Weird mouse build that turns into steering wheel

[mwhc00]

Hi everyone,

I've been messing around with a custom mouse build and swapped the scroll wheel for a rotary dial.

Originally did it to reduce finger strain, but it ended up working for driving sims where I basically use it like a mini steering wheel.

So far I’ve received 3k+ upvotes on Reddit, especially among gamers.

I'm not trying to replace a full wheel setup, but it’s a fun portable alternative. It still handles normal vertical scrolling too.

The video shows a prototype running Live for Speed and ATS using vJoy and AutoHotKey (AHK) for mapping.



Still tweaking sensitivity depending on the game using AHK script.

Happy to share more details...

 

[Simlist]

The vJoy routing is the clever part. Most sims don't play nice with non-standard input devices, so getting the rotary dial mapped as an axis through AHK opens up a lot of titles that wouldnt normally work. The per-game sensitivity tuning is the bottleneck though. Games with linear steering response are fine but ones with built-in smoothing or nonlinear curves need a lot of trial and error to feel right.

 

[mwhc00]

The vJoy routing is the clever part. Most sims don't play nice with non-standard input devices, so getting the rotary dial mapped as an axis through AHK opens up a lot of titles that wouldnt normally work. The per-game sensitivity tuning is the bottleneck though. Games with linear steering response are fine but ones with built-in smoothing or nonlinear curves need a lot of trial and error to feel right.

To save people's time, we have a set of AHK steering profiles tuned for each game - AC, Beam, ATS/ETS, LFS. You can download from our site at https://rotarymouse.com and click on the Downloads menu.