0)" as the source instead of "plunger.z" - that will generate a continuous full-scale sine wave input on the axis without you having to manually operate the plunger to test for a reaction.

[Petruzzo73]

"sine(1000,0)" function works! "plunger.z" doesn't instead. Could be a bug in "plunger.z" function?

[mjrgh]

Could be a bug in "plunger.z" function?

Is plunger.z misbehaving somehow in other contexts that make you suspect a bug, such as in JOY.CPL?

If yes, please explain. If no, then we're back to something isolated to PinballFX, agree?

As I've said, I don't use FX, so I can't offer any insight there. I will repeat my suggestion that talking to other people who use FX might save you a whole lot of time here. I do have one wild guess, though, based on something you mentioned earlier in the X360CE context: you said something about INVERTED THIRD AXIS. My wild guess is that THIRD AXIS in X360CE context means right joystick X (the axis that Pinscape labels as xRight), and INVERTED means sign reversal. So maybe the problem is that you have to use NEGATIVE plunger.z instead of plunger.z, which, consulting the manual, I see you can do with "negate(plunger.z)".

[Petruzzo73]

Thank you, that was the issue. Negating the plunger.z is the solution! This will be useful to all PinballFX players.

Sorry for all the hassles.

[mjrgh]

Awesome, glad you hit upon the winning setup . I'll make a note in the Config Reference about this, since apparently the PinballFX people don't document it anywhere either - I wasn't able to find anything definitive on google about it.