Gyro¶
Per-pad motion-sensor mapping with grip, calibration, sensitivity, smoothing, and engage gates.
The Gyro tab appears when the slot's assigned physical device exposes a gyroscope or an accelerometer. Tuning saves per pad per slot, so the same pad on two different slots can carry two different feels.
When the tab shows¶
The tab is visible when the selected mapped device reports a motion sensor of either kind. DualSense, DualShock 4, Joy-Con, Switch Pro, Switch 2 Pro, Steam Controller, Steam Deck, the Wii Remote, and any Extended profile that wires gyro axes all qualify. Pads with no motion sensor never see the tab.
On a device with an accelerometer and no gyroscope, such as a Wii Remote without Motion Plus, the tab shows only the cards that read the accelerometer: Grip, Motion Steering, and Gyro Tilt. The five rate cards (Motion Passthrough, Calibration, Sensitivity, Response Shaping, Engage) stay hidden. Before 4.4.0 the whole tab was gated on a gyroscope, so those three cards were unreachable on such a remote.
Grip¶
The first card on the tab is Grip. Its one row, Held As, tells PadForge how the controller sits in your hands. The driver delivers every controller's motion in the frame of its natural hold, which for a Wii Remote is aimed at the screen. Hold the remote sideways and every axis a game reads is a quarter turn off. Held As rotates the gyro, the accelerometer, and the gravity estimate together into the frame of the hold, for the mapping rows, for the motion the virtual controller reports, and for the DSU Motion Server feed.
The four holds name the face (the button side) and the top edge (the pointer end) so there is no guessing which "sideways" is meant.
| Held As | Face points | Top edge points | Rotation, (x, y, z) becomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pointing | Up | At the screen | (x, y, z), unchanged. The default. |
| Sideways, Face Up | Up | Left | (z, y, -x) |
| Wii Wheel, Face Toward You | Toward you | Left | (z, x, y) |
| Upright | Toward you | Up, at the ceiling | (x, -z, y) |
Sideways, Face Up is the NES-style hold, and its rotation is the same swap SDL applies to a single left Joy-Con held sideways. Wii Wheel, Face Toward You is the hold the wheel shell puts the remote in. In that hold the steering motion is a turn about the remote's face, which is body yaw, and the table turns it into the roll a flat pad reports when tipped like a wheel. The two sideways holds differ only in which way the face points, and they need different tables: the face-up table steers on yaw in the wheel hold.
All three rotations are proper rotations, so one table serves the gyro, the accelerometer, and gravity alike, and the motion the virtual controller reports stays consistent with the mapping rows.
The D-pad follows the grip. Under Sideways, Face Up and Wii Wheel, Face Toward You the hat turns a quarter turn with the sensors, so the remote's physical Right reads as Up, Up as Left, Left as Down, and Down as Right, with the diagonals in between. Upright leaves the hat alone. The rotated hat feeds mapping rows, macro triggers, and the Record button, so a press recorded in the hold fires on that same press. The Devices page keeps showing the physical direction.
A grip change recenters. Switching Held As re-references that device's motion state on the slot: the gravity estimate re-seeds from the next accelerometer sample, and the lean, tilt, and shake neutrals re-capture. Hold the controller in the new grip for a moment after switching. Calibration is not affected, because the gyro bias is sampled in the sensor's own frame and subtracted there before the rotation. Calibrating and changing the grip stay independent.
Held As is per pad per slot like the rest of the tab, and it rotates the body sensor only. A Nunchuk or a standalone left Joy-Con is a separate body in the other hand and keeps its own frame. On a combined Joy-Con pair, the fused Gyro Pitch / Yaw / Roll rows rotate both halves together, while the Left Joy-Con rows keep the left half's frame.
The row's reset button (Reset Grip) returns Held As to Pointing.
Motion Passthrough¶
The first card carries one checkbox: Apply Gyro Tuning to Motion Passthrough.
Off by default. The virtual controller hands the game a clean, calibrated sensor reading: bias is subtracted, no other filtering. Same goes for the DSU motion server, so a Cemu / Dolphin / Yuzu / Ryujinx client sees the raw sensor too. Off is the right default when the game has its own gyro tuning.
