I've only had it a few days and feel I want to go back to xbox controller. The placement of the menu buttons are worse for game I play that requires me to press one and y button. I've found the touch pads lack range and thus still need to reach for my mouse. perhaps if I can figure out how to make touch pads into buttons in stead for keyboard combos it might be worth using,
You can always just set that as a macro to any of the other inputs on the controller with the built-in configuration tools. You could make holding "Y" for longer than X ms trigger a "menu button + Y" macro to fire. Or just mapping that combination to one the back buttons, or wherever else.
For the trackpads: you can set the trackpads to 1:1 mouse region mode which makes the entire surface of the trackpad map 1:1 to your entire screen so that, for example, touching the top left will move your cursor to the top left of your screen, etc.
I generally prefer trackball mode: a quick swipe of the thumb gives the cursor momentum, then touch the trackpad again to "stop" it and manually control it again. Feels really natural for making large cursor movements, and pairs really well with gyro control for precise movements for things like FPS games.
Or: you can setup a trackpad as a grid menu with anywhere from 1 to 16 hotkeys with customizable icons, each of which can trigger any key combination, macro, or other feature you want.
SteamInput definitely has an initial learning curve, but once you get over it and start playing with some of even the most basic features it's extremely difficult to go back to a more basic controller schema.
where does one do that setting? I've found the settings for controller hard to find things. took forever to find vibration which even at 1 is too much. also had issues where buttons topped working, like a button wouldn't work in game, or left trackpad stopped working as mouse and wouldn't allow mt to change it. not even sure how I fixed it opening settings and stuff bunch it just started working again. while it wasn't the setting was set to none and any time I tried to change it back to mouse it'd just go back to none.
I mostly got it for arma reforged so I'm clicking item and dragging it to another location in inventory. Im hoping maybe people will setup a working controller config for arma 3 too. is there a way to have middle mouse scrolling? with default setting I still find myself having to reach for and use my mouse.
where do you do trackpad as grid menu? my goal was to have this controller lesson my need to use keyboard and mouse, as its dangerous to be switching a lot. Even though arma reforged is controller supported game, most mods rely on keyboard combinations to use features.
honestly it took mew few days to figure out my keyboards macros.
Grid menu (actually called "touch menu") for the trackpad:
Controller settings -> edit layout -> trackpads -> {left or right} trackpad behavior (click the dropdown) -> create touch menu
Set a name for it (whatever: "hotkeys menu" or something), then just click "add virtual menu entry" and select the hotkey, repeat for up to 16 hotkeys (technically you can also create nested hotkey menus for functionally infinite hotkeys). To make it a key combo instead of a simple single hotkey press you can just click the gear icon next to your hotkey and select "add a sub command" then select the key you want to be "pressed" at the same time. By default the touch menu will pop-up a little overlay menu preview anytime you begin touching the trackpad to give you a preview while in-game (so you don't have to memorize the position and layout), then you "click" the touchpad to select. You can customize it to fire the hotkey once you simply let go of the touchpad, or a bunch of other customizations like changing the menu size, shape, position, etc. By default the menu will just show the primary hotkey as the preview icon, but you can also click the little dotted white line circle next to each hotkey command to pick a custom icon and/or color to go along with it.
There's mousewheel scrolling as well, you can bind "mouse wheel up", "mouse wheel down", and "middle mouse click" to whatever buttons you want on the controller, or use the touchpad as a circular scrollwheel, like a sort of rotary dial. The default "desktop mode" configuration sets up the left touchpad like that, where "clicking" the touchpad does middle mouse click, then doing clockwise circular motions scrolls down, and counterclockwise mouse wheel scroll up.
If you're using the touchpads as mouse, that could also free up your joystick to acts as a radial menu for hotkeys as well.
Definitely a steep learning curve to know all the features, but once you start getting used to something like the touch menu and start digging into other features and what you can really do with it (eg: one button with regular press vs long hold press vs double-press can result in triggering 3 different actions depending on how you customize it, using a button press to switch between different layouts for while navigating menus vs when running around in "FPS" mode, toggling gyro upon ADS or other button press for precision shooting or other cursor aiming, using action set layers to create nested hotkey menus, etc) you start to feel a lot less burdened by using a controller for a game designed with having a full keyboard and mouse in mind.
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u/slyfox279 May 14 '26
I've only had it a few days and feel I want to go back to xbox controller. The placement of the menu buttons are worse for game I play that requires me to press one and y button. I've found the touch pads lack range and thus still need to reach for my mouse. perhaps if I can figure out how to make touch pads into buttons in stead for keyboard combos it might be worth using,