[Q] virtual android controllers for pc and other - General Questions and Answers

So basically i have been trying to find a good controller from my android to my PC, i cant even find one with two joysticks.
anyway my main question is. Is there a virtual controller for android that uses motion patterns instead of a virtual buttons, for example if i swipe in a half circle clockwise it is the x button or if i swipe to the left on the left side its the square button. instead of always accidentally miss hitting a button or excreta. dont know if this would really work either but in theory it seams like it would.

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question about touchscreens and user input

I noticed in many programs that when you interact with the touchscreen it gets locked out of getting touched in other places. For example......... in the unblock parked car game you move a car by touching and sliding it... and while you are slidig it any input anywhere else on the screen is blocked out. Is that because instead of programming the touch from scratch the app author is using some premade gesture? Is it possible to have the touchscreen open to input even while it's being touched somewhere?
case example: suppose I have a drawing application. I want a virtual button in the corner and when I press and hold that button down touching the screen goes into erase mode instead of draw mode. Would that be possible? Would holding down the virtual button block the input on the rest of the screen so you couldn't erase? Or is this possible?
It is possible as long as you know how to code it.
Sent from my toaster.

Function keys and scroll direction

So, I'm loving the hell out of my Surface RT (64GB with black Touch cover) except for two things.
1: I use the actual function keys (F1-F12) a lot more than I need a shortcut key for the play/pause button or the Share charm. Due to the placement of the Fn button on the right side of the keyboard, it's difficult to use the keys the way I'm used to. For example, Alt+F4 is now Alt+Fn+Play/Pause, and requires two hands. If anybody can find a way to toggle the default state of the Fn key, I would be super-grateful! Ideally, I'd be able to actually remap he keys like you can on advanced USB keyboards; for example, I need the Home and End keys too, but rarely use F8-F10 so I'd like to remap those.
2: The default direction of the multitouch scroll drives me up a wall (but only if I try to drive down it). It's a pointing device, not a touchscreen, dammit! I expect it to function like a scroll wheel on a mouse, or the side-scroll on older PC touchpads, or the TrackPoint scroll on the Thinkpad, or... you get my point. Yes, I get that Apple did it first; they were dumb then, are still dumb now, and MS was very dumb to copy them. On the other hand, at least Apple lets you change it! If the direction of this scroll can be reversed (preferably without screwing up the scroll wheel of an actual mouse, if I were to connect one), that would be amazing.
I was really hoping that the included drivers would include controls for these things, the way Microsoft's normal mice and keyboards come with highly configurable drivers, or most Laptops come with fairly advanced Synaptics touchpad driver controls. If any of you have contacts at MS on or near the Surface team, tell them that we really want some drivers like those, please!
have you been able to resolve the Fn key issue?
GoodDayToDie said:
So, I'm loving the hell out of my Surface RT (64GB with black Touch cover) except for two things.
1: I use the actual function keys (F1-F12) a lot more than I need a shortcut key for the play/pause button or the Share charm. Due to the placement of the Fn button on the right side of the keyboard, it's difficult to use the keys the way I'm used to. For example, Alt+F4 is now Alt+Fn+Play/Pause, and requires two hands. If anybody can find a way to toggle the default state of the Fn key, I would be super-grateful! Ideally, I'd be able to actually remap he keys like you can on advanced USB keyboards; for example, I need the Home and End keys too, but rarely use F8-F10 so I'd like to remap those.
2: The default direction of the multitouch scroll drives me up a wall (but only if I try to drive down it). It's a pointing device, not a touchscreen, dammit! I expect it to function like a scroll wheel on a mouse, or the side-scroll on older PC touchpads, or the TrackPoint scroll on the Thinkpad, or... you get my point. Yes, I get that Apple did it first; they were dumb then, are still dumb now, and MS was very dumb to copy them. On the other hand, at least Apple lets you change it! If the direction of this scroll can be reversed (preferably without screwing up the scroll wheel of an actual mouse, if I were to connect one), that would be amazing.
I was really hoping that the included drivers would include controls for these things, the way Microsoft's normal mice and keyboards come with highly configurable drivers, or most Laptops come with fairly advanced Synaptics touchpad driver controls. If any of you have contacts at MS on or near the Surface team, tell them that we really want some drivers like those, please!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Fn Key issue is a little bit annoying, anybody have a solution for it?

[Q] Hiding the mouse pointer.