Check the box to route the rest of the Gyro tab's tuning through the motion the virtual controller reports: deadzone, horizontal and vertical sensitivity, smoothing, response curve, invert, and the reference-frame projection. The engage gates come with it, so a slot with Easy Aim or an Aim Engage button set reports zero motion while the gate is closed. Useful when you want PadForge's curve and smoothing to land in a game that exposes only raw motion.
The virtual controller types that carry motion to the game are PlayStation slots (DualShock 4, DualSense) and the Nintendo (virtual Switch Pro) type since 4.1.0. Xbox, Extended, MIDI, and Keyboard + Mouse slots have no motion channel.
Calibration drift correction always applies, regardless of the toggle. The toggle only gates the discretionary tuning. The Grip rotation applies either way too, because a hold is a fact about the frame, not a tuning choice.
Leave it off for emulators. An emulator integrates the gyro rate into an orientation. With the box checked, the tab's default tuning runs the tightening and smoothing thresholds and then a 3°/s deadzone on that rate before it leaves. A rate that reads zero below 3°/s and three degrees short above it accumulates orientation error the emulator cannot see, so steering drifts after a tilt and breaks on a sharp turn. The live readouts on this tab show the calibrated rate, not the tuned passthrough, so the distortion is invisible there as well. If motion in an emulator drifts or turns the wrong way, this box is the first thing to check.
Motion Steering¶
A Motion Steering card sits between Motion Passthrough and Calibration. It tunes the Motion Lean input: tilt the whole controller like a wheel to drive a steering axis. Inner and outer tilt deadzones (in degrees) and controller orientation live here.
Motion Lean is a normal input. Pick it from the input dropdown in the mapping table and bind it to a stick axis. Full tuning and starting values are on Steering.
Gyro Tilt¶
Gyro Tilt is an envelope for the Gyro Tilt X and Gyro Tilt Y inputs: hold a tilt and the stick holds its deflection, the way Steam's Joystick Deflection mode behaves. Full Tilt Range sets the angle that reaches full deflection (1° to 90°, default 25°), Tilt Deadzone ignores tilt around the resting grip and subtracts before scaling (default 0), and the Gyro Recenter macro action re-zeroes the resting grip. Yaw, turning the controller flat, is invisible to gravity and does not move these inputs.
On controllers with a gyroscope and accelerometer, Gyro Tilt updates its orientation estimate on each input poll. Gyro rotation follows the movement, and accelerometer correction keeps the gravity reference stable. It uses the device's existing gyro calibration. Motion Lean and Gyro Lean keep their smoothed response. Devices with only an accelerometer keep the existing gravity estimate.
Calibration¶
Zero the at-rest reading so gyro mappings don't drift the mouse or stick while you hold still.
- Put the controller on a flat surface. Hands off.
- Click Calibrate Gyro.
- PadForge samples for about 1.5 seconds. The averaged reading becomes the device bias.
- The bias is subtracted from every raw sample going forward.
The timestamp beside the buttons shows the last successful calibration. Two live readouts sit below the buttons. The gyroscope line shows the current Pitch, Yaw, and Roll rate in degrees per second so you can confirm the rest-state floor. The accelerometer line shows the X, Y, and Z reading in g. Both readouts are in the held frame set by Grip, the same values the mapping rows and the virtual controller get.
On a combined Joy-Con pair, the left half's gyro keeps its own bias. Calibrate Gyro samples both halves in the same pass, and a profile calibrated before 4.1.0 gets an automatic aux-only pass on connect that measures the left sensor without touching the stored primary bias.
Reset Calibration clears the bias (both halves on a pair) and the timestamp. The next polling cycle re-runs the auto-calibration.
Sensitivity¶
Top-level scaling, axis inversion, and the reference frame the gyro is interpreted in. Every gyro mapping on this device inherits these values.
Units¶
The Units dropdown offers Multiplier (the default) and Degrees per screen turn. It is a saved preference only: neither choice changes how the sliders read. Both sensitivity sliders always take a multiplier, and the "≈ N°/turn" readout beside each slider gives the Steam-style equivalent at all times. 1.0× reads ≈ 360°/turn, 2.5× reads ≈ 144°/turn.
