Found the perfect software

In my endless research for this project, I found the "ROV-Suite".

There's a program that runs on a PC, called Monterey.   They're up to version 4.0, and it's downloadable, so I grabbed it and it works!   It supposedly supports USB joysticks, so I'm attempting to get the xbox 360 controllers working with my PC.

If that all works, there's another program they have called "Bottomside" which runs inside the ROV platform on an Arduino microcontroller.    You install the code there, connect together via ethernet tether, and voila!  You have communication based on a network connection.