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.
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.
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.
The problem is that you can't.
There are just too many different type of gamers having different requirements. Given Valve's lineage, their core audience are the FPS/PC type gaming crowd who are used to keyboards and mice. And this controller makes sense for that audience.
While I'm interested in the Steam Machines, I would never buy this controller for myself, because I'm into fighting games and old-school console type games. And even though the Steam Controller isn't for me, the great thing about Steam Machines is that they're still computers at heart, which means that I can probably use just about any other controller out there if it has USB connectivity and identifies it as a standard HID.
I'm glad they went a different route, it opens up more options for gamers and developers.
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
But the lack of tension is going to be a bummer for action games regardless.
We tried that relative-to-an-absolute scheme on our iPhone FPS and it was very confusing. The best scheme was a relative-to-a-relative center where the origin would "follow" the thumb, but then we had a full screen to do that.
The problem with a relative-to-an-absolute scheme (even one with the little raised circle) is you have no idea where the thumb is until you touch the control but then it's too late.
Not saying it can't be done, it's just a little bit tricky.
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.
I have always usually done this, but also remapped the trackpad to be entirely a "scrollpad"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I mean, given the option of a physical mouse, I will always prefer that over both nub and track pad -- and the physical mouse requires the most movement away from the keyboard (of course, to avoid all three mouse input methods I use keyboard shortcuts when possible).
Anyway, my reasons for preferring the nub are:
* Less movement required on the actual input device. Just a slight tilt of the finger can move the mouse cursor from anywhere to anywhere else.
* Higher accuracy. This one may be subjective, only personal applicable, and/or biased, but I think the nub just makes it so much easier to navigate compared to the touch pad.
I use the nub on my thinkpad, but only because Lenovo's touchpads are truly woeful.
For that alone I'm very interested, obviously also the fact that they're trying to make things quite open.