What is phantom-sense?

PhantomSense solves a frustrating gap in game streaming: when you use Moonlight to stream PC games to a Steam Deck, the software automatically converts your DualSense controller into a generic virtual Xbox 360 gamepad. That translation silently kills every premium feature, adaptive triggers, HD haptics, gyroscope, and touchpad input all disappear entirely. PhantomSense bypasses this by forwarding the DualSense as a raw USB device over the network using a technology called USB/IP, which tunnels the USB connection through your local network. Your PC then believes the DualSense is physically plugged in, so all of its advanced features work natively. Meanwhile, Moonlight continues to handle video and audio as normal, the two data paths run in parallel without interfering with each other. A piece of software called DSX, short for DualSenseX, on the PC side then drives the adaptive triggers and haptics per game. Setup is automated: one install script runs on the Steam Deck in its desktop mode, another runs on Windows and handles all the required software. After setup, you plug the DualSense into the Steam Deck via USB-C, the Steam Deck acts as a USB bridge over the network, and your PC picks up the controller. The setup auto-starts at boot through a background system service and is designed to survive SteamOS software updates. Network latency added by the USB forwarding is around 1 to 3 milliseconds on a local network. The whole pipeline is free, the VirtualHere software it relies on offers a free tier that covers exactly one USB device, which is all this needs. Written in PowerShell and shell scripts, it targets Windows 10 or 11 as the gaming PC and SteamOS on the Steam Deck, and is released under the MIT License.