I liked it. The touchpad was useful for nothing, as well as the gyro. This is a controller that tries to improve on things gamers actually care about. The variable tension on the triggers is a...
I liked it. The touchpad was useful for nothing, as well as the gyro. This is a controller that tries to improve on things gamers actually care about. The variable tension on the triggers is a great idea.
The appearance took some getting used to, but I grew to appreciate it.
Wait, are they removing the gyro? I own both a PS4 and a Switch and I finally get the purpose of motion controls thanks to the Switch joycons. Gyro aiming is just one step removed from mouse...
Wait, are they removing the gyro? I own both a PS4 and a Switch and I finally get the purpose of motion controls thanks to the Switch joycons. Gyro aiming is just one step removed from mouse aiming in terms of precision, it makes so much sense and I want it to become the default for all console games. With a little tweaking it could replace mouse input as my favorite control scheme for FPS games. It’s really that good.
I can’t think of a single game that used gyro for aiming on the PS4, but I used it like that on the Vita and it was pretty awesome. How did you make it work? It’s not clear if the gyro will...
I can’t think of a single game that used gyro for aiming on the PS4, but I used it like that on the Vita and it was pretty awesome.
How did you make it work?
It’s not clear if the gyro will remain, but it was not mentioned in the blog post.
(This went longer than I expected, the TL;DR is "it gives you greater range of movement"...) The secret to mouse movement is that you can use your whole wrist as well as your fingers so you have a...
(This went longer than I expected, the TL;DR is "it gives you greater range of movement"...)
The secret to mouse movement is that you can use your whole wrist as well as your fingers so you have a greater range of motion. You can move your mouse 1mm for pixel-precision and 100mm for a fast turn – and everything in-between. With a joystick, you only have your thumb. You have a total of maybe 10mm, often with a dead zone and you're required to do it in a perfect half-circle around its origin. Your thumb is not as precise as your whole hand (certain angles are awkward) and and the range of movement increments is maybe 1-10x as opposed to mouse-movement's 1-100x. To do a 90° turn, you have to hold the joystick for like .5 seconds, which is laughable to a CS player, for example. Gyro controls can solve this.
Gyro controls make the whole controller a mouse held in the air. You're missing the stability of a desk surface, but that's the only disadvantage. You have 2 axis (actually 3) with a lot of range. You can flip your wrist into a near-instant 90°-turn and you can carefully point for precise aiming. I'd say it's very close to the 1-100x range of movement speed and it's close in terms of precision (even if there's a little more hand jitter). You can hold a button to reposition your controller if you need continuous movement into one direction (the equivalent of lifting your mouse to keep spinning in the same direction in an FPS game). It all works pretty much perfectly.
That being said, it needs a lot of tweaking to get right. I think Nintendo has gotten general aiming down perfectly but the exact mechanics of dealing with position resets are trickier (Splatoon 2 got very close but they couldn't resist making the camera snap forward when resetting your movement between turns, which is annoying). The best thing: Your right thumb is free to actually press buttons while moving! It's good enough for me to never want any other form of input for console aiming. You feel handicapped going back to joystick-aim. Gyro just obviously a superior input mechanism (when done right).
Historically, I think the reluctance towards motion controls comes from the initial Wii marketing, which presented motion controls fully 3D-tracked, 1:1 simulations of real-world movement (see those ads where people swung their hand all the way back for virtual bowling – the WiiMote doesn't even see the sensor bar when pointed backwards!). Good VR setups now allow it, but its still limiting it's use to exact mappings of real-world hand movement. It's IMO a much better and more sensible use of gyro controls to just treat the sensors as abstract input axis. You don't need more space than with a traditional controller but get so much more range of input.
I’m well aware of the superiority of the mouse and gyro for aiming. The purpose of my question was to understand if it was at all possible to make gyroscopes be used for aiming on any PS4 games. I...
I’m well aware of the superiority of the mouse and gyro for aiming. The purpose of my question was to understand if it was at all possible to make gyroscopes be used for aiming on any PS4 games.
I clearly misunderstood your previous comment, sorry about that.
It’s absurd that not even first parties make use of the gyro on the PS4...
Oh, sorry, no. Somehow the PS4 and all its developers refuse to acknowledge gyro controls (there's a few notable exceptions but many of them go into gimmick territory). I just hoped for the chance...
Oh, sorry, no. Somehow the PS4 and all its developers refuse to acknowledge gyro controls (there's a few notable exceptions but many of them go into gimmick territory). I just hoped for the chance of there being a change of heart for the PS5. No mention of gyro controls in their grand reveal does not make me hopeful but it would be nice if it's at least there as a possibility.
It is possible. Check out the Steam Controller (Or Dualshock 4 hooked up to your PC). Its trackpad and gyro have multiple output modes for controllers. One of them is called Mouse-like Joystick....
