Status of Logitech G25 support under GNU/Linux

Last time I tried the Logitech G25 steering wheel under GNU/Linux, only two of the 7 gears could be used, there was no clutch pedal, gas and brake were in combined axis mode, a couple of buttons didn’t even work, the steering range was severely limited… long story short, there was no way to fix all those problems, so the wheel was definitely not usable for simracing purposes.

Fortunately, a few days ago I stumbled upon a thread discussing the usability of the wheel under GNU/Linux, and someone had kindly posted some links to the VDrift forums (great sim btw), where most of the previous discussions regarding the G25 had been held. It seems that some guy had released a tool that allows to use all the features of this awesome steering wheel.

Skimming through its code (yeah, it was realeased in source code form, under public domain and LGPL!), it seems to send some binary data that initializes the so called extended mode, which is not enabled by default. It looks like someone has spent some serious time sniffing through USB traffic…

Anyway, the thing is that the tool does work, and so the G25 is now much more usable under GNU/Linux! Except for one thing: trying to set the 900º rotation mode, a process during which some usb or hid driver seems to freak out and remove the steering wheel device nodes 🙁

Force feedback is supposed to have been working for some time now, but due to the aforementioned initial problems, I never really bothered to test it much (I did patch the kernel to see if the existing FFB drivers would work for the G25, and the basic effects worked, but there was no point on finding a driving game that used them).

Just in case it disappears from tha interwebs, i’m hosting the tool myself. The usage is pretty simple:

1. Download the GNU/Linux Logitech G25 extended mode enabler tool (46KB) archive.
2. Extract its contents anywhere, and cd to it.
3. Compile: ./build.sh
4. Run the tool: ./usbtools g25-set-extended-mode

And that’s it. Make sure you run jscalibrator the first time in order to calibrate and remove any nasty deadzones on all axis. For more info, simply run ./usbtools without parameters.

Now i just gotta wait for Wine to properly support forcefeedback so that i can enjoy Live For Speed the way it’s meant to 😀

Happy racing!