Most of you know about my rotating 6-panel driving cabinet which I built many moons ago:
http://unclet.arcadecontrols.com/MomsArcade/MomsArcadeMain.htmlAll of the steering controls and buttons are wired to multiple Microsoft DualStrike SideWinder controllers. I have 6 sidewinders total which are all connected via a USB Hub. This allows me to rotate the cabinet's control panel to select a controller and then be able to play with that controller without having to unhook/hook the controller every time. Basically, every control is active at all times, just rotate and play.
Now, since my kids are growing up and no longer play the "Mame" driving games anymore, I was thinking it is about time to update the driving cabinet with more recent driving games.
It would be neat to be able to play Xbox games with my arcade steering controllers. Is it possible to interface my arcade controllers (ie: Spy Hunter steering wheel, Star Wars yoke, etc...) as input to Xbox games? Does someone make some sort of converter which will take input from the sidewinder dualstrike controllers and make it act like an Xbox controller? Would I be able to use the sidewinder joystick POTs for this or are they not compatible?
I guess I can always connect my Xbox driving controller up to the cabinet to steer with, but I think it might be more fun to drive with a Spy Hunter Steering wheel instead. I am not that interested in hacking an Xbox controller to get it working, so some quick method of conversion would be best.
Now, if I can not easily interface my arcade controls to the Xbox, then I might look into simply buying some cool PC driving games for the kids to play (ex: Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition, etc..), however, I am not sure whether the driving games would interface nicely with the Dualstrike sidewinder controllers. Would I be able to use any of the Dualstrike sidewinder controllers (connected via the USB hub) to control the driving game, or would the PC game limit input from the "first" USB device encountered only? If my analog brakes are considered my "firs" USB device existing, then that would be bad since I would not want to steer using my analog brake controllers..... hope this made sense. Since I have multiple sidewinder controllers connected at one time via the USB hub, I can not be certain which sidewinder controller my PC will determine is the first, second, third, etc ... device to be connected. The order in which the sidewinders init themselves seem to determine the order my PC considers the devices to be connected to the USB Hub .... so this changes whenever the USB Hub loses power and then is turned back on. I guess I am asking whether PC games will allow "any" sidewinder which is connected to the PC to control the movement of the cars in the games?
What are my options in updating my cabinet with better driving games (Xbox or PC)?