It is possible. Check out the Steam Controller (Or Dualshock 4 hooked up to your PC). Its trackpad and gyro have multiple output modes for controllers. One of them is called Mouse-like Joystick. It outputs a joystick, but feels like a mouse. Slap that on the gyro, and have it activate on trackpad touch, and you have a 100% backwards-compatible way to get gyro motion. It's not as fine-grained and precise as actual gyro-mouse output, but it gets you a LOT of the benefits of gyro aim without the game needing to even be aware that the gyro exists.
I liked it. The touchpad was useful for nothing, as well as the gyro. This is a controller that tries to improve on things gamers actually care about. The variable tension on the triggers is a great idea.
The appearance took some getting used to, but I grew to appreciate it.
Wait, are they removing the gyro? I own both a PS4 and a Switch and I finally get the purpose of motion controls thanks to the Switch joycons. Gyro aiming is just one step removed from mouse aiming in terms of precision, it makes so much sense and I want it to become the default for all console games. With a little tweaking it could replace mouse input as my favorite control scheme for FPS games. It’s really that good.
I can’t think of a single game that used gyro for aiming on the PS4, but I used it like that on the Vita and it was pretty awesome.
How did you make it work?
It’s not clear if the gyro will remain, but it was not mentioned in the blog post.
(This went longer than I expected, the TL;DR is "it gives you greater range of movement"...)
The secret to mouse movement is that you can use your whole wrist as well as your fingers so you have a greater range of motion. You can move your mouse 1mm for pixel-precision and 100mm for a fast turn – and everything in-between. With a joystick, you only have your thumb. You have a total of maybe 10mm, often with a dead zone and you're required to do it in a perfect half-circle around its origin. Your thumb is not as precise as your whole hand (certain angles are awkward) and and the range of movement increments is maybe 1-10x as opposed to mouse-movement's 1-100x. To do a 90° turn, you have to hold the joystick for like .5 seconds, which is laughable to a CS player, for example. Gyro controls can solve this.
Gyro controls make the whole controller a mouse held in the air. You're missing the stability of a desk surface, but that's the only disadvantage. You have 2 axis (actually 3) with a lot of range. You can flip your wrist into a near-instant 90°-turn and you can carefully point for precise aiming. I'd say it's very close to the 1-100x range of movement speed and it's close in terms of precision (even if there's a little more hand jitter). You can hold a button to reposition your controller if you need continuous movement into one direction (the equivalent of lifting your mouse to keep spinning in the same direction in an FPS game). It all works pretty much perfectly.
That being said, it needs a lot of tweaking to get right. I think Nintendo has gotten general aiming down perfectly but the exact mechanics of dealing with position resets are trickier (Splatoon 2 got very close but they couldn't resist making the camera snap forward when resetting your movement between turns, which is annoying). The best thing: Your right thumb is free to actually press buttons while moving! It's good enough for me to never want any other form of input for console aiming. You feel handicapped going back to joystick-aim. Gyro just obviously a superior input mechanism (when done right).
Historically, I think the reluctance towards motion controls comes from the initial Wii marketing, which presented motion controls fully 3D-tracked, 1:1 simulations of real-world movement (see those ads where people swung their hand all the way back for virtual bowling – the WiiMote doesn't even see the sensor bar when pointed backwards!). Good VR setups now allow it, but its still limiting it's use to exact mappings of real-world hand movement. It's IMO a much better and more sensible use of gyro controls to just treat the sensors as abstract input axis. You don't need more space than with a traditional controller but get so much more range of input.
I’m well aware of the superiority of the mouse and gyro for aiming. The purpose of my question was to understand if it was at all possible to make gyroscopes be used for aiming on any PS4 games.
I clearly misunderstood your previous comment, sorry about that.
It’s absurd that not even first parties make use of the gyro on the PS4...
Oh, sorry, no. Somehow the PS4 and all its developers refuse to acknowledge gyro controls (there's a few notable exceptions but many of them go into gimmick territory). I just hoped for the chance of there being a change of heart for the PS5. No mention of gyro controls in their grand reveal does not make me hopeful but it would be nice if it's at least there as a possibility.
I'd be a bit surprised if it weren't there just from a backwards compatibility perspective.
They could probably get away with it since almost no games made use of it.
It is possible. Check out the Steam Controller (Or Dualshock 4 hooked up to your PC). Its trackpad and gyro have multiple output modes for controllers. One of them is called Mouse-like Joystick. It outputs a joystick, but feels like a mouse. Slap that on the gyro, and have it activate on trackpad touch, and you have a 100% backwards-compatible way to get gyro motion. It's not as fine-grained and precise as actual gyro-mouse output, but it gets you a LOT of the benefits of gyro aim without the game needing to even be aware that the gyro exists.
That’s on PC correct?
Correct, all the magic is done through Steam's Steam Input.