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Input — Joystick & Mouse

Player input device handling: the Win32 multimedia joystick API layer and the mouse event ring. (Serial-cable and modem link transport, historically "input" territory, is documented with the network transport layer per the reconstruction program's ownership split.) Re-carved from a very broad nominal range into the two true device clusters.

Provenance: Ghidra static analysis of the game executable with FA.SMS symbols applied; recorded in the symbol database and applied to the Ghidra project. Progress: reconstruction matrix. Markers follow spec-authoring.md: confirmed · inferred · unknown.

Devices

  • Joystick (0x494270–0x494B50): a thin layer over the Win32 MM joystick API (joyGetNumDevs/joyGetPos(Ex)/joyGetDevCapsA) — not DirectInput. ReadSticksRaw polls axes, InitJoysticks enumerates, GetJoystickType maps to a configured stick type.
  • Mouse (0x499CF0–0x499E5B): a WndProc hook feeding a 16-entry event ring the shell and cockpit poll.

Input: the joystick MM-API poll and the mouse event ring feed control state each frame.

Functions

Full record: db/symbols/input.csv.

VA Symbol Role
0x494270 ReadSticksRaw poll raw joystick axes (Win32 MM)
0x4942D0 InitJoysticks enumerate/initialise joystick devices
0x494430 GetJoystickType map a device to the configured stick type
0x4944A0 ReadDevice read one device's current state

Open Questions

1. Calibration / mapping table — resolved (layout)

NormalizeStick (0x4946B0) indexes two parallel per-device arrays by the axis's device number (_joystickXDevice/YDevice/ThrottleDevice/RudderDevice):

  • _joystickInfo — Win32 JOYINFO snapshots, stride 0x10 (&_joystickInfo + dev*0x10).
  • Calibration table at base 0x554670 — stride 0x34 per device; the raw axis words sit at record +0x00 (X, 0x554670), +0x04 (Y, 0x554674), +0x0C (rudder, 0x55467C). The first poll auto-captures the resting value as centre (_gotCenterX/Y/R guard → DAT_00554EBC/EC4/EC8), and ScaleToRange (0x494580) maps raw→min/centre/max into the normalized int the sim consumes.

So each joystick device has a 0x34-byte calibration record (raw + captured-centre per axis) plus a 0x10-byte JOYINFO slot; that is the layout the .CFG axis bindings persist.

Status: resolved — re-static (calibration record: 0x34-byte stride/device; JOYINFO 0x10 stride).

  • network.md — the serial/modem link transport (SER_/MOD_).
  • physics.md — control inputs feed the flight model.
  • hud.md — slew/padlock controls drive HUD symbology.