I finally got around to playing I-War 2 last night with a Saitek x52 Pro. I notice that there seems to be a hard coded deadzone in the joystick input for joystick X and Y.

I don't have any deadzones assigned in the Control Panel for the Saitek, nor in the Profiler for the Saitek, and I don't see any way to edit any deadzones in game (or in the ini files).

Anyone else notice this? And more importantly, does anyone know if there's a fix?

It's not something I was ever aware of while working on the development of the game, and it certainly never came up as a technical support issue - and I handled nearly all the tech support for the game.

If there's nothing in the various ini files then it's unlikely to be tweakable/fixable by editing the game files.

Is it something you notice when you play the actual game on a joystick with a fairly large throw (like the Saiteks)?

Anyone else?

I actually notice the same forced deadzone in Descent 1 and 2, in their raw and updated source port versions (D2X-XL). I wonder if it is just that older games simply don't see the center registers of the X and Y axes on newer joysticks or something.

As stated before, the control panel shows no deadzones at all on X and Y but they are pretty evident in IWar2 and Descent 1 and 2. I should probably reinstall Freespace 2 and see if it happens there too. :\

I've got an x52 pro as well, and yeah, there does seem to be a small deadzone. I didn't actually notice it until I read this thread though, so it never affected my ability to play.

You're not alone with this problem. I'm using a Thrustmaster T.16000M and have deadzones in I-War 1 and Tie Fighter, so I thought it must be related to the age of the games so I installed I-War 2... Same problem.
Then I tested Mechwarrior 4 and it works perfectly, so it's not a matter of age and the stick itself is definitely fine.

Ok buddy, I hope you're still reading the forum coz' I've figured out the fix.

The dead zone is indeed coded, not hard coded, but coded.

Go to the install directory, open flux.ini, find [fcInputDeviceDI] and under this section you'll find the editable parameters specifically relating to dead zones.

The defaults were 0.175 on all my axis, I reduced to 0.1 and it worked perfectly.

Thanks for that. I never knew that option existed!