Keyboards and mice

Not everything RetroXR runs is a console. Point-and-click adventures, DOS games, Amigas, STs and home computers all want a pointer and a keyboard, and both are first-class here.

A tower running ScummVM, cabled to a CRT monitor over VGA, with RetroXR's own mouse on the desk. Sliding the mouse moves the cursor in the game.

This is the room, not a screenshot: a machine, a monitor, a VGA lead between them, and a mouse you can pick up. Slide the mouse across the desk and the cursor moves, because the mouse’s travel is the pointer input.

Closer in on the screen:

The same thing from the core's point of view. The cursor is the game's own — RetroXR feeds it pointer movement and the game draws the rest.

Two ways to point

The mouse already on your desk

The most comfortable option, and the one in the clip above. Spawn a mouse receiver, plug it into the machine’s port, and the mouse next to your keyboard drives the game — with nothing held in either hand.

The mouse receiver. Seat it in a port and your real mouse is the game's mouse.

Movement is relative, exactly as a real mouse is: the game gets how far you moved, not where you are. That is why the cursor behaves the way it always has, including in games that hide the pointer and read raw motion.

The virtual mouse

The mouse you can pick up. It plugs into a controller port with the same cable and plug a controller uses.

There is also a mouse you can pick up and slide across a surface in VR. It is a lovely object, and a poor pointing device — it needs a hand, a flat surface and your attention. It exists because it is right, not because it is the fastest way to play a LucasArts game.

Use it when you want the room to feel real. Use the receiver when you want to finish Monkey Island.

It sticks to the surface

The thing that makes it usable at all: when the mouse comes near a surface it glues to that surface’s plane. What you see is your hand’s position projected flat onto the desk, so small lifts and the natural wobble of holding your arm out neither show nor move the cursor.

Pull your hand far enough away and it lets go — the mouse snaps back to where your hand actually is, and stops reporting motion until it lands again.

That is why sliding it across a desk feels like sliding a mouse rather than waving a brick in the air.

What you do	What the mouse does
Trigger	Left button
A / X button	Right button
B / Y button	Middle button
Slide it on a surface	Moves the cursor
Lift it clear	Stops reporting until it lands again

Typing

The keyboard receiver. Seat it and type — no capture key, no mode.

Computers need a keyboard, and there are two of those too.

The receiver forwards your real keyboard to the port it is plugged into. Seated is live; there is no capture key and no mode to remember, because plugging something in is not an ambiguous act.

The virtual keyboard is a board you can pick up and hold. Because holding a keyboard is ambiguous — you might merely be carrying it — your typing does not reach the game until you press Scroll Lock. That is deliberate, and it is why the receiver is easier if you are going to be typing for a while.

The keyboard. Every key is its own modeled cap, and every one can be pressed individually.

Every key is a real key

The board is not a picture of a keyboard. Each cap is its own object, and each one can be pressed on its own — reach out and poke a key with a fingertip, or point at it and press.

That means you can type on it in VR without a physical keyboard anywhere near you, which is the only option for a computer system if you are standing in the middle of a room with nothing to rest a real board on.

For anything longer than a password, use the receiver and your own keyboard.

Setting it up

1. Connect your mouse and keyboard to the headset or PC as you normally would.

2. Open SPAWN → Controllers. Receivers appear only once their device is connected — if you cannot see one, that is why.

3. Spawn the receiver you want and push its plug into the machine’s port.

4. Play. The LED on the box shows it is live.

Full detail on using a real gamepad, keyboard or mouse.

Which systems want this

• ScummVM — the point-and-click adventures. Mouse essential, keyboard occasionally.
• DOS — mouse and keyboard both.
• Amiga, Atari ST, C64, MSX, PC-98 — keyboard essential.
• Consoles with a mouse peripheral, like the SNES mouse.

For consoles, the mouse is a peripheral you plug into a controller port rather than a system input — see controllers and peripherals.

On desktop, they are already yours

Receivers are a VR idea. Running RetroXR on a PC without a headset, your keyboard and mouse are how you walk around the room — so the virtual keyboard keeps its Scroll Lock capture and mouse-look is never taken away from you. See desktop controls.