Horizontal and Vertical¶
| Slider | Drives |
|---|---|
| Horizontal Sensitivity | Yaw and Roll gyro contribution |
| Vertical Sensitivity | Pitch gyro contribution |
Both range 0.1×–10×. The two axes are independent. Set Horizontal to 2.5× and Vertical to 1.0× for fast turning with conservative tilt aim.
Invert Pitch (Y), Invert Yaw (X), Invert Roll (X)¶
Three per-axis flips applied after the reference-frame projection. Since 4.3.0 yaw and roll carry separate checkboxes, so a pad that needs its yaw flipped keeps its roll as it was. Each one also flips the horizontal blend while its axis is the dominant motion. These run independently from any Invert flags on the mapping table.
Real-World Calibration¶
In-game degrees per physical degree of controller rotation. 0 turns the correction off. 1.0 means a 90° wrist rotation produces a 90° camera turn.
Calibrate once per game: turn the pad a full physical rotation, look at how far the in-game camera turned, and adjust until the two match.
Reference frames¶
The Space dropdown picks how raw gyro motion is mapped to camera input.
| Space | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Local | Raw controller axes. Pitch is whatever the IMU calls pitch. Holding the pad tilted changes which way feels like "horizontal." |
| Player | Horizontal motion is projected onto the real-world vertical (gravity). The same wrist twist always turns the camera, regardless of how you're holding the pad. |
| World | World additionally re-projects vertical motion onto world axes. Useful when the pad pitches around a lot during play. |
Local stays as the default so existing configs feel identical.
Compass¶
A Compass card appears between Sensitivity and Response Shaping, and only on a controller that carries a magnetometer. Anchoring yaw to magnetic north removes the slow horizontal drift gyro aiming accumulates.
- Anchor Yaw to Compass. Off by default. Turn it on after calibrating.
- Calibrate Magnetometer. Press it, rotate the controller through every orientation in a figure-8 for a few seconds, then press again. The button reads Finish Calibration while the sweep runs.
The correction is measured on the body's yaw axis, so it applies only while Held As leaves yaw on the yaw lane (Pointing or Sideways, Face Up). Wii Wheel and Upright feed yaw from another body axis and skip it.
The card has a per-row reset on the checkbox and no card-level Reset All.
Response Shaping¶
A deadzone, two smoothing thresholds, a smoothing window, an acceleration term, and an output curve.
Deadzone¶
Rotation rate (°/s) below which gyro output is treated as zero. Rejects at-rest hand tremor. Rates past the threshold pass through with the threshold subtracted, so there's no jump at the boundary.
Dual-threshold smoothing¶
Two sliders set the rate window where smoothing kicks in.
| Slider | Effect |
|---|---|
| Tightening | Below this rate, the signal is replaced by the smoothing buffer's average. Drops hand tremor. Default 3°/s. |
| Smoothing Threshold | Above this rate, raw signal passes through. Fast turns keep their precision. Default 8°/s. |
| Smoothing Window | How long a window the buffer averages over. Larger = heavier smoothing below the tightening threshold. Default 50 ms. |
Between Tightening and Smoothing Threshold a linear ramp blends raw and averaged signal.
Acceleration¶
Rate-dependent gain. 0 is off (plain linear scaling). Higher values pass slow rates through unchanged while amplifying fast rates. Lets precision aim and fast turns share one sensitivity setting.
Gyro-source mapping rows carry their own Acceleration control that composes with this one. See Per-mapping tuning.
Output Curve¶
Reshape applied after smoothing, before either Acceleration stage.
| Curve | Feel |
|---|---|
| Linear | Pass-through. 1:1 input to output. |
| Aggressive | x² (slow stays slow, fast amplifies hard) |
| Relaxed | √x (slow amplifies, fast saturates) |
| Wide | x^1.5. Sits between Linear and Aggressive. Milder than Aggressive. |
| Extra wide | x^2.5. Stronger than Aggressive. |
The stages run in a fixed order: curve first, then this tab's Acceleration, then the per-row Acceleration from the mapping table.
Engage gates¶
The Engage card limits when the gyro is active. Gates are optional. Gyro fires only while every configured gate is active.
