A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans
scanofthemonth.com
scanofthemonth.com
The PS5 controller has "linear resonant actuators" (previously introduced in the Switch, and in the iPhone before that) which provide a much more fine-grained rumble feature than the older method which is still used in the XBox. The newer feature lets you feel e.g. that the character walks over sand, rubble or grass. The PS5 controller also has actual force-feedback triggers (which simulate e.g. a bow or a gun), while on the XBox there are only simple rumble motors. The XBox controller also still lacks a gyroscope (e.g. used for more precise aiming), which other controllers have for many years now. A really outdated piece of hardware, in contrast to the base console.
now as to if these are something you want or need is another question.
That sort of thing really puts me off the changes, although I accept that it pushes innovation forward.
I enjoy being able to play OG Xbox, 360, and current-gen titles with the same controller.
There is one exception, you can't play a PSVR (1) game that requires the camera to track the light bar on the controller with a DS5, but that's very few games and for technical reasons (the DS5 does not have the light bar)
Maybe I am too old, but I hardly feel any differene.
I am not saying it is not there, I am saying I cannot feel it.
The only difference is in the triggers, where you have to press more or less on the PS5.
As far as the haptics go, the degree to which cross-platform games use them really varies. Cold War had cool haptic triggers so you felt the recoil kick, but I don't think that was included in MW2. Some exclusives like Returnal leverage the advanced haptics in a really impressive way, too, but I don't think we'll see that in many cross platform titles.
It takes a little getting used to, and there’s a good number of settings parameters you can dial in to your preference (I generally like higher sensitivity and on all the time), but now I’m able to snipe across the map with a controller in fortnite nearly as well as I used to with a mouse and keyboard in battlefield 4. Playing it on an Xbox feels like using stone tools in comparison.
Compare that to a Xbox Elite controller (different price tier, I know) and it feels like a cheap piece of junk.
I assume with all of this new tech the PS5 controller is a bit heftier but I was surprised how much just the weight made a different for me.
Even the earliest analog sticks like the N64 (Which used LEDs for tracking) didn't suffer from drift — although it did wear out considerably mechanically!
I just bit the bullet and replaced my Joycon's sticks with 3rd party hall-sensing ones, which have worked great so far.
If you find your controller is drifting, then the console just needs some menu where you put the stick to a bunch of reference locations, and then the stick maps outs its own response and renormalizes. "This is neutral." "This is upper-left as far as it goes." "This is..." ect... Maybe even with fine grain mapping adjust if the player really wants control over drifting behavior.
You set high sensitivity and the cursor moves with hand off the controller in a certain direction. You adjust the counter-drift until the cursor doesn't move at all.
You see users of all the consoles anecdotally reporting drift problems. I haven't experienced personally any drift on my PS4 or PS5 controllers, nor an Xbox controller used for a PC. I did have it happen pretty significantly on a Switch Lite.
I also think there's probably an aspect of personal usage patterns: maybe if you're just going through sticks constantly, you apply more pressure, or just use them more, or have something like a dusty environment wearing them out faster.
This is the big one for me. For me it is such an improvement in both "feel" and in my real performance that I cannot go back to a system without one. When MW2 released without gyro support, I played briefly but wound up putting it down until that was added in an update.
The PS4 controller had a gyro too that was essentially never utilized. I was really hoping this would be the gen when all the major vendors included it, but Microsoft, alone, opted not to.
The speakerphone built into the controller is great too. I can run all the game audio through my hifi, and still talk to my friends on in-game voice chat without using a headset.
my thumb joints still ache from beating ape escape
As much as I agree the PS5 controller is better technically, the xbox pad works better with a PC. Compatibility wise, not many games take advantage of the haptic feedback triggers.
Playing wired is so 2002.
The PS3 controller was indeed uncomfortable, but for the past two generations the two competing consoles are on par. Some find one more comfortable, others the other.
Ultimately they’re both very good, which is a big improvement over previous generations.
If you have big hands it can be a lot more comfortable to instead kind of wrap your fingers around the grips but not make contact with your palms (kind of like it's a SNES controller with some extra finger grips). I don't know if this is the intended way to do it, but it feels good to me.
It's how I've pretty much always held them...
It feels like only a monkey would full palm them...
My ideal controller would be the PS4 shape and layout, but with the dpad and triggers from the Xbox one/series controller (the PS5 haptic feedback is nice, but hardly any games I play actually use it effectively, and I like the shape of the Xbox triggers more).
Do you use both sticks at the same time? I think most games are left stick + buttons, meaning the Xbox would not only be symmetrical but also allow for a more relaxed extended thumb instead of the lower down ps position
(I'm not sure if that's just how all "linear resonant actuators" work, just found it neat)
After you've played some games that make full use of its advanced haptics (like Demon's Souls, Ghost of Tsushima, Gran Turismo 7, Doom Eternal), going back to other platforms (or even other PS5 games that don't use all the features) feels like something's missing from your hands.. just dead.
Graphics have been Good Enough for several years now. It's time to focus on other areas of the gaming, and the control method is the second most important part of that experience.
Truly an outdated design that would force me to manage a fleet of rechargeable batteries, something I have zero desire for.
https://www.fictiv.com/teardowns/nintendo-controller-teardow...
I just love how overbuilt the old controllers are. I still have my original SNES and controllers and as far as I can tell they work as well as the day they were made despite decades of abuse. One has bite marks... not sure if that was the dog or me playing The Lion King.
