vJoy for Elite Dangerous: HOTAS Merging with Joystick Gremlin

Elite Dangerous is a natural fit for a HOTAS — hands on throttle and stick — and also a game where a pilot’s hardware often grows piece by piece. A stick comes first, then a separate throttle, then pedals or a button panel. Each addition is another Windows controller with its own axes and button numbers. vJoy, driven by Joystick Gremlin, lets you present a merged, reshaped version of that collection to Elite Dangerous as a tidy virtual joystick. The game binds the virtual device, while Gremlin handles the merging, the curves and any mode logic underneath.

Pilots use this for practical reasons. A gentle curve around the centre makes fine thrust and pitch control easier during docking and combat. Merging lets a throttle axis, stick axes and pedal yaw live on one virtual device instead of being scattered across several. Button remapping can move a frequently used function to a reachable control. None of this changes the game itself, and vJoy does none of it alone: vJoy is the DirectInput virtual device, Gremlin is the feeder that reads the real HOTAS and writes to vJoy.

What you need

• vJoy from our download page — BrunnerInnovation 2.2.2.0 first on Windows 10 and Windows 11, with 2.1.9.1 as the fallback if a feeder misbehaves on 2.2.x.
• Joystick Gremlin — our Joystick Gremlin guide covers profiles, merging and curves.
• Your HOTAS connected and tested in Windows, with every axis and button confirmed working before any merging begins.
• A written plan for which virtual axis and buttons Elite Dangerous will bind, kept beside the keyboard during setup.

Setup, step by step

1. Install vJoy and create one virtual device in Configure vJoy with enough axes for stick, throttle and pedals. The documented ceiling per device — up to 8 axes, up to 128 buttons and up to 4 POV hats — is generous for a single HOTAS merge.
2. In Gremlin, map the physical stick pitch and roll to vJoy X and Y. Activate the profile and confirm movement in joy.cpl before adding anything else.
3. Add the throttle to a free vJoy axis and the pedals, if you use them, to another. Note the virtual numbers. Elite Dangerous will show you these numbers, not your physical layout.
4. Shape response curves in Gremlin for pitch and roll. A softer centre helps with precise manoeuvring, but keep the outer range responsive enough for combat turns. Save the profile under a clear name.
5. Decide how you will handle the physical devices in the game. If Elite Dangerous also reads the raw HOTAS alongside the virtual device, you can get duplicate or conflicting input. Bind the merged functions on the vJoy device and clear the same functions from the physical devices.
6. Launch Elite Dangerous, open Options, then Controls, and bind the vJoy device axes and buttons one group at a time: flight rotation, thrust, yaw, then secondary functions such as landing gear, lights and panels.
7. Test in the training scenarios or in open space away from traffic. Check docking approach control, full throttle travel, and that no button triggers two functions at once.
8. Back up both the Gremlin profile and your Elite Dangerous bindings folder. Rebinding a merged HOTAS from memory after an update is a miserable evening; restoring a backup is five minutes.

Head tracking, stated honestly

Many Elite Dangerous pilots pair a HOTAS with head tracking to look around the cockpit, and general community practice includes chains where OpenTrack output reaches a game through FreePIE and vJoy, as well as dedicated head-tracking hardware used on its own terms. Treat those as separate systems from the HOTAS merge in this guide. This page does not claim a specific Elite Dangerous support promise for any single tracking method. If head tracking matters to you, read our OpenTrack and FreePIE head-tracking chain for how the vJoy link in such a chain actually works, and check the current state of any hardware option before buying.

Limitations

Merging adds a layer that must be running. If Gremlin is not active with the right profile, Elite Dangerous will see a silent vJoy device. Build the habit of launching the feeder first. Curves also stack: shaping in Gremlin and again in the game can produce a numb centre, so shape in one place. And vJoy cannot repair a drifting stick — if the raw axis wanders in joy.cpl with no feeder running, clean or replace the hardware.

A final habit separates calm Elite Dangerous setups from fragile ones: change one variable between flights. If you adjust a curve, fly and judge it before touching button assignments. If you rebind a group, test that group before editing the feeder again. The merged HOTAS has three places a symptom can live — the physical hardware, the Gremlin profile, or the game bindings — and single changes are how you learn which place is speaking. Keep a dated copy of the profile before each experiment, so a worse result costs one restore instead of a rethink of the whole cockpit layout you had already tuned to your hands.

Explore the vJoy setup guides by game hub for the other space and flight guides, and read our vJoy for Star Citizen setup for the HOSAS version of this merging idea.