Finding which X-Plane Joystick is where

So, you want to assign custom joystick controls and need to find which “joy_location” number each joystick is taking up.

To find the assignment number I opened the X-Plane Joystick Settings.prf file using the text editor.

This file can be found under your X-Plane folder: X-Plane 11\Output\preferences.

I also opened Device Manager (press “Windows” and type device manager) and plugged in the joystick I whose number I didn’t know.

In Device Manager, under the Human Interface Device row, I right-clicked “HID-compliant game controller”, selected properties then clicked Events.

I found the Device HID/VID # and saw what it was on the _joy_location # in X-Plane Joystick Settings.

In this example hid#vid_0046d&… is taking up _joy_location0

Now we know that the device we plugged in matches up with joy location 0, so we can use 0 as the joystick number in our custom assignments!