Two gates ship: stick deflection (Easy Aim) and a button gate (Aim Engage Button). Whether the button engages while held, toggles, or engages while released is set by Engage Mode below. Leave both gates at their disabled values for always-on gyro. Macros can also drive the engage state, covered in Macro control.
Easy Aim Threshold¶
Stick deflection (0–100%) below which gyro output is zeroed. Which stick and which direction count is set by the two controls below.
| Value | Behavior |
|---|---|
| 0% | Disabled. Gyro is always on. |
| 1–100% | Gyro fires only while the chosen stick's deflection exceeds this percentage. |
Above the threshold the gyro signal passes through. Below it the gyro output goes to zero, which recenters any virtual stick the gyro is bound to.
The threshold reads the stick's raw deflection, before the stick's own deadzone. So you can set the gyro-engage threshold lower than the stick deadzone. A tiny stick nudge the game itself ignores still arms the gyro.
Engage Stick / Engage Direction¶
Two dropdowns beside the Easy Aim threshold pick what deflection arms the gyro.
Engage Stick picks which stick counts.
| Option | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Right Stick | Right-stick deflection arms the gyro. |
| Left Stick | Left-stick deflection arms the gyro. |
| Either Stick | Either stick past the threshold arms the gyro. |
Engage Direction picks which direction of that stick's movement counts.
| Option | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Full | Any direction. |
| Horizontal (X) | Left or right travel only. |
| Vertical (Y) | Up or down travel only. |
| Left (X-) | Leftward travel only. |
| Right (X+) | Rightward travel only. |
| Down (Y-) | Downward travel only. |
| Up (Y+) | Upward travel only. |
Pair a direction with a low threshold to arm the gyro on a small push one way while the game still reads the stick normally.
Aim Engage Button¶
Cross-device picker that gates gyro on a held button.
- The dropdown lists every input on every device the slot has access to, grouped by physical device.
- The device-name subtitle under the picker shows which device owns the chosen input. Matches the mapping-row pattern in the rest of the app.
- The Record button next to the picker records the next physical input press as the aim engage button.
- Leave the field unset to disable the button gate.
When both Easy Aim and Aim Engage are configured, both must be active for gyro to fire. Releasing either gate zeroes the gyro output.
Engage Mode¶
Sets how the Aim Engage button behaves.
| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Hold | Gyro fires while the button is held. The default. Leave the button unset for always-on gyro. |
| Toggle | Each press flips gyro on or off. Release does nothing. The state sticks until the next press. |
| Release to Aim | Gyro fires while the button is not held. Holding the button pauses gyro. New in 4.1.0. |
Release to Aim is Steam's inverted engage button. A Steam Workshop import whose config sets gyro_button_invert arrives in this mode. With no button set, Release to Aim behaves like always-on.
Toggle state resets to off on a profile switch or app restart. It isn't saved between sessions.
Macro control¶
Two actions in the macro editor drive gyro directly.
- Set Gyro Engaged sets the slot's engage state, with a Toggle / On / Off mode. It OR-combines with the Aim Engage button at the evaluator, so either source can engage and both must release to disengage. Details on Set Gyro Engaged.
- Gyro Recenter (new in 4.1.0) zeroes the pad's accumulated gyro aim references on press. Smoothing history clears, the Motion Lean neutral re-captures, and the gravity estimate re-seeds from the controller's current pose. Details on Gyro Recenter.
Output routing¶
Gyro doesn't have a tab-level "send to mouse" or "send to stick" switch. The destination is whatever the mapping table says.
- Bind Gyro Pitch / Yaw / Roll to Mouse X / Mouse Y to get a gyro mouse.
- Bind Gyro Pitch / Yaw / Roll to Right Stick X / Right Stick Y (or any virtual stick axis) to get a gyro stick.
- Bind to any Extended axis if you're driving a custom HID profile.
Stick output recenters as soon as the engage gates close, because zeroed gyro output writes zero stick deflection. Mouse output just stops moving.
See Button and Axis Mappings for the full source/destination reference.
