Force Feedback
The Force Feedback tab controls how rumble and vibration from games gets sent to your physical controllers. You can adjust overall strength, per-motor balance, and test that everything is working.
When a game sends rumble commands to the virtual controller, PadForge forwards them to your physical controller. The Force Feedback tab lets you customize how that happens.
The Overall Gain slider (0-100%) controls the master vibration strength. At 100%, the full rumble signal from the game is passed through. At 50%, all vibration is half strength. At 0%, rumble is completely disabled.
Most controllers have two vibration motors:
- Left Motor (Low-frequency) -- The heavy, rumbly motor. Typically used for large impacts, explosions, and engine vibrations.
- Right Motor (High-frequency) -- The lighter, buzzy motor. Typically used for gunfire, subtle feedback, and UI haptics.
Each motor has its own strength slider (0-100%) so you can independently control the balance between them.
Enable the Swap Motors option to reverse which physical motor receives the left and right signals. This can be useful if a game's rumble feels backwards on your particular controller, or for creative effect tuning.
Click the Test Rumble button to send a short vibration pulse to your physical controller. This confirms that:
- Your device supports rumble
- PadForge is correctly forwarding force feedback
- Your gain and motor strength settings produce the effect you want
Real-time activity bars show the current vibration intensity for each motor. When a game sends rumble commands, you can see the left and right motor bars respond in real time. This is helpful for visualizing what a game is doing and for tuning your strength settings.
Some controllers do not have traditional rumble motors but do support SDL haptic effects (such as certain arcade sticks or specialty controllers). PadForge automatically detects this and uses haptic feedback as a fallback:
- LeftRight effects are preferred when available (direct motor control)
- Sine wave effects are used as a secondary fallback
- Constant force effects are used as a last resort
This happens automatically -- you do not need to configure anything. If your device supports neither rumble nor haptic effects, the Force Feedback tab will indicate that vibration is not available for that device.
When a slot is set to vJoy output, force feedback works through DirectInput instead of ViGEm:
- Games send DirectInput force feedback effects (ConstantForce, Sine, etc.) to the vJoy virtual device.
- PadForge receives these effects and translates them into rumble commands for your physical controller.
- Overall Gain, per-motor strength, and Swap Motors settings all apply.
The vJoy driver includes full PID (Physical Interface Device) descriptor support, so DirectInput games can discover and use the force feedback capabilities of your virtual controller.
| Problem | Solution |
|---|---|
| No vibration at all | Check that Overall Gain is above 0%. Click Test Rumble to verify your device supports it. |
| Vibration too weak | Increase Overall Gain and per-motor strength sliders. |
| Vibration too strong | Decrease Overall Gain or reduce individual motor strength. |
| Rumble feels reversed | Enable Swap Motors. |
| Rumble stops working intermittently | Make sure no other software (like Steam) is also trying to control the controller's vibration. |
- Button and Axis Mappings -- Map your controller's inputs
- Trigger Dead Zones -- Pair trigger adjustments with rumble tuning
- Troubleshooting -- More help with rumble issues