How to Make a Pong-Style Steering Controller for Meta Quest Racing

Exploring a Pong-Style Steering Controller for an Immersive Driving Game

A fun afternoon project, easy enough to put together and SideQuest a free game to play with it.

At its core, the project utilizes a potentiometer to control vehicle steering—offering fine granularity and precise input.

It is worth a try if you have the materials - it really does add a dimension to the steering that seems to have been forgotten or ignored with thumb sticks.

ESP8266

5K / 10K pot

A decent knob for the pot

3 Buttons

Bread Board

Wires

Meta Quest

Build the circuit.

Arduino Code on GitHub

You can just copy and past the code into your sketch if you want.

Make sure you know how to use the Arduino IDE with your board - try some simple sketches first to make sure your hardware is ok.

Use the serial monitor to find the IP address of your Paddle when it starts up:

Once you know the IP address assigned to your paddle you can use Putty to connect .

You should constant output on the terminal - the parameters should change as you turn the paddle / press the buttons.

Get the Game on SideQuest

If the paddle is connected to WIFI and its the same WIFI your Quest is connected to, the game should connect automatically.

This is just a fun experiment to see what a paddle controller adds to a driving game experience so it would be good to get feedback.

The game will use the thumbstick of the Quest controller if the paddle controller is not present - so you can compare the experience.