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Comment by paulgerhardt | Hacker News Reader

I got to hold one of these a few months ago. It's solid. The ergonomics are there. The same designer[1] was previously at {one of the other three very large gaming console manufacturers} and knows a thing or two about controllers. My understanding is it will be significantly more accurate than traditional joysticks and competitive with a mouse (with a mouse you have a single 'large' plane of motion, with this, you have two smaller independent planes for each thumb). For FPS's it will really shine, but keep in mind that Valve also makes DOTA2 so I'm sure they're more than aware of the need to make this work across genres.

For Valve to bring PC gaming to your TV/Couch, they really needed to nail the interface. I imagine they have spent many iterations on the problem, and I am very excited to see the fruits of their labor.

[1] Full disclosure, by some odd coincidence she happens to be my sister and also did the industrial design for Lockitron so I am wayy biased here.

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I don't see how my right thumb could be as precise as moving the mouse, which I do with all 5 of my fingers (for tiny movements) or from my shoulder (for larger movements). If thumb touchpads were good for FPS games, how come nobody is playing them with their thumb on their laptop's touchpad? Maybe I'm just old, but I don't see myself ever being able to use this.

Long time users of trackball mice will disagree with you

http://mobile.logitech.com/en-us/mice-pointers/trackballs

Using Counter Strike as the flag ship FPS for Valve there currently aren't any professional players using a trackball: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AkghPvIh7ZVwdGZ...

As a trackball heavy user (i use both thumb and index ones, with both hands) I avoid playing FPS without a mouse!

the thumbs trackball is more precise. But still not good. A good and cheap microsoft mouse is always with me when i'm playing FPSs.

Also, even if the control wasn't an issue, no trackball has more than 300DPI. EVER. The minimum for mouses is 400. I don't know why that is. But even the overly expensive Kensington ones are crappy even to click on a 10x10 button on regular usage, let alone to headshot in a FPS.

no trackball has more than 300DPI

My 1600DPI L-Trac disagrees.

Ok, One or two $100+ trackballs have it. While all sub $50 mouses are over 3000DPI...

I wholeheartedly agree that trackballs suck for FPS games, but most pro FPS players advocate keeping the mouse at a fairly low DPI, so that deficiency isn't really the problem.

I have trouble believing that any device that relies on thumb-only input is going to be anywhere near as good as a mouse, but I hope I'm proven wrong.

Trackballs really aren't _that_ terrible for precision in FPS. Not pro level, but heckuva lot better than the joystick control consoles currently use. I found I had a harder time in StarCraft than I did in UT2K4, but both were quite playable.

I used a Logitech Trackman for seven years, and the biggest issue was that the force required to move the ball around wasn't constant; it would vary depending on how gunked up the little rollers inside had gotten. I had to clean mine out every day to keep it smooth.

If a person prefers using a trackball, that's great, but when the same tools used by the pros costs about $50, there isn't really any other reason to use anything else.

I use a logitech trackman and still have an optical mouse just for FPS games

I used a Logitech Trackball for more than a decade due to De Quervain syndrome. My specific experience in this topic is that the TB allows for high speed macro motions (RTS control), often easier/faster than a mouse; but for high speed precision (headshots), the mouse wins every time.

A laptop's touchpad isn't a handheld controller. Using your thumb would feel awkward.

Why not FPS with a laptop? Laptop trackpads are low precision and high latency. They're also ergonomically inferior and the placement is difficult when considering the all-important WASD just above it.

When you read into the details of these two pads they're developing, it sounds extremely exciting.

Some of the highest resolution and performant sensors ever put into a controller.

When combined with the supposed "configuration utility" whereby we have hopefully powerful control to map and bind to will, I can see this being a big win.

I like my 360 controller for PC gaming for many reasons: pain from mouse/kbb overuse being one, comfort when sitting and playing for another, and the simple fact that many games are made for controller and ported to kbb/mouse as well.

So you talk about an ergonomic, high quality, extremely performant, Linux native, configurable, built-for-PC controller?

Color me very interested.

Apple's trackpads aren't low precision and high latency.

Heh, have you tried playing an FPS on a mac, with its awful mouse acceleration?

This has been my biggest frustration with Macs. I've never been able to get used to the weird mouse acceleration curve. Using a non-Apple mouse usually makes things a little better, but it's still just not right. I even tried installing a 3rd party tool once to fix the issue, but it didn't help much.

Was it SmoothMouse[0]? We likely have different needs but I've been pretty satisfied since installing it, especially for my trackball.

