8 ms·
I'm skeptical that the trackpads will provide the same precision feel that a good analog stick can do, even with the haptics. But I'm not going to count it out
by breckinloggins 13y ago
I'm skeptical that the trackpads will provide the same precision feel that a good analog stick can do, even with the haptics.
But I'm not going to count it out. I'll reserve all judgement until I get to try it. And that's the only real sticking point for me on this announcement; everything else about this controller I love.
- hahainternet 13y agoThe one thing that frustrates me with the 360 joysticks is positioning my thumb not at an extreme but not at neutral either. This option seems like it will eliminate that entirely. For that alone I'm very interested, obviously also the fact that they're trying to make things quite open.
- eterm 13y agoLaptops all moved from nipples to trackpads a long time ago, surely if analog sticks could provide higher resolution then that wouldn't have happened, or there would have been a move back?
- spongle 13y agoI'd have agreed with you once, but I broke the trackpad on a ThinkPad a couple of years ago and out of apathy i switched to the nipple mouse and I haven't looked back. It takes more practice but it has excellent precision and infinite movement. The trackpad remains broken and unplugged.
- jlgreco 13y agoFurthermore, it is a hell of a lot easier to play quake with a trackpoint than a trackpad.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoI have to guess that these trackpads will act like joysticks for fpsen. Keep your finger on the left side to move left, etc. Maybe I'm wrong though.
- andybak 13y agoI was assuming the opposite. Keyboard and Mouse is usually regarded as superior to joysticks for FPS so I assumed they were trying to bridge the gap and come up with something more mouse-like?
- zenojevski 13y agoYes, in fact it would solve the aiming issue, while using the left trackpad in "joystick mode" would better replicate a keyboard.
- Vaskivo 13y agoIf it were me doing it, I would use the trackpad and the trackpad buttons. (I'm not sure, but I believe each trackpad is "pressable" and has multiple buttons, replicating a d-pad) I would tap and drag for little and precise movements, swipe for fast movements, and press the button for default movement. With some training, it can become pretty natural.
- neona 13y agoYou'll hopefully be able to choose based on preference, since choice seems to be the theme here.
- w1ntermute 13y agoI've had several ThinkPads, and I've always disabled the trackpad in the BIOS as soon as I got a new one - it's totally unnecessary when you have the TrackPoint. It's so much faster and more precise. Like amalcon said, I have no idea how anyone can use a trackpad. Whenever I watch a friend use one, or use one myself, it's like the mouse is moving in slow motion compared to me using the TrackPoint. It does take some practice, but it's well worth the investment, just like how learning to touch type pays off in the long run.
- __david__ 13y agoHow do you scroll? Do use scroll bars?
- spongle 13y agoHold the middle button and use the nipple. It scrolls like a mousewheel.
- jlgreco 13y agoOn thinkpads you can press the middle mouse button (below the spacebar) then press the trackpoint up or down. I have always usually done this, but also remapped the trackpad to be entirely a "scrollpad"
- w1ntermute 13y ago> On thinkpads you can press the middle mouse button (below the spacebar) then press the trackpoint up or down. Yep, and you can also click and release the middle mouse button, then separately mouse up or down. Interestingly, I have only been able to get either this OR the press then scroll behavior you described working on Windows (by toggling a setting), but in Linux you can have both enabled at the same time.
- jlgreco 13y agoBizarrely, Linux seems to support much of the trackpoint/trackpad stuff on thinkpads better than Windows does. I use to not be able to configure the trackpad how I wanted on Windows, but the Synaptics driver for Linux gave me plenty of possibilities.
- jimwalsh 13y agoUse an Apple trackpad and you'll never want to use the ThinkPad/Lenovo eraser nubs ever again.
- possibilistic 13y agoI have, and I strongly prefer the TrackPoint--by a whole order of magnitude. I never have to keep my fingers off home row. I do use a tiling window manager and bindings like Vrome/Vimperator, so my use case is probably atypical. My mouse usage is limited to when I deem it absolutely necessary; I hate physical/mental context switching, and bringing my hand from keyboard to TrackPad/mouse/whatever is a huge context switch.
- Arelius 13y agoBut that's really a matter of where the trackpoint is, not the input on the device itself. It's a bit different while you're playing games.
- idlewan 13y agoI have always felt that the TrackPoint (on a HP Elitebook here) is difficult to access from the right or left index because of its place between G and H. I would use it so much more if it was between H and J. How do you stretch your finger towards the middle of the keyboard with no issue? Stretching just to type a letter is fine for me (think Y, H or B), but staying on the TrackPoint is hard.
- spongle 13y agoI used an Apple one (one of the large ones) on a 2010 MBP. It was error prone and made my fingers numb after a while. Not only that, the full pad depression to click is awkward and configuring sensitivity for tap to click was never just right. Possibly a shocking statement here but I went from a top end 2010 MBP to a 2009 T400 running windows 7 and am much happier as a whole, even though I have my head in UNIX machines a lot.
- jlgreco 13y agoNot my experience at all. Apple trackpads tire my fingertips, they become sore after extended usage.
- breckinloggins 13y agoIt's not the resolution, it's the feedback. Like I said, I'm skeptical, not dismissive.
