I managed to get a playstation 3 controller working on my pc running windows xp. I’ve looked into the possibility of getting an equivalent driver for an imac (for exhibition purposes but this may not be so easy). I intend to create my game menu using Adobe Encore and Photoshop and then drive the menu navigation with a ps3 controller to simulate how a gamer would tab through and make selection choices in a playstation game.

It took me a while to figure out how to get this working. I recently updated my OS to run windows 7 64bit so that I could make use of my pc’s 64bit processor (and go above the 4GB ram limit of a windows 32bit OS) as I had been running windows xp pro 32bit. Trying to install 3rd-party unsigned device drivers (for my ps3 controller) on a 64bit system is a lot more complicated than the regular 32bit system. I managed to finally get it working properly. I have almost full functionality of the ps3 controller mapped to my pc. It has DPad functionality, vibration/rumble feature activated, both analog sticks work plus the PS button, L1, L2, R1,R2, Select and Start buttons. The only thing it can’t do is make use of the six-axis motion but I don’t require it for my major project anyway.

After getting this working I realised what I also needed was to be able to control my mouse with the ps3 controller. I installed another file which allowed me to create a custom map set to assign mouse functionality to my controller. I then tested it on my game menu mockup and it worked perfectly.