[0]: http://smoothmouse.com/

Based on screenshots, it seems like it, but it's been a few years, so if it hasn't been around that long, then no.

wow, that really improved the feel of the mouse in OSX for me, thanks alot!

Yes, played entire Portal/Portal2 on it. It was fine. Maybe you should be railing at game developers that port to the Mac but then don’t update their acceleration curves to fit the platform. That’s the problem, when games are developed on Windows with the Windows mouse curve and then never adjusted on the Mac port.

Maybe this can help for games that don't bother to adjust/disable acceleration:

    defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1
    defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.trackpad.scaling -1

I could care less about programmable buttons, but my RAT5 required a kext installed along with the companion software to work properly (hover bugs and whatnot), and it does not seem to have any acceleration, even outside games (I did not use the above settings)

Part of the problem with laptop touchpads is that it's hard to find the center if you lose it. The texturing and concavity on the Steam controller will make that much easier.

The positioning on the Steampad helps, too. Imagine a D-pad or thumbstick built into your laptop in the place where a trackpad normally goes. That's what laptop trackpads are like.

Controllers like this are notoriously hard to get right. The tiniest details matter immensely and mean the difference between joyous and unusable.

There's just no way to judge a controller without physically holding it and walking an FPS mile with it as your shoes.

I spent the early 90's going from one giant, gaudy "flight stick" to the next, never knowing that what I really wanted was a pair of miniature thumb-sticks. My mind is wide open to stuff like this.

This[1] CH joystick was my bread-and-butter for gaming. I used one one-handed with a joystick in the other for FPS; I used one with the spring switch off on a Y-adapter as a throttle. it's only downside was not enough buttons for fighting games. Also they wear out after about 2-4 years of hard use (or a decade of light use).

I'm down to my last one that works perfectly, and considering building a USB one since all of the joystick parts are still manufactured and available from CH.

http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000IBRN7O.01-ABT3ZC4T...

Thank you for saying this. Logical arguments, especially around fuzzy notions like the feel of a controller, are useful for prioritizing the hypotheses we test. But not for deciding on them.

Given 15 different controller designs, use logic to figure out what order you test them/build them. But at the end, it comes down to the feel.

> how come nobody is playing them with their thumb on their laptop's touchpad?

Touchpads (and mice) don't work like thumbsticks.

Touchpads/mice measure a vector with the size equal to distance traveled. Thumbsticks measure a vector with a size equal to the deflection from center.

Thumbsticks are terrible for mousing tasks (e.g., moving a virtual cursor [rts games]), and mice/touchpads are terrible for thumbstick tasks (e.g., playing a racing/flying game).

Actually raw touchpad output does work like that, it's just adapted to drive a mouse cursor. Imagine a touchpad mode where the position of the mouse cursor on screen gets mapped to the position of the finger on the pad.

True enough, my (uninformed) guess is that for this to work it would have to be on the level of the touchpad driver.

>I don't see how my right thumb could be as precise as moving the mouse

It's a controller, it will never be as precise as a mouse. Trust me when this thing comes out people will be complaining about how they're suddenly losing every game of TF2.

Yeah i tired playing LoL with a mouse. Not a good experience. EPICLY HARD. You just can't get that level of rapid precision with a mouse. for FPS games, this controller looks like a BEAST!!! but for games like Dota, this is gonna be a huge pain. I can already see people complaining after every death that they are playing form a controller

Imagine one thumb being 1x, the other 10x - then you could dial in precision and speed at the same time.

>For Valve to bring PC gaming to your TV/Couch, they really needed to nail the interface.

I don't understand the problem with traditional mouse+kb for couch gaming. I've been using it for years and haven't encountered any drawbacks (using wireless mouse+kb combo). Am able to play online FPS and RTS, both of which require extreme precision and extreme low latency, at very high levels.

You use a solid mousemat, place that on the couch beside you. The keyboard goes in your lap. Kick your feet up and game away. It works great.

This controller looks like trying to reinvent the wheel, and I just don't think that it'll work. The problem which all of these schemes have is that they make you uncomptetive versus mouse+kb foes in multiplayer games. No one has ever been able to match the precision and control of mouse+kb, and even if this solution is far better than previously attempts, it will still likely not be anywhere near the traditional control.

For 'casual' single player games, it'll work great. I'm sure that's a large part of the market for SteamBox. But for the hardcore, it probably won't work at all. I think they'd be better off finding a solution which incorporates traditional mouse+kb than trying to work around it, but that's just my opinion from the outside looking in.

