Virtual Joystick.. Is.. a joystick, but virtual! The main advantage being it’s not restricted to physical ports. For example, if you have 8 USB ports, Virtual Joysticks (by using VJoy) can have up to 16 Joysticks (with each having 8 axis, 128 buttons, and 4 hat switches)
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LEA Extended Input
What is even LEA? Well, I usually use LEA Extended Input.. but LEA is clunky and old.. and unmaintained.
Plus, there’s no Windows client. The things is, I have a functional Windows tablet I can use.
Matric
Enter Matric. (https://matricapp.com/), it’s like LEA, but with a much modern interface (HTML!) There’s preset buttons for airplanes, too.
My layout is not that neat, but this is my first try in using the app. Look at the demo below:
Ok.. so how can we do that?
Download the server and client from https://matricapp.com/
If downloading the Windows client gives and error, press on these:
Press on Package Bundle, then you will get an installable .msix package.
But the problem is, the dev says that the Windows client is not actively developed at the moment, but when I use it I don’t find any problems (yet)
After the client and server is setup, we’re gonna make the panels.
Make sure that the client and server is on the same Wifi network, and make sure the network adapter being used is appropriate. Check How to Prioritize Network Adapters.
Making the Panels
In the Matric server, press new, then drag and drop the buttons.. but see below:
Can’t drag and drop instantly, you have to pick it up (slight delay upon clicking) then drag. Dropping is instant, thankfully.
Then, we bind the button to an action:
Press events and actions -> Button press -> hotkey (or vjoy button, or whatever), then add. In the case of hotkeys, we then press the hotkey in the resulting submenu.
Virtual Joystick
So how do we do that? Find these in Default Control Templates.
Then we bind the axes. If you haven’t already installed VJoy, Just do so.
DON’T use it simultaneously with LEA (or other VJoy apps) because they will block each other.
If you want multiple pages, we have to make a button so that it can switch to other pages. The most convenient way to do this is to have one main page for navigating to pages (button page) then in each page, put a button to go to this page.
How do we make this button?
We bind the action, but it’s only available in Button released, under Matric Mobile. Weird why it’s only available in button released, but that’s the dev’s choice.
After all is done, save.
Pros and Cons
Cons
It doesn’t support multitouch. The dev says that it is NOT a replacement for gamepads, implying that maybe multitouch support is technically demanding to code)
How’s the use case for multitouch? Suppose that we have a virtuual joystick and throttle, we can’t operate them simultaneously. Two sliders for left and right wheelbrakes? Can’t operate them together.
Pros
But the good thing is, it supports 2-way-communication, so in DCS, we can use an export script.
There are also unlimited pages (screens), unlike LEA, which only supports 6.
Verdict
I’ts great! Better than LEA, because it supports n number of screens, but the lack of multitouch is… hard to live with.
Windows client support will be dropped too, but probably not in the short term. The Dev is waiting for an Android Emulator solution from MS or Google, but as of now MS’s solution is very heavy on the RAM, and it has a Pixel 5 resolution. So if you play for example, Mobile Legends, it will have tons of Aliasing.
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