vJoy Feeder Apps & Tools

Here is the fact that explains this entire site: vJoy alone does nothing. The vJoy driver creates empty virtual joystick devices — up to 16 of them, each with up to 8 axes, 128 buttons and 4 POV hats — and then waits. Nothing moves until a feeder application writes data into a device, at which point games see an ordinary DirectInput joystick. Every useful thing ever done with vJoy is done by a feeder. This hub collects the seven feeders and companion tools that matter, each with its own setup guide.

Feeders come in three families. Mergers and remappers take real controllers — or keyboards, mice and wheels — and reshape them into one virtual device. Scripted and hardware feeders generate joystick data from things that were never joysticks: head movement, a serial port, a mouse, a CAD puck. And companion tools like HidHide do not feed anything at all — they clean up what games can see, so the virtual device your feeder built is the only one in the room.

Start in the right order

Whatever feeder you choose, the order never changes: install vJoy first from the download page, configure a device in vJoyConf with the axes and buttons you need, then install the feeder. Our setup hub covers the driver stage end to end. Skipping it is the root cause of most ‘the feeder does nothing’ reports — the feeder was fine; it simply had no device to feed.

The seven guides

Mergers and remappers

  • Joystick Gremlin — merge multiple HOTAS devices into one vJoy device, with response curves, modes and macros; requires vJoy underneath.
  • UCR (Universal Control Remapper) — remap keyboard, mouse, wheel or stick to a virtual device, using vJoy output for DirectInput or ViGEm for Xbox.
  • HidHide — the companion tool: hide your physical controllers from games so only the merged vJoy device reaches them, ending double input.

Scripted and hardware feeders

  • OpenTrack + FreePIE — head tracking fed into games as joystick axes, for titles with no tracking input of their own. OpenTrack does not require vJoy — this chain is the honest fallback.
  • Mouse to joystick with FreePIE — a small script turns mouse movement into a virtual stick for steering or camera control.
  • vJoySerialFeeder — serial data into vJoy: RC receivers for sim practice and Arduino builds as DIY controllers.
  • Sx2vJoy — a legacy feeder that turns a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse into a joystick other software can use.

Which feeder do you need?

Merging a HOTAS or HOSAS rig into one device: Joystick Gremlin, finished with HidHide. Feeding a game from a keyboard, mouse or wheel: UCR for a point-and-click remapper, FreePIE when you need scripted behaviour. Head tracking in a game without tracking support: the OpenTrack and FreePIE chain — and check our head tracking hub first, because if your game accepts tracking natively you need none of this. Unusual hardware — an RC transmitter, an Arduino project, a SpaceMouse: vJoySerialFeeder and Sx2vJoy respectively. Every guide is honest about its tool’s limits, including the legacy ones, so you can choose with your eyes open.

New to all of this? Get the driver from the download page, work through the setup hub, then pick the one feeder your hardware and your game actually call for. One feeder, working well, beats three installed hopefully.