Are you suggesting that most hardcore console gamers use a keyboard and mouse? I don't think that's true...

Edit: Rereading your comment, I guess you might mean PC gamers who are sitting on their couches. I don't think that's the market this is after; it's trying to get console gamers onto Steam by providing them a cool new product that will work well with the games they have. This makes that a much smaller shift for those gamers than the keyboard and mouse. Will they still get owned by more traditional PC gamers (since they're now competing directly), as you suggest? I guess that's possible, but that's just saying "console gaming needs to stay separate", not "they should use a keyboard and mouse for console games", which just isn't on the table any more than PC gamers are going to switch to a handheld controller.

Any game with a PC version that is vetted as a competitive esport will find its pc version, with superior and portable control interfaces, to be the choice for competition.

See: CoD, Battlefield, Quake, etc. All prefer exact aiming with a mouse over fudging analog input sticks with aim assist.

By your wording, no, console gamers don't use keyboards / mice, because the games they play on consoles are not compatible with them, and are not designed to use them. Very few genres (fighting, brawlers) sometimes prefer controllers to keyboards, and when they do it is usually a personal choice, or the market has better alternatives to both (ie, fight sticks).

The major difference between a mouse and a controller stick is the type of input.

Mouse is a pointing input - for a movement of 1 unit, your view changes by 1 unit. If you stop moving the mouse, your view stops moving.

Controller stick is a velocity input - for a movement of 1 unit, your view starts moving at a speed of 1 unit. If you bring the stick back to center, your view stops moving.

It could be that the Steam controller trackpad is precise enough to be a pointing input sensor, which could enable precise aiming. But it's too early to tell before the first reviews are out.

There's no reason you can't use a mouse a velocity input and a stick as a position input; either one is returning a value in a two-dimensional space -- treating that value as "position" or "velocity" is a matter of what the receiving software does with the input, not the input itself.

Joystick calibration utilities, for instance, tend to take stick position as a position input, and ISTR a number of PC sims that preferred joystick input but could use a mouse like a non-auto-centering joystick.

That is hardly relevant, using a stick as position input would give you, what, five units of movement on either axis?

> That is hardly relevant, using a stick as position input would give you, what, five units of movement on either axis?

From what I can find online, the PS3 controller is 10-bit per axis (1024 positions on either axis), the Xbox 360 is either 8-bit (256 positions) or 16-bit (64k positions.)

A 25-way joystick of the type you describe wouldn't be usable for most console games, whether as a position or velocity input.

It sounds like you're defining "hardcore gamer" as a competitive professional or semi-professional gamer. If so, I guess that's fine, but irrelevant to whether Valve will sell a lot of controllers. That's just not an important demographic.

Much more important is the platform market share for hardcore games, like CoD and Battlefield. It simply isn't true that people prefer the PC version [1], despite the inferior controls. CoD sells vastly more copies for console than for PC [2]. It's not even close.

If Valve wants to break into that market and compete with Xbox and PS, it needs a controller.

[1] Though I do, and it sounds like you do too.

[2] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31995/Exclusive_Black_Ops... (I recognize this doesn't include Steam sales, but the point still stands)

> I recognize this doesn't include Steam sales

Who buys retail games anymore?

Many of the more serious FPS console gamers do you a mouse and keyboard: http://xim3.com/

Console will always be at disadvantage to the PC in this genre due to its low frame rate (usually 121+ fps is considered slandered for the genre in order to make use of a 120hz refresh rate). Consoles currently output about 20 - 30 fps, not really acceptable for competitive play in a FPS.

They explicitly aren't trying to replace the mouse and keyboard. they're just trying to make an option available for people who want a controller. if you like a mouse and keyboard, good for you, keep using it. from the product page FAQ:

"I’m a happy Steam customer happily using my happy mouse and keyboard. I don’t want a controller? You can’t make a sentence into a question by just putting a question-mark at the end. But we’re happy you’re happy, and by all means keep using whatever input method makes sense for you. Rest assured, we won’t abandon you. We love mice and keyboards, too."

Again, why not find a solution which incorporates mouse+kb instead of avoiding it? Would console-ers really be too put off by an elegant solution?

And the problem here is not negligible. CoD series games will be miserable to play with a gamepad versus mouse+kb'ers, and those games would likely be quite popular on SteamBox.

SteamOS should support a keyboard and mouse just fine if that's your bag. They aren't avoiding it.

