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CMS Basics
The CMS works by accessing the various controls on your controllers directly. It processes those according to the list of commands in the script, then feeds the results of that processing to a special set of pseudo-controls referred to as the "CMS Controls". You can add the CMS Controls to your map using the "Add" button just as you would any other real device. It's also automatically added when you use the Map Wizard and tell it you want to include the scripting facility.

The configuration for the system when the CMS is in use looks much the same as it does in Mapped Mode:


The difference is in the presence of the CMS Script and CMS Controls depicted in the lower-right corner. Conceptually, the device-generated data (shown in red) is taken directly from the USB devices and passed to the CMS script. The data is processed according to the list of instructions that the script contains to produce the script-generated data (shown in blue). The script-generated data is passed to a pseudo-device called the "CMS Controls". The CMS Controls generate data as buttons and axes just like the real USB devices do. This data is available for programming in the map just as the axes and buttons from the USB devices are.

The CMS Controls

The CMS Controls include 64 axes and 128 buttons. When you add them to your map, you'll have a Device Tab in the Selection Pane for them that operates exactly like the Device Tab for any other controller. The Selection Pane will look like this:


This works exactly like any of the other controllers that you might see in the Selector Pane. There are hot spots for each of the 128 buttons and 64 axes. As the mouse moves across them, a popup label will appear which identifies which button or axis is under the mouse cursor. Clicking the mouse while the label is visible will select that axis or button for programming.

Programming the CMS Controls

Programming of these axes and buttons is done exactly the same way that axes and buttons on your real devices are programmed. They can be set to operate in DirectX Mode and assigned to any Control Manager Device axis or button, or they can be set in Programmed Mode and set to send characters and strings. The Dialog Pane will use the same dialogs as it does for your real devices.

The main difference between the CMS Controls and the real devices is that you define when the buttons activate and what values the axes on the CMS Controls have via the CMS script file. The CMS can access any axis or button on any of your real devices. It takes that data and combines and/or modifies it as defined by the CMS script to produce outputs to the CMS Controls. The GUI is then used to assign the CMS Controls to Control Manager Device axes and buttons so they'll be available to Windows or to set them to send character strings. The CMS Controls are essentially one large "do-it-yourself" joystick that you program just as you would any of your real CH devices.