vJoy for American Truck Simulator: FreePIE Virtual Steering, Honestly Framed

The honest starting point for American Truck Simulator is identical to its European sibling: ATS has native mouse steering, and vJoy is not required to steer with a mouse. The game offers mouse steering on its own, and a player who wants only that should use the built-in option and skip virtual joystick drivers entirely. Any guide that implies you must install vJoy for mouse steering in ATS is misleading you, and this one will not.

vJoy becomes relevant in ATS for the same narrow, real reasons it matters in ETS2. If you steer with a phone tilted like a wheel, something must turn that phone’s motion into a joystick axis the game can read. If you build a FreePIE virtual-steering script — around mouse movement, keys or a DIY input — the script needs a standard virtual device to write to. And if you add DIY analogue controls, such as a hand-built lever or extra axis, presenting them through one DirectInput device can be tidier than hoping the game likes each raw source. In all three cases, FreePIE or another feeder does the thinking and vJoy provides the virtual joystick. The differences between the ATS and ETS2 versions of this setup are minimal: the framing, the feeder and the binding discipline are the same, and only your truck, map and key layout change.

What you need

• For native mouse steering: only ATS itself. Use the in-game option; no vJoy, no feeder, no script.
• For a FreePIE build: 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 FreePIE misbehaves on 2.2.x.
• FreePIE, the legacy-stable scripted feeder — our mouse-to-joystick guide with FreePIE explains the mouse-to-joystick pattern it uses.
• A short plan: the steering source, the vJoy axis it will own, and where throttle, brake and essential keys will live.

FreePIE setup, step by step

1. Install vJoy and create a single device in Configure vJoy. Give it the axes your script will write — steering first, plus throttle or brake axes only if your design truly uses them.
2. Write or load your FreePIE script in stages. Stage one handles steering only, with an explicit centre and a sensible range. Resist adding button emulation or extra axes until steering alone is proven.
3. Run the script, open joy.cpl, and watch the vJoy device. Move your steering source slowly lock to lock, then quickly, and confirm the axis follows without sticking, inverting or jumping at the centre.
4. Fix scaling in the script if the axis saturates too early or never reaches its stops. A virtual wheel that only uses half its axis will feel vague no matter how you tune the game.
5. In ATS, open Options, then Controls, choose the vJoy device for steering, and bind the planned axis. Bind throttle and brake once each, on the sources you chose, and clear duplicate bindings for the same function.
6. Tune steering sensitivity and non-linearity in the game in small increments, testing on the same stretch of road after each change so differences are real rather than imagined.
7. Take a mixed drive: a depot manoeuvre, a surface-street section with junctions, and a highway run. Long American highway miles expose a bad centre quickly, and tight yard work exposes a bad low-speed range.
8. Save the script, the vJoy notes and a screenshot of your ATS control settings together. A FreePIE setup is code plus configuration; treat it like something worth backing up.

Binding tips for long-haul driving

ATS rewards a calm control layout. Put cruise control, retarder steps, indicators and lights where you can reach them without looking, because the game’s long highway stretches are punctuated by exactly those actions. Keep camera controls consistent with your other driving games where you can. If you also play ETS2 with a similar FreePIE build, reusing the same virtual axis layout and near-identical key choices means switching trucks does not mean relearning your hands.

Limitations

FreePIE is a legacy-stable tool, with its last release in 2019 according to our fact base. Scripts shared by the community may assume older setups, so read any script before running it and adapt axis numbers to your own vJoy configuration. Virtual steering also has no force feedback and no physical centre. On a ten-hour route plan, that missing centre is a real comfort factor and the main reason many virtual-steering drivers eventually buy a wheel — not a failure of the free setup, just its honest boundary.

Whichever route you choose, protect the profile you have already tuned. ATS drivers often spend more time perfecting a key layout and steering feel than the initial installation ever took, and that tuning lives across the game profile, the FreePIE script and your vJoy notes. Export or copy all three before a game update, a Windows reinstall or a hardware change. Readers who keep that small backup habit can rebuild in minutes; readers who skip it tend to rediscover, one junction at a time, settings they had already solved months earlier and forgotten they had changed.

Browse the vJoy setup guides by game hub for every game, and compare this guide with our vJoy for Euro Truck Simulator 2 setup if you drive both sides of the Atlantic.