I don't see how my right thumb could be as precise as moving the mouse, which I do with all 5 of my fingers (for tiny movements) or from my shoulder (for larger movements). If thumb touchpads were good for FPS games, how come nobody is playing them with their thumb on their laptop's touchpad? Maybe I'm just old, but I don't see myself ever being able to use this.
Controllers like this are notoriously hard to get right. The tiniest details matter immensely and mean the difference between joyous and unusable.
There's just no way to judge a controller without physically holding it and walking an FPS mile with it as your shoes.
I spent the early 90's going from one giant, gaudy "flight stick" to the next, never knowing that what I really wanted was a pair of miniature thumb-sticks. My mind is wide open to stuff like this.
Thank you for saying this. Logical arguments, especially around fuzzy notions like the feel of a controller, are useful for prioritizing the hypotheses we test. But not for deciding on them.
Given 15 different controller designs, use logic to figure out what order you test them/build them. But at the end, it comes down to the feel.
This[1] CH joystick was my bread-and-butter for gaming. I used one one-handed with a joystick in the other for FPS; I used one with the spring switch off on a Y-adapter as a throttle. it's only downside was not enough buttons for fighting games. Also they wear out after about 2-4 years of hard use (or a decade of light use).
I'm down to my last one that works perfectly, and considering building a USB one since all of the joystick parts are still manufactured and available from CH.
Why not FPS with a laptop? Laptop trackpads are low precision and high latency. They're also ergonomically inferior and the placement is difficult when considering the all-important WASD just above it.
When you read into the details of these two pads they're developing, it sounds extremely exciting.
Some of the highest resolution and performant sensors ever put into a controller.
When combined with the supposed "configuration utility" whereby we have hopefully powerful control to map and bind to will, I can see this being a big win.
I like my 360 controller for PC gaming for many reasons: pain from mouse/kbb overuse being one, comfort when sitting and playing for another, and the simple fact that many games are made for controller and ported to kbb/mouse as well.
So you talk about an ergonomic, high quality, extremely performant, Linux native, configurable, built-for-PC controller?
This has been my biggest frustration with Macs. I've never been able to get used to the weird mouse acceleration curve. Using a non-Apple mouse usually makes things a little better, but it's still just not right. I even tried installing a 3rd party tool once to fix the issue, but it didn't help much.
Yes, played entire Portal/Portal2 on it. It was fine. Maybe you should be railing at game developers that port to the Mac but then don’t update their acceleration curves to fit the platform. That’s the problem, when games are developed on Windows with the Windows mouse curve and then never adjusted on the Mac port.
I could care less about programmable buttons, but my RAT5 required a kext installed along with the companion software to work properly (hover bugs and whatnot), and it does not seem to have any acceleration, even outside games (I did not use the above settings)
> how come nobody is playing them with their thumb on their laptop's touchpad?
Touchpads (and mice) don't work like thumbsticks.
Touchpads/mice measure a vector with the size equal to distance traveled. Thumbsticks measure a vector with a size equal to the deflection from center.
Thumbsticks are terrible for mousing tasks (e.g., moving a virtual cursor [rts games]), and mice/touchpads are terrible for thumbstick tasks (e.g., playing a racing/flying game).
Actually raw touchpad output does work like that, it's just adapted to drive a mouse cursor. Imagine a touchpad mode where the position of the mouse cursor on screen gets mapped to the position of the finger on the pad.
As a trackball heavy user (i use both thumb and index ones, with both hands) I avoid playing FPS without a mouse!
the thumbs trackball is more precise. But still not good. A good and cheap microsoft mouse is always with me when i'm playing FPSs.
Also, even if the control wasn't an issue, no trackball has more than 300DPI. EVER. The minimum for mouses is 400. I don't know why that is. But even the overly expensive Kensington ones are crappy even to click on a 10x10 button on regular usage, let alone to headshot in a FPS.
I wholeheartedly agree that trackballs suck for FPS games, but most pro FPS players advocate keeping the mouse at a fairly low DPI, so that deficiency isn't really the problem.
I have trouble believing that any device that relies on thumb-only input is going to be anywhere near as good as a mouse, but I hope I'm proven wrong.
Trackballs really aren't _that_ terrible for precision in FPS. Not pro level, but heckuva lot better than the joystick control consoles currently use. I found I had a harder time in StarCraft than I did in UT2K4, but both were quite playable.
I used a Logitech Trackman for seven years, and the biggest issue was that the force required to move the ball around wasn't constant; it would vary depending on how gunked up the little rollers inside had gotten. I had to clean mine out every day to keep it smooth.
If a person prefers using a trackball, that's great, but when the same tools used by the pros costs about $50, there isn't really any other reason to use anything else.
I used a Logitech Trackball for more than a decade due to De Quervain syndrome. My specific experience in this topic is that the TB allows for high speed macro motions (RTS control), often easier/faster than a mouse; but for high speed precision (headshots), the mouse wins every time.
Part of the problem with laptop touchpads is that it's hard to find the center if you lose it. The texturing and concavity on the Steam controller will make that much easier.
The positioning on the Steampad helps, too. Imagine a D-pad or thumbstick built into your laptop in the place where a trackpad normally goes. That's what laptop trackpads are like.
>I don't see how my right thumb could be as precise as moving the mouse
It's a controller, it will never be as precise as a mouse. Trust me when this thing comes out people will be complaining about how they're suddenly losing every game of TF2.
Yeah i tired playing LoL with a mouse. Not a good experience. EPICLY HARD. You just can't get that level of rapid precision with a mouse. for FPS games, this controller looks like a BEAST!!! but for games like Dota, this is gonna be a huge pain. I can already see people complaining after every death that they are playing form a controller
