Setting up your controls

Everything that presses a button in RetroXR is rebindable, and it all lives under the CONTROLS tab.

Each row is one control on the emulated machine, with whatever currently drives it beside it. Change a row and it takes effect immediately.

Three kinds of input, one screen

What you are binding	Where it comes from
VR controllers	The Quest controllers in your hands
Keyboard	The real keyboard, on desktop or through a receiver
A real gamepad	Anything connected over Bluetooth or USB

They are not exclusive. A control can have a VR binding and a key at the same time, and whichever you press wins — pressing one never cancels the other.

Global, or per system

Bindings resolve in layers:

1. Defaults — what RetroXR ships with.
2. Your global bindings — applied everywhere.
3. Per-system bindings — applied only to that machine.

The most specific one wins. So you can set a layout you like everywhere, and still give one console its own arrangement without disturbing the rest.

Why per-system exists

Machines disagree about what their buttons are called. A layout that is comfortable on a two-button NES pad is not the same as one for a six-button arcade stick, and neither suits a Wii Remote. Per-system bindings are how you stop tuning one and breaking another.

Devices with their own layer

Some hardware has bindings of its own, because it is not shaped like a joypad:

• Wii Remote — its own map, since it has seven buttons, a d-pad and motion. See the Wii page.
• Nunchuk — a small map of its own, chained behind the remote.
• Light gun — its own trigger and buttons.

These read from the same file and follow the same global-then-per-system rule.

Using real hardware

A real gamepad, keyboard or mouse reaches a machine through a receiver — a small box you plug into a controller port, rather than anything you configure in a menu.

Caution

Receivers only appear in that list once their device is actually connected. The screenshot above has none, because nothing was plugged in when it was taken.

That has its own page: using a real gamepad, keyboard or mouse.

Desktop mode

With no headset, the keyboard is both how you walk around the room and how you play. The full default map is on desktop controls.

The two do not collide, because a held keyboard only hijacks your typing once Scroll Lock capture is on. Off, the keys still belong to you.

Comfort settings are elsewhere

Turning style, snap angle, the movement vignette, height and world scale are not bindings — they are under OPTIONS, and covered on graphics and comfort.

Needs an in-headset pass

The layering model and the per-device maps are read from the bindings source and are accurate. The exact controls on the CONTROLS tab — how a row is rebound, and whether per-system is a toggle or a separate page — have not been checked against a running build.