4 ms·

I got a chance to try this out with a first-person shooter. I was not very happy with it. It felt worse than mouse+keyboard and simultaneously worse than dual-a

by laeus 13y ago

I got a chance to try this out with a first-person shooter. I was not very happy with it. It felt worse than mouse+keyboard and simultaneously worse than dual-analog gamepads. Everybody in the room had issues calibrating and re-centering themselves. I'm sure it gets better with more use, but that's just the problem: it fails a fundamental usability test, because the initial experience of using it is pretty awful and requires a significant learning curve to achieve results that aren't necessarily or obviously better than either of the current standards.

vacri 13y ago
My first impression on viewing the controller is that reporting the 'location' of the thumb is going to be hard. Unlike a joystick or mouse that has a well-defined point, the thumb touches over a large area. You can find the centroid of this area - and the area will change size and shape as the thumb is rolled around. Different people will roll their thumbs differently, and there may be a mismatch between intent and physical interaction. It'll be interesting to see how well they manage to deal with this.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  I suspect that will be a feature, not a bug. I already use finger-rolling on my laptop trackpad when I need pixel-level precision. For noobs, the difference probably won't be noticeable; for experts, I expect they'll be using that technique on purpose.
Pxtl 13y ago
To be fair, dual-stick FPS gaming and mouse+keyboard gaming has a vicious learning-curve the first time out as well. The question is whether it's worth struggling through that.
nslamberth 13y ago
Out of curiosity, was the haptic tech in the build you tried out? Keeping thumbs oriented seems to be the biggest challenge of a controller like this, but I as hoping the haptic feedback would help keep your thumbs in place.

4 ms·

I got a chance to try this out with a first-person shooter. I was not very happy with it. It felt worse than mouse+keyboard and simultaneously worse than dual-a

by laeus 13y ago

vacri 13y ago
My first impression on viewing the controller is that reporting the 'location' of the thumb is going to be hard. Unlike a joystick or mouse that has a well-defined point, the thumb touches over a large area. You can find the centroid of this area - and the area will change size and shape as the thumb is rolled around. Different people will roll their thumbs differently, and there may be a mismatch between intent and physical interaction. It'll be interesting to see how well they manage to deal with this.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  I suspect that will be a feature, not a bug. I already use finger-rolling on my laptop trackpad when I need pixel-level precision. For noobs, the difference probably won't be noticeable; for experts, I expect they'll be using that technique on purpose.
Pxtl 13y ago
To be fair, dual-stick FPS gaming and mouse+keyboard gaming has a vicious learning-curve the first time out as well. The question is whether it's worth struggling through that.
nslamberth 13y ago
Out of curiosity, was the haptic tech in the build you tried out? Keeping thumbs oriented seems to be the biggest challenge of a controller like this, but I as hoping the haptic feedback would help keep your thumbs in place.