Rate versus tilt¶
PadForge covers both of Steam Input's gyro-to-stick modes. The names differ, so here is the translation:
| Steam calls it | PadForge equivalent |
|---|---|
Gyro to Joystick (Camera), gyro_to_joystick |
Map Gyro Pitch / Yaw / Roll to a stick axis |
Gyro to Joystick (Deflection), gyro_to_joystick_deflection |
Map Gyro Tilt X / Y (adjustable range) or Gyro Lean X / Y (fixed 90° range) to a stick axis |
Steam's separate "Joystick Camera" is a stick-group mode in its schema, not a gyro mode. The configurator shows both families in the same place, which makes them easy to conflate.
Rate is the default and what the plain gyro axes give you: instantaneous rotation speed maps to stick deflection, so you stop tilting and the stick recenters while the in-game camera stays where you turned it. This is deliberate and will not change. An integrated tilt-to-stick path shipped once and was removed, because holding the controller tilted kept the camera turning forever, the opposite of how gyro aim is supposed to feel. JoyShockMapper, Steam Input, and Splatoon all treat gyro-to-stick as rate.
Tilt holds. Keep the controller tilted and the stick keeps its deflection for as long as you hold the tilt. Three inputs map that angle:
- Gyro Tilt X / Gyro Tilt Y reach full deflection at the range set on this tab's Gyro Tilt card (default 25°), with a tilt deadzone that subtracts before scaling. This is the closest match to Steam's Deflection mode.
- Gyro Lean X / Gyro Lean Y are the fixed-envelope originals: 90° of tilt is full scale, and the per-source Sensitivity dial on the mapping row scales the read.
- Motion Lean is the steering-oriented tilt input with its own inner/outer deadzones and grip orientation on the Motion Steering card.
All three capture your resting grip as the neutral when the controller connects, and the Gyro Recenter macro action re-zeroes it mid-session. A change of Held As re-zeroes it as well. Gyro Tilt also uses the saved gyro bias. See Calibration for the existing Calibrate Gyro command.
Held yaw is not possible. Gravity points down: it moves when you pitch or roll the controller, and it does not move at all when you turn the controller flat around the vertical axis. So the tilt inputs hold pitch and roll, never yaw. Holding a yaw rotation would need the gyro's rate integrated into an angle, which drifts without something to correct it, and no shipped mode does that today. To turn a camera with gyro, use rate mode.
Left Joy-Con aux gyro¶
On a combined Joy-Con pair, the plain Gyro Pitch / Yaw / Roll sources read both halves averaged, each debiased with its own bias. The right half alone is reachable as Right Joy-Con Gyro Pitch / Right Joy-Con Gyro Yaw / Right Joy-Con Gyro Roll. The left half is a second physical sensor, and since 4.1.0 the mapping table's input dropdown exposes it as its own sources.
| Source | Reads |
|---|---|
| Left Joy-Con Gyro Pitch / Yaw / Roll | The left half's rotation rate, one axis per row. |
| Left Joy-Con Motion Gyro | Bundled passthrough. Streams the left half's full rate vector to the virtual controller's motion channel and the DSU server instead of the right half's. |
| Left Joy-Con Lean | Tilt steering from the left half's accelerometer. |
| Left Joy-Con Accelerometer | Bundled accelerometer passthrough from the left half. |
The aux sources appear only when the paired device reports the second sensor. They run through the same pipeline as the primary sources: this tab's sensitivity, response shaping, and engage gates all apply. Player and World space project against the left half's own gravity, and Calibration keeps a separate bias for the left sensor. The Grip rotation does not reach these rows. The left half is its own body and keeps its own frame.
On a Wii Remote with a Nunchuk, the lean and accelerometer rows carry Nunchuk names instead. The Nunchuk has no gyro, so the three rate sources stay Joy-Con only.
Pairing with Flick Stick¶
Flick stick turns a thumbstick into a compass for mouse-driven camera control. It turns horizontally only, so gyro is its natural partner for vertical aim.
- On a Keyboard + Mouse slot, map Flick Stick (Right Stick) to Mouse X, and bind Gyro Pitch to Mouse Y for the vertical.
- The Flick Stick card on the Sticks tab tunes it. 4.1.0 adds Rotation Offset, which turns the whole flick map by up to ±180°. Positive is clockwise, and snapping applies after the offset.
- Full settings and starting values are on Flick Stick.
Per-mapping tuning¶
Every mapping row whose source is a Gyro axis carries its own Sensitivity dial (0.1×–10×, shown only on gyro-source rows). 1.0 is the engine's default 500°/s → ±1 deflection scale. The per-row multiplier composes with the device-level Horizontal and Vertical sensitivities on this tab.