- amalcon 13y agoNot all. Lenovo still provides eraser nub-style pointers on many models. I personally find them to be more accurate at high speeds than a touchpad. I actually have no idea how people can use touchpads. You need a huge one to be able to go corner-to-corner in one swipe and still have reasonable accuracy.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Osiris 13y agoI hate touchpads. I use an external mouse with my Macbook. I have a Dell D830 with the nub pointer and it was so much easier to use, especially considering that you don't have to remove your hands from the keyboard and your finger doesn't need to cross 3 inches of space to move across the screen.
- NoodleIncident 13y agoI've always been confused by this argument. I can reach my trackpad with my right thumb without moving any of my other fingers off of the home row. Is this an unusual amount of flexibility?
- jamesbritt 13y agoMaybe. I have long fingers and decent dexterity but find thumbing a trackpad way less accurate than using a trackpoint. This may be a matter of practice, but there's still more hand movement required even to get my thumb over the trackpad.
- efraim 13y agoI don't think most people use trackpads with their thumbs.
- StevenRayOrr 13y agoThis is one of those use cases that I'd be interested in seeing some research on. Personally, it depends a great deal on what I am doing, but I often use my thumbs to do minor navigations when within a document. Particularly because I have some RSI issues and using my thumb seems to less of an aggravation. Milage, I'm sure, varies, but I suspect that there is a subset of folks that at least use their thumbs a bit.
- deletes 13y agoMy high end (new)ThinkPad has both an trackpad and a trackpoint, and i must say the trackpoint is more precise when tiny movements are required.
- asdasf 13y agoMost popular does not mean best.
- avn2109 13y agoObligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/243/ http://xkcd.com/243/
- Anonymous9823 13y agoKeep in mind you can always just plug in a 360 controller, so if you have one of each, you can switch between the Steam and 360 controller depending on the game and your preference. I'm glad they went a different route, it opens up more options for gamers and developers.
- cheald 13y agoThat's the big thing for me here. They're obviously trying to bridge the gap between PC gaming and console gaming, but they aren't doing it at the expense of existing control schemes - I have no doubt that you can use a bluetooth keyboard + mouse, or a Steam controller, or an Xbox 360 controller to play your games. The Steam controller doesn't have to solve every problem, because it isn't an exclusive input mode for the platform. If it works on 95% of the games, that's a huge win and good enough for most people.
- Pxtl 13y agoI think the challenge is Valve is trying to create one-size-fits-all inputs with those trackpads. They have to work as joysticks and pointing devices, since Valve sells both console games and PC games on their platform. As a PC gamer, I'm super-excited for this gamepad because it will beat the ever-loving-crap out of a joystick for games that depend on a pointing-device (strategy, RTS, no-aim-assist-FPS games). It might not measure up to a mouse, but it could still provide a "good-enough" experience unlike a thumbstick.
- cheald 13y agoThe nice thing is that a high-DPI trackpad can act as both a relative-input joystick (movement based on how far from center you are) and an absolute-input pointing device (movement based on absolute position in the device's input field). Joysticks can do this, too, but their DPI is frequently nowhere even close to acceptable for this kind of work - they tend to be somewhere in the 200-400 DPI range, when your average mouse tends to be capable of input at several thousand DPI; if the touchpad resolution is good enough, then I think they're going to have a winner on their hands.
- matt_ 13y agoand yet most competitive fps players play at 400 dpi
- cheald 13y ago400 DPI on a 6"x6" input surface; that's very different from 400 DPI on a .5"x.5" input surface.
- sliverstorm 13y agoProblem with an absolute-input pointing device in this case is your thumb. In the world of ultra-high DPI touch input, your thumb is a veritable cudgel.
- Pxtl 13y ago
- Arelius 13y agoThe goal is to provide the some precision that a mouse can, not replicate sticks... If that were the case, they would have just put sticks on the thing.
- cheald 13y agoYou can trivially replicate joystick behavior with a touchpad - note how the controller has a raise "home" circle in the middle. This is almost certainly so that it can be used as a joystick, where the input is based on how far from center the thumb is, rather than the thumb's absolute position on the touchpad.
- roc 13y agoAlbeit without any of the tactile value of the tension of an analog stick. [1] Nor an absolute, physically constrained, "max" position: where the stem of an analogue stick is pressed against the edge of its container. [2] A trackpad seems like it will very easily allow your thumb to drift from a position of sending maximally-distant-from-center input to not registering any input. That's going to be a huge usability problem. And making assumptions about what a user might have meant should a thumb just happen to slide off the edge of a trackpad is going to be problematic. [3] [1] What would you call a 360 or dual shock controller with analog sticks that have no tension-to-center anymore? Broken. [2] Think of how often you feel/hear that little analog stick "clack". Think of how often you're pressing against that physical boundary to ensure maximal-distance input. Each of those moments is an opportunity for a trackpad to present a problem. And those moments are awfully common. It's likely they're more common than not. [3] did their thumb slide off, or did they raise it? did i slide off on accident or on purpose? etc EDIT: cleaned up phrasing
- NoodleIncident 13y agoI'm guessing that that's what the outer circle is for, right? Your thumb feels the ridge, and that section of the pad is interpreted as maximal-distance input.