"I don't understand the problem with traditional mouse+kb for couch gaming"

"why not find a solution which incorporates mouse+kb instead of avoiding it?"

It sounds like they feel the same way to do. Mouse + Keyboard is already viable across a very wide spectrum of games. They don't need "a solution which incorporates mouse+kb", because that already is a solution (as you note, there's no real problem there).

However, for those that want a controller experience, there's not a viable solution. Controllers work across a pretty narrow spectrum of games. That is the problem that they're trying to address.

Because at some point, Valve is about making money, and people don't buy consoles and attach them to their tv with mouse and keyboard en masse. If they did, this wouldn't exist.

If you want/need to sell something in the millions, it kind of needs to be least common denominator. Gamers understand controllers as the basic interface for tv gaming, so they will buy them.

Gamers don't buy keyboards to put on their TV's so Valve is being smart by not forcing a square peg in a round hole. They want the Steam Machines to sell. A mouse and keyboard won't sell.

There are certain games that work better with controllers—the best example I can think of is Mirror's Edge. I would be upset if I couldn't use a controller, because sometimes you need joysticks.

Is that even a good example? Mirror's Edge without the speed and precision of the mouse sounds awful for speed runs, and nothing is lost with the lack of an analog stick for movement (since you're always running).

If you haven't tried before, I highly recommend doing time trials with KB+M. It's a completely different game.

I can think of two good reasons:

1. cultural expecations. consoles have controller gizmos. people expect it. its a different experience than just running an HDMI cable from your PC to a TV and calling it a day. Its a console. It lives next to your TV all the time. Its supposed to have a controller, because Nintendo's NES had one back in 1985. Cultural expectations and traditions are a powerful force.

2. there are many games that are actually superior to play with a controller than with a mouse and keyboard. Platformer games come to mind. Thats a major genre of consoles and always has been, and alot of indie game companies are exploring the genre again on the steam platform. At the moment I have to use an XBox controller plugged in to my PC to play. If Valve offered their own controller I'd gladly use it instead (assuming its good).

I don't doubt that this controller design likely won't cut it for precision FPS play. On the flipside, however, having a giant keyboard, plus a mousemat taking up space (and to work well, a mouse needs a significant amount of space) and flopping around when people sit up and down on the couch may work for hardcore gamers, but it's likely a non-starter for anyone else. Even if you integrated the mouse so it could be on your lap, it would still be a large ugly thing that's likely to fall down and is hard to use in many of the relaxed positions people are used to gaming in.

Fair enough.

I suppose my "complaint" is that they could do a better job of bridging the gap, but perhaps I am wrong. You do make a good point that the mouse+kb may be too cumbersome for some (most?) consoler switchers.

I do wish that I could see what sort of solution Valve could come up with if forced to keep the primary mouse+kb, though. Some sort of streamlined solution which you partly imagine in your post.

A few friends and I once had imagined a keyboard with an attached mousepad and a mouse that was magnetically (or otherwise) attached to the pad, that prevented from falling off, so that you could rest it on your lap while sitting on the couch.

I always wondered if something like that would be possible.. So you'd have all your precision mouse movement without the akward balancing of loose things while sitting on the couch, or getting up and sitting down.

diamagnetic levitation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNRDvDIqD1M

hoverfield: http://www.correlatedmagnetics.com/products/hoverfield-non-c...

This was the planned input peripheral for the ill-fated "Phantom" gaming console.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/12/phantom-keyboar/

Aaaand looks like the keyboard actually made it to market, there's even one on ebay. I had no idea.

But most console players dont want to use their KB + mouse in the living room, it just doesnt feel right. I know i wouldnt, and i love playing PC games with keyboard and mouse..but if im playing a serious FPS that needs decent KB+ mouse controls i do that on my desk, on the couch i would just be crippled. Anyway this isnt really their market, they want to make PC games playable in the living room for the masses, which would be a huge achievement if this works.

You can have a laid back, more clutter-free experience with a controller in front of a TV - and the TV experience is meant to be laid back, anyway.

I mostly agree with you but to play the devil's advocate... if it is a game I love, I am usually at the edge of my seat (probably a bad idea ergonomically)

"No one has ever been able to match the precision and control of mouse+kb"

Someone did some tests a while back with a gamepad-trackball (trackball replacing the right thumbstick). They found that pro PC FPS gamers did just as well with it as with mouse+keyboard, after a short adjustment period.

