RIOJoy

Modern Windows 10/11 interface between the cockpit RIO (Remote Input/Output) board and Windows, as a virtual joystick / keyboard / mouse — the successor to the legacy vJoy-based app, with no vJoy dependency.

The RIO has 72 digital inputs and outputs (lighted buttons) and 5 analog axes (joystick X/Y, throttle, left pedal, right pedal), connected over RS-232 at 9600 8N1. RIOJoy exposes these to games that don't natively know about the cockpit hardware, with per-game profiles. (The native games — Firestorm, Red Planet — talk to the RIO directly and do not use this app.)

Repository layout

Path	Contents
src/RioJoy.Core	Protocol, profile model, input mapper, HID feeder (class library)
src/RioJoy.Tray	Background tray application
tests/RioJoy.Core.Tests	xUnit tests for the protocol core
driver/	RioGamepad virtual HID driver (KMDF + VHF) — replaces vJoy
tools/RioJoySmokeTest	On-cabinet end-to-end check of the feeder → driver path
tools/XcfRegionExtract	Extracts cockpit label regions from riojoy.xcf → regions.json
docs/PLAN.md	Full modernization plan
docs/PROTOCOL.md	RIO wire format + iRIO input-map reference
docs/FEEDBACK.md	Game→cockpit feedback endpoint (lamps + plasma over pipe/UDP, rumble)
docs/INPUT-INTEGRATION.md	Integrator's guide: cockpit→game — routing kinds, pad/axis mapping, profile building
docs/OUTPUT-INTEGRATION.md	Integrator's guide: game→cockpit — lamp address map, plasma display model, recipes
RIO board hardware & firmware	Moved to the TeslaRel410 restoration/ archive — board photos, schematics, GAL decode (restoration/rio-hardware) and the RIO 4.3 board firmware (restoration/rio-firmware)
docs/reference/	Cockpit overlay art & the legacy labeling pipeline
legacy/	Original C++/vJoy implementation, kept as reference

Building

Requires the .NET SDK (8.0 or newer) plus the .NET Framework 4.8 targeting/developer pack, on Windows. The apps target .NET Framework 4.8, which is in-box on every Windows 10/11 machine — so deployed builds are framework-dependent and need no runtime install on the target. The driver builds separately with the WDK (see driver/README.md).

dotnet build RioJoy.sln -c Release
dotnet test RioJoy.sln

Status

Phases 1–5 and 9 are implemented and tested (442 unit tests). Games (or sim export scripts) can drive the cockpit lamps and plasma display back through the running app — see docs/FEEDBACK.md. The RioGamepad virtual HID driver is built (KMDF + VHF), test-signed, installed, and verified: it enumerates in joy.cpl, and the C# HID feeder (DeviceIoControl → RioGamepad.sys) drives its axes, buttons, and hat end-to-end (see tools/RioJoySmokeTest). The C# side covers the serial

• RIO protocol core, input mapping + output routing, axis calibration + plasma display, the tray app + profiles (JSON config, RIO.ini importer, three-state auto-switch), and the HID report packer that matches the driver's wire format. Remaining work is on-cabinet (real RIO serial/axis/plasma/auto-switch verification) plus packaging (Phase 6) and the profile editor + overlay generator (Phase 7). See docs/PLAN.md for the full roadmap.

Testing without hardware: vRIO over a named pipe

The vRIO device emulator can stand in for the real board with no com0com pair: anywhere a COM port name is configured — a profile's RioComPort, the app-wide DefaultRioComPort, or the RioSerialMonitor [port] argument — the endpoint pipe:vrio connects to vRIO's \\.\pipe\vrio instead (vRIO must have its pipe endpoint open). Serial bytes and modem lines (including the DTR reset pulse on open) travel as typed frames over the pipe; the contract lives in src/RioJoy.Core/Serial/PipeFraming.cs on this side and vRIO's PipeFraming.cs / the DOSBox-X fork's serialnamedpipe.h on the others.