The hid-pidff driver exists within the Linux kernel for enabling force feedback "FF" support on various USB HID PID (Physical Interface Device) compliant devices. With a new set of patches posted yesterday, that hid-pidff driver is extended to "hid-universal-pidff" for supporting more functionality on quirky devices.

Open-source developer Tomasz Pakuła posted the patches on New Year's Eve for establishing the hid-universal-pidff driver. He explained in the patch series:

"This patch series is focused on improving the compatibility and usability of the hid-pidff force feedback driver. Last patch introduces a new, universal driver for PID devices that need some special handling like report fixups, remapping the button range, managing new pidff quirks and setting desirable fuzz/flat values.

This work has been done in the span of the past months with the help of the great Linux simracing community, with a little input from sim flight fans from FFBeast.

No changes interfere with compliant and currently working PID devices."

The hid-universal-pidff driver comes down to extending the usable button range, quirk management, and other changes for "slightly non-compliant" USB PID devices as well as better fuzz/flat values on high precision direct-drive devices. This driver has been currently tested and used with hardware from Moza Racing, Cammus, VRS, FFBeast, and others for simulation racing games and flight simulator devices.

More details for those interested via [1]this patch series now under review on the Linux kernel mailing list.



[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20241231154731.1719919-1-tomasz.pakula.oficjalny@gmail.com/