By John Walker on January 8th, 2010 at 1:44 pm.
Are you ready to have the way you play PC games revolutionised? No? Well tough, because a man said it’s going to happen. News from Consumer Electronics Show suggests that there’s a push to convince us we need a six-axis/Wii remote/wavy throwy gun-style controller for the PC, and no less than Valve are providing the shouting. The attack is coming from three companies, peripheral manufacturer Razer, Sixense, a motion tracking tech company, and them there Valve lot, who appear to be suggesting it’s how we should be playing Left 4 Dead 2.
This device will, according to Shacknews, offer “…ultra-precise one-to-one motion sensing controllers that use electromagnetic fields to track precise movements along all six axes.” Cor. It is to apparently get around the problems of other similar controllers that use LEDs, gyros, accelerometers and cameras, which Sixense claims do not perform well enough, by using magnets. Or “magnetic motion tracking” to be precise. This, they say, provides “precise and continuous position and orientation information for uninterrupted gameplay.”
This new, currently only prototyped gadget is yet to be named, but Sixense’s chairman Avi Arad explains that it will “truly revolutionize how games are played on the PC.” And Valve seem to be backing this claim. Chet Faliszek, in full-on marketing man press release mode, made the following confident statement:
“With this controller, Razer and Sixense have created the most immersive way to play our games. For us and for our customers, this release represents motion-enabled gaming that’s more integrated and visceral than any platform has so far achieved.”
The boasts for the tech are impressive. There press release says this:
“Marking the next step in user interface technologies for gaming on the PC, Razer and Sixense scientists and engineers along with select PC OEM partners have been working on ultra-precise one-to-one motion sensing controllers that use electromagnetic fields to track precise movements along all six axes for use in current and future generation PC games. The absolute controller position is tracked to within a mere millimeter for positioning and to a degree for orientation.”
I find myself a little sceptical about it. Short of rolling balls around mazes, I’ve never felt much of a need for Wii-type controls on my PC. I’ve always found pressing W a lot less mental effort than having to tip a physical object forward in order to move. I’m assuming this is mostly about offering us a sophisticated light gun, but again, doesn’t the mouse do a more accurate job? But I’m a short-sighted buffoon, and it’s up to you to tell me why I should be excited and interested in having motion sensing control in my computer games. Educate me.
If you happen to be passing Las Vegas this week, you can see the prototype being demonstrated by Valve at CES in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Here’s the awesome John Carmack discussing Sixense, for even more bloody context.
PS. I was trying to work out why Arad’s name rang a bell. Then I remembered