I have one of those Android HDMI TV sticks (A variant of CX-01, to be exact.) running 4.0.4, successfully rooted and hacked up to my liking. There is one thing I would like it to do, which, in my case, is the reason to own it in the first place: I need a very portable presentation device, which I could plug into anything with a HDMI socket and play a presentation. (As a side note, it boots whenever it gets power supplied, so you can use it as a very hidden cheap web server - it's smaller than a Raspberry Pi.)
There is a problem with this usage, however. The device comes with a 2.4 GHz wireless accelerometer-based mouse with a few buttons, which is it's only input device, connected over USB OTG. (Replacing it with something else would be very much not cost-effective) That mouse is only usable because when it is connected, ICS displays a mouse pointer on screen, otherwise, navigation would be way too cumbersome. I have replaced the stock mouse pointer with a smaller one by replacing the png image in framework-res.apk, and it's good enough. Using Hide Bar, I was able to hide the status bar (the wireless mouse has back and home buttons) so I get the full screen for my presentation.
During the presentation itself, I need an input device to move between individual slides and otherwise trigger execution, buttons on the wireless mouse work, or can be reassigned in various ways. However, I need the mouse pointer to invisible during that, as the motion sensitive wireless mouse would make it move constantly while I'm talking with the mouse in my hand.
There is apparently no way to temporarily disable the accelerometer in the mouse itself, while it has a power button that disables it entirely, it turns off everything, including the buttons, and pressing the buttons enables the mouse again.
This means I need a software means to temporarily hide or disable the mouse pointer. (I can obviously permanently hide it by replacing the pointer with a transparent PNG. That would make it very hard to control the device, because the only button it has to trigger a control actually simulates a left click, so it's out.) Extensive googling failed to provide an answer -- most of the time people who get a mouse pointer they don't want seem to eventually give up and pick a HID device which does not produce it instead. As far as I can see, there can only be two ways to do it:
Somehow get the OS to think it has no mouse HID device, or that it's not moving.
Somehow force the mouse pointer to stick to a corner of the screen and keep it there while it's not needed.
Unfortunately I could find no clear sources on either method. I'm not above some hacking and programming to get it done, but I would appreciate an advice on what to look for.

[Q] Non-root app for remapping gamepad axes + deadzone?

So I found out that my new Galaxy S3 supports USB-OTG, and gamepads. Well I just so happened to have an old Xbox (original, not 360) controller lying around, so I cut off the xbox connector off the end of the cable, and replaced it with a USB cable (so very easy). It works, sort of. The buttons and dpad all work fine, but getting the analog sticks and triggers needs help from 3rd-party drivers/software.
Specifically, the issues I'm having are:
- There is absolutely no deadzone whatsoever in the Android OS gamepad drivers, so unless the game itself implements a dead zone, this makes mapping axes to functions very difficult. For example, the game Shadowgun: Deadzone, has gamepad support built in, but it requires that you map each individual button and axis; there are no premade configurations. So this means I have to manually map the left analog stick to move, and the right one to look, by tapping on the function, and then moving the appropriate stick. But the problem is that the moment I tap on a function to map it, it is instantly mapped to the trigger axis, because of how noisy/sensitive the trigger axis is, and the fact that there is no deadzone. There is no way around this. It is simply impossible to map any of the axes/buttons because of the lack of a deadzone.
- Some games, however, do come with premade gamepad configurations, so that I don't have to map each function individually. The problem is, these games usually don't allow any custom mapping, and they almost always get the axes wrong. For example, the game Dead Trigger will let you use your gamepad right away, without any options or configuration required. The game maps the left analog stick to move, just fine, but it maps up/down look to up/down on the right stick, and left/right look to the triggers?! And worse yet, the triggers are one combined axis, so this means that I am constantly spinning around in circles like a retarded chicken on a merry-go-round, unless I press and hold both triggers.
So what I need is an app that can A) Force a dead zone on the gamepad, and B) Re-map one axis to another axis.
Anyone know of any Android apps that can do this?
Oh, and they have to work on a non-rooted device, because my S3 is still under warranty, and even though I know I can just unroot it if I need to send it back, I'm still afraid that I might break it while rooted and be unable to unroot it because it is broken.
Thanks for any help!
Did you find a solution to this Problem? I'm having the same issue when using the Ouya Controller with another Android Device.

Anything like Pie Control for Surface3?

I got a Surface 3 laying around from work and I keep trying to use it like my Nexus 2013.
I see swiping from the left will bring up the alt+tab menu similar to Recent apps button on droid but the rest leaves much to be desired.
I dont like tablet mode since I put network shares on it and copy files directly to the desktop sometimes. I found a shortcut to take you to desktop, because oddly the Show desktop button is missing in Win10 now. In tablet mode though the shortcut does nothing.
I cant swipe brightness so I have to keep going to the action center. Windows key on the right side when I liked swiping from the left. Maybe flipping it will work but then the stand will be useless.

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