Re: [microsound] gaming joysticks as MIDI controllers?

[Frank Barknecht <fbar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hallo,
graham miller hat gesagt: // graham miller wrote:

> anyway, long story short: can these be used to control reaktor or
> whatnot? i can't think of anything cooler than making music with looks
> like the cockpit of a fighter jet...

You can use every standard conforming HID device ("human interface
device") in Pure Data using the [hid] object by Hans-Christoph
Steiner. As Pd can output midi, this means, that you can convert the
[hid] data to the more restricted midi, so that old fashioned software
which only supports midi can use it, too. (You can also convert it to
OSC or whatever using Pd.) Pd is free software.

Unfortunatly [hid] for Pd as of now is only available for Linux and
OS-X. There is another Pd object called [joystick] by J. Sarlo. which
should work with most standard joysticks, but not every hid device.
[joystick] is available for Windows, too. 

Generally you risk to loose a lot of precision if you convert hid data
to midi, as the ranges of hid devices normally are much larger. Just
consider the mouse, which also is a hid device. Assuming it has a x,y
resolution of 1024 * 768, mapping this to 127 * 127 is really
horrible. Midi should die.

This reminds me of one of my favorite Miller S. Puckette quotes: 

  Question: Do you consider the invention of midi a step forward or a
  step backwards? 
  
  MSP: I think, it was a huge step sideways. 

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__

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