vJoy

vJoy is a lightweight application that acts as a joystick driver device emulator and that can lend you a hand with developing applications that use input controllers with a fixed or non-fixed configuration.

While the app comes with several utilities that can be incorporated into your program, you have the possibility to test out the capabilities of the tool via the Feeder application. Following the installation, you can open the feeder and most likely notice that the app selects the target device if it is free.

The feeder includes axes for the sliders that are active and you can easily change its position by moving it up and down. The same thing applies for the buttons you can access, but you can make more of them active via the configuration options window.

Further noteworthy features of the feeder are the POV Switches, which refer to the type of POV that appears in the continuous or discrete POV frame. Simply put, there are up to four POVs there and you can select the one that you want to manipulate. As a side note, the default position is in 1/100 degree units and you can click the center to set in or out of the neutral position.

It is important to note that the tool is not an emulator for input devices such as joysticks, but solely a driver device. Moreover, you do not need to have a joystick in order to use it. As previously mentioned, it is a tool that mainly addressed developers working on applications that would need an input device and that can be incorporated into your product.

In the eventuality that you are working on an application that enables users to add an input controller of choice or you want to add some fixed configuration to a tool you are forking, then perhaps vJoy could come in handy.