USB devices and for older PS2 games

Archived from groups: alt.games.video.sony-playstation2 (More info?)

I am surpised that some of the newer USB controllers such as steering
wheels and flight joysticks are not usuable on older games. I
understand that the newer games read from the USB port directly to get
the input signal. And older games only read from the game controller
port and hence these games are not compatible with newer USB devices.

It may be true that the newer devices has more functionalities than the
dualshock2 controller. But most of the functions can easily mapped to
provide the lower common demoninators for compatibility. For example,
a turn of the steering wheel may be mapped to the left and right arrows
of the game pad. All is missing is the PS2 console to "redirect" the
signals from the USB port to the game controller port. With the
redirect at the OS level, the games do not even need to know the signal
is not from the game pad port. i.e. an older games should be able to
use the reduced functionality of the newer devices. For example, a
force feedback steering wheel can still behave like a dumb steering
wheel on any old driving games such as Crazy Taxi etc.

Does anyone know if such mapping is even possible?