Use the per-row dial when one mapping needs to feel different from the rest. A camera bind at 1.0× alongside a steering bind at 0.3× lets you keep the camera fast while taming the wheel.
Since 4.1.0, rows with a continuous source also carry an Acceleration control (0–5). Fast motion on that row's input is amplified, slow motion passes through unchanged, and 0 keeps the response flat. On a gyro row it applies after this tab's Acceleration, so the two compose. Steam Workshop imports carry Steam's mouse acceleration here on stick-hosted rows.
Per pad, per slot persistence¶
Calibration, sensitivity, smoothing, curve, and engage values save per pad per slot. Assigning the same pad to two slots gives you two independent tunings. Removing the pad from a slot keeps the values cached for next time.
The values save automatically to your profile whenever you change anything on this tab.
Reset buttons¶
Every row has a reset button (circular arrow icon). Each card except Grip and Compass has a Reset All button next to its title that snaps every value in the card back to defaults.
| Button | Resets |
|---|---|
| Reset Grip | Held As back to Pointing |
| Reset Motion Passthrough | Apply Gyro Tuning to Motion Passthrough |
| Reset Gyro Tilt | Full Tilt Range, Tilt Deadzone |
| Reset Calibration | Auto-cal bias + timestamp |
| Reset Sensitivity | Units, Space, Horizontal, Vertical, all three Invert flags, Real-World Calibration |
| Reset Response Shaping | Deadzone, Tightening, Smoothing Threshold, Smoothing Window, Acceleration, Output Curve |
| Reset Engage | Easy Aim Threshold, Engage Stick, Engage Direction, Aim Engage Button, Engage Mode |
| Reset Engage Stick | Engage Stick back to default |
| Reset Engage Direction | Engage Direction back to default |
Suggested starting points¶
Starting values only. Tune against the live rate readout and in-game feel.
First-person shooter, gyro-mouse aim¶
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Space | Player |
| Horizontal Sensitivity | 1.0× (the hint reads ≈ 360°/turn) |
| Vertical Sensitivity | 1.0× |
| Deadzone | 3°/s |
| Tightening | 3°/s |
| Smoothing Threshold | 8°/s |
| Smoothing Window | 50 ms |
| Acceleration | 0 |
| Output Curve | Linear |
| Easy Aim Threshold | 0% (always on) or 15% if stick aim shares the right stick |
| Aim Engage Button | L2 or unset |
Console-style flick aim (gyro to right stick)¶
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Space | Player |
| Horizontal Sensitivity | 2.5× |
| Vertical Sensitivity | 1.5× |
| Deadzone | 5°/s |
| Tightening | 5°/s |
| Smoothing Threshold | 12°/s |
| Acceleration | 0.5 |
| Output Curve | Wide |
| Easy Aim Threshold | 10% |
| Aim Engage Button | Unset |
Racing / flight stick tilt steering¶
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Space | Local |
| Horizontal Sensitivity | 1.0× |
| Vertical Sensitivity | 0.5× |
| Deadzone | 8°/s |
| Tightening | 6°/s |
| Smoothing Threshold | 15°/s |
| Acceleration | 0 |
| Output Curve | Relaxed |
| Easy Aim Threshold | 0% |
| Aim Engage Button | Unset |
Related pages¶
- Button and Axis Mappings: bind Gyro Pitch / Yaw / Roll to virtual destinations and set per-row multipliers.
- Flick Stick: stick-driven horizontal flick turns that pair with gyro for vertical aim.
- Stick Deadzones: sets the stick's in-game deadzone. Easy Aim reads raw deflection before that deadzone, so the gyro-engage threshold can sit lower.
- Macros: the Set Gyro Engaged and Gyro Recenter actions.
- DSU Motion Server: broadcast the calibrated gyro and accelerometer feed to Cemu, Dolphin, Yuzu, and Ryujinx over UDP.
- Steering: tune the Motion Lean tilt-steering input whose card lives on this tab.
- Wii Controllers: the Wii Remote's holds and the emulator setup that goes with them.
Last updated for PadForge 4.5.0.