Question : Logitech Wingman Force Joystick and Wheel not working with Vista 64-bit...help!!!

I have a couple of old, but good and working controllers that no longer work since I upgraded to Vista 64-bit.  I have the Logitech Wingman Force Joystick and Wheel.  Vista sees them, but I can't find the right drivers.  I spent a lot of time searching online and according to Logitech, it simply won't work.

I just don't understand why? They are USB devices.  Vista sees them and tries to install them.  What's the big deal?

Anyone have any ideas out there? Anyone find a solution?  I really, really don't want to trash hundreds of dollars worth of controllers that are in like new condition and still work.

I'll give anyone 500 points (I will give all my points honestly, but EE won't let me do more than 500) if they can find a way to get these devices working with Vista x64!!!

Answer : Logitech Wingman Force Joystick and Wheel not working with Vista 64-bit...help!!!

I would love to take those points off your hands but unfortunately I have failed to find anyone, anywhere that ahs the correct drivers or whatever need to get your components working on Vista 64bit. I have seen alot of ppl saying that it works in x86 but not in x64 and this is a statement that I got from Logitech...

"Not garbage at all. In fact, the device is working rather well considering it's a gaming device that was made over 8 years ago. There are just some technical impediments to having it supported on modern OSes.

These devices (Wingman Force, Formula, Formula Force) were some of the first DirectInput gaming devices. These were designed when USB was still a small market technology, and are in fact [technically] serial devices, even though they have a USB port. Because of the bandwidth constraints of having something being serial compatible, original force feedback devices had to load the forces into the device's memory, and then would execute the force when instructed by the PC. Simple forces allowed up to 10 effects, but later/more complex force feedback executions caused the memory to be constrained, possibly to 7 or less effects.

Later Force Feedback devices, basically all devices supported by LGS 5.01 and above, have a different way of managing effects. The PC could send and execute individual effects, as well as actively remove and replace the effects without closing and reopening the game. This, combined with greater memory banks and no need for legacy serial support, allowed for a significantly greater amount of effects and this is the standard basically used by all the games developed in the last few years.

We had to pull a lot of tricks to keep force feedback working properly on these devices, and simply put, the way force feedback is implemented in games moved past what the standard was when we launched this product line (September of 1998). We also couldn't make current games compatible with this device, so even if we got the driver working, I can't guarantee you would even be able to use this device with the games that are designed for Vista. Modern games simply would throw too much information at this device for it to handle reliably.

We are not ending Vista support in some sort of malicious way. PC technology has simply progressed so far that we have to recognize where we have to limit the technology. We still support these wheels/joysticks, but we have to do so on the OSes they were designed for (Windows 95-XP, depending on the LGS version)."

Message Edited by CharlesB on 03-05-2008 09:22 AM

Random Solutions  
 
programming4us programming4us