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Now available: the always titillating "FRETBUZZ" software! **NEW**

TEST CONTROLLER INPUT

So you've got your GH controller piped into your computer. Now it's time to test it to make sure your computer detects the button states properly!

In Windows XP, go: Settings > Control Panel > Game Controllers. If you've got your gear hooked up right and your adapter driver installed (again, not needed for the Xbox controller), you should see your device(s) listed in the Game Controllers window. It should look something like this:

Double-click the appropriate entry in the list, and you'll probably get a joystick calibration menu like this one:

You might not need to calibrate the GH controller here, but you will wanna test all the inputs and watch the indicators light up as you mash the buttons and flip the flipper.

For the Super Dual Box adapter and driver that we use, the flipper produces a y-axis response in the upper left crosshair display. Also, oddly, the x-axis always registers to the left. No matter! This shouldn't stop you from detecting the y-axis changes and using that dimension to trigger sounds in response to flipper flips.

***NOTE: The whammy bar does NOT get picked up by any of the PlayStation2 adapters/drivers that we tried. It's unfortunate, but not a huge buzzkill. Remember that many real guitars don't have whammy bars. However, it could be a super-neat dimension of control that could open up a lot of possibilities in signal processing. If you have the Xbox360 controller, you're in luck, as the whammy bar will correlate to an analog axis in the game controller calibration menu seen above. The tilt sensor reports *2* dimensions of control, too. Wow. It's the main reason to use the Xbox360 controllers over the PlayStation models. Anyway, let's move on.

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