Here's some quotes from the most recent attempt (out of three that I know of) to crowdfund one of those (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/485185897/revolve-goes-w...):

"...I attained a level of accuracy I had never experienced without a mouse and keyboard combination." - Gerry Block, IGN

"You will spend less time fighting your controls and more time fighting bad guys." - Grant Collier, Co-Founder of Infinity Ward and Co-Creator of Call of Duty

Of course it failed anyway, because gamers all went "LOOKS DUMB LOL" and refused to read further. I was really hoping that Valve's controller would be a trackballpad; if it actually made it to market, I'm confident that ongoing positive reviews would lead to popular adoption.

When you make bold statements you generally have to back it up with some evidence. I find it really hard to believe that anyone has the level off accuracy and speed that you get from a good keyboard/mouse combo.

It is a reason that console games come with built in auto aim on all FPS shooters...

I'm looking for the original study I saw. I haven't found it yet, but here's one that found that trackballs were superior to thumbsticks, even for users familiar with gamepads and not trackballs (hardly a revelation, certainly, but you'd be surprised how many people contest it): http://www.yorku.ca/mack/FuturePlay1.html

But come now, my original statement was hardly all that bold. Obviously the reason that gamepad aiming sucks is just that thumbstick aiming sucks. Replace the thumbstick, solve the problem. (And as a bonus, get analog movement as well as analog aiming--the traditional WASD doesn't allow for speed gradations.) I used to game exclusively with a trackball and never had any troubles. The only reason I stopped is that nobody makes trackballs for left-handers anymore that are any damn good. And if you don't believe me, I just gave you a couple of quotes from gaming professionals.

There is a large difference between CoD and CS. That's what you would have to convince me with... that or SC.

I'm pretty sure CoD and CS both involve aiming a crosshairs. That's the only thing that's really relevant to this discussion.

As for Starcraft, you're right, it wouldn't work; not because of the pointing device, but because a gamepad doesn't have enough buttons to manage all the hotkeys. In my original post, I called out FPSes specifically for that reason.

*"You use a solid mousemat, place that on the couch beside you. The keyboard goes in your lap. Kick your feet up and game away. It works great."

I've played console games with three other people scrunched up on a love seat; lying on the couch; sitting crosslegged on the floor; and sprawled out in a beanbag chair. Sometimes I get tired of having my hands in my lap, so I stretch them out behind my head. If I want to relocate, I can keep playing as I walk across the room, or pause and carry the controller in one hand and my drink in the other.

That's the sort of flexibility I want in a "couch controller," not just sitting still on the couch by myself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What do you mean by having an extra plane. The mouse already covers a 2d surface, how would an extra plane help you with that?

The analog trackpad does have an advantage over a keyboard but not over a mouse, i think.

In a typical keyboard+mouse FPS game, for example, you get 2D analog "look" controls with the mouse, but much more limited 2D "move" controls with the keyboard.

With two analog sticks/trackpads/mice/etc. you can get the same range of control over both. That's what the two "planes" give you.

To expand on this:

In most FPSes your move commands are binary, "W" or nothing. You can alter them a bit with combinations, Shift-W to sprint or perhaps Ctrl-W to crawl but you're still limited to a handful of preset speeds.

I could easily imagine being able to use a continuous axis to encapsulate walk/jog/sprint being quite a bit more intuitive and precise.

Splinter Cell did this to great effect, with the scroll wheel used to smoothly progress between creeping/walking/jogging/sprinting.

What about circle strafing a moving target while jumping/ducking and shooting? For me, that takes 3 simultaneous inputs on my left hand and 3 on my right hand. On each hand, some of those inputs vary or alternate. I can't speak for "most FPS" but competitive FPS require this coordinated action.

Regarding your comment about DOTA2, i see how they have a stake in making this good for rts, but i am not sure how it will work. Me and a cousin hacked an old XBOX (not 360) controller and made it into a usb controller and i tried playing League Of Legends with it... hellishly tough man. I figured it would be more suited to a controller than other rts games because it involves a lot of button action, instead of just the point-and-click of rts games. so while the controller was pretty cool for casting spells, but mouse movement is a pain. because u have to click all over the screen pretty rapidly (MOBA games get pretty intense) and such rapid precision is very VERY hard to obtain from a controller.

Maybe its just all of us aren't used to doing those tasks with a controller as we are used to it by a mouse (btw long time halo veteran so am more comfortable on controllers for FPS games) but i think a learning curve would prevent high level players from switching to controllers becuase it would (albeit temporarily) really shunt their skills

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