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Rumble feedback on gamepads
Grifter Feb 1, 2017
Hi, I'm curious if anyone has experienced rumble feedback on gamepads in linux?

I have a steam controller and have never felt any rumble despite having rumble emulation turned on.

I also have a ps3 controller, and while connected via usb I have never experienced rumble, however back before kernel 3.15 (and bluez5.23 or somesuch), the easiest way to get the ps3 controller to work in bluetooth mode was to use FalconTX's modified bluez, the gamepad would then rumble whenever it was powered up and connected. I never felt any rumble in a game though.

After kernel 3.15 and the new bluez, it had native support for the ps3 controller, and I've used that ever since.

There has been exactly one game where rumble works on the ps3 controller, Pinball Pro Ultra, and it's awesome, it adds a lot, and it felt so natural that I actually didn't even realize that 'holy shit my controller is rumbling!' until having played it for a long time already.

So yeah, having a ps3 controller and only in bluetooth mode I can get rumble in a single game.

Anyone have better experience? Or a longer list of games where rumble works? And if you've gotten rumble working with one type of gamepad but not another?
dubigrasu Mar 10, 2017
I never seen Steam Controller's force feedback working from within Steam (on Linux). I understand that kozec/sc-controller driver has working force-feedback, but rarely tried it.
https://github.com/kozec/sc-controller
I do have my ps3 controller working with force feedback, but since its axes are rarely detected properly by Linux games I prefer to use a wired Xbox gamepad, which from what I've seen so far is the most compatible and widely used gamepad on Linux.
Back to the ps3 controller, two games that definitely work right now with force-feedback (and no issues) are Bioshock Infinite and Borderlands 2. I used an USB cable but they would probably work wireless too.
I have a number of other controllers (Logitech mainly) and is about the same story; they do work, have force-feedback, but axes usually messed up.
Gaming with Wine is much better due to x360ce existence though. You can basically use any controller as long as you have a profile for it.

To summarize:
- Don't bother with Steam Controller's force-feedback, even when it works (as in Windows) is a pale substitute for the real small motors usually used in gamepads. After a while you'll disable it yourself since is actually annoying.
- You can try a SDL configuration tool to fix the axes on your ps3 controller and still have force-feedback...maybe. In my experience there's always this or that issue popping up.
- If you're really keen on having the best out of the box force-feedback experience on Linux native games get yourself a WIRED Xbox360 gamepad. (I don't know about the new Xbox controller since I don't have one though).
- For Wine gaming you're set with x360ce and any force-feedback enabled controller, just make a profile for it and drop it in the game's folder.
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