I have not are that on any other controllers, even cheapo xbox360 clone controllers from AliExpress.
I think some other controllers will correct for drift after you push them all the way in each direction.
What makes the Joy-Con sticks so horrendous in my understanding is 1) they're tiny 2) the shrouds protecting particle ingress into the sensor compartment is wildly inadequate. Rather than the stick having a very large hemisphere under the primary casing and surrounding the sensor compartment, whereby particles that manage to fall in it are directed into the case cavity, the Joy-Con sticks have this dinky paper thin rubber skirt that floats on top of a convex hemisphere on the sensor housing. In use, this skirt can expose the sensor compartment directly to air or it can pick up particles on the housing and drag them into the housing.
I recently found Hall effect Joy-Con sticks on Amazon and am giving those a go right now. This issue is something I'm overly invested in as I think the combination of independent controllers and some fine details in how Splatoon (twitchy shooter) manages motion controls yields the best control scheme for a shooter even compared to mouse and keyboard. Unfortunately outside of the concept the devices are horrible.
worlds apart from those awful gamecube style sticks that make playing quite a few games impossible.
Nowadays, one can get replacement parts, and fairly easily restore/fix the problem. Add in a bit of PTFE lube or lithium grease and it greatly extends the lifespan of the replacement as well. Used to be able to get rather fancy steel bowls and analog sticks which significantly reduced the wear even more.
The more 'standard' thumbstick design has a similar self-centering mechanism. They are actually susceptible to the same problem. However, two things contribute to it being witnessed less frequently, I suspect. The first, is that the "bowl" in those sticks actually has lubricant which greatly reduces the wear, and the second is that the mechanical parts tend to outlast the potentiometers; that is, the sticks start to drift before you get the "floppy stick" problem to begin with and then you stop using it or replace the stick, and therefore it doesn't actually see enough wear to cause the floppy stick problem.
You don't get access to raw data, assuming you mean something like individual X-ray images. The service runs the tomography on some cluster in the cloud and you get access to the reconstruction through a web app.
Doing metrology on production parts normally means disassembling them and putting them under the microscope or X-raying them, but sometimes there are problems that only manifest when the pen is assembled and closed. There's a lot of geometry that isn't visible externally in a pen, more so in certain markers. The writing systems are very sensitive to manufacturing tolerances, and out of spec parts are perceived by users as a bad pen or marker (which we don't want). With a normal X-ray, it is very difficult to resolve internal geometry deep in the assembled pen with any degree of accuracy.
CT scans allow us to examine internal geometry non-destructively and they are relatively fast to run. The scans shown in that blog post I would guess took about 6-8 hours of scanning + 1 hour of reconstruction to generate. Once you start the machine, it's completely automated from there, so you don't need a technician or an engineer sitting at the X-ray machine (which BTW is running Windows XP or something worse) takings images of parts.
These look cleaned up, as the metal artifact from dense things is minimal.
I’ve scanned things then converted the Dicom file into a format suitable for printing (I’d broken a part of a coffee grinder). These images look like the item when moves to a 3D print in format.
Side story: finding out what’s inside things is what CT is for. We used to scan the chip packets before loading them into the vending machine. We sort out the ones with prizes inside.
To answer the question about whether these are cleaned up, these scans aren't processed beyond what our software does automatically during the reconstruction. Industrial CT scanners are designed to scan a wider range of material densities than medical scanners. We use some copper filtration to scan parts with lots of dense materials, but no extra processing is required once we've reconstructed the model.
Talk about attention to detail: the SNES controller added 4 more buttons (you have to count the shoulders).
I had a friend who worked on electronics about 20 years ago. Suddenly they were facing a flood of reverse engineered devices coming out of China. The build quality was lower than their official devices but it was hard for customers to tell the difference and they were undercutting them on price enough to crater the companies revenues.
Enforcing patents and other IP was basically a non-starter even when they tracked down the shops in China.
Eventually they ended up just partnering with them and selling the lower quality and cheaper versions of their devices because they couldn't compete and all the work they had done to design, test, prototype, etc was written off as a loss.
Nintendo's joycons also pretty novel, you just clip them on your console in/out and you unlock new ways to play, OP should have included them too, I'm curious now.. a shame its build quality is one of the worst of this decade
Xbox's one is pretty basic and conservative, wich is a shame..
I also have a PS5 and a switch, but those controllers don't feel good in my hand. The PS5 haptics don't add much IMO, but hurt battery life enough that I'd rather just turn them off.
Hence why I bought a Nintendo Switch, the premise is: to have fun
No other console manage to deliver like Nintendo did with both the Wii and the Switch
Sony/Microsoft have a lot to learn, hopefully their next gen include a portable device with original mechanics
But the Switch Pro controller (found it, https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/pro-controller/) is basically that... a full size, Xbox like controller you can bring with you. You can leave the smaller side controllers at home and just use Switch in tabletop mode, maybe...?
There are more comfortable PC and Android handhelds too, if you're not set on the Switch ecosystem.
My minor complaint is that it came with two internal microphones, but thankfully it's very easy to open the controller up and rip them out.
I still really like the XBox controllers for their ergonomics. They’ve been refining that same basic design for a long time.
CT scan and just focus on the big huge unavoidably obvious stuff.
The biggest change in feel and game play from the SNES and the newer controller for example is the lack of plate under the dpad and other things that are awsome to see with a scan like that. Yet they ignore all that.
I'm pretty sure they did it two years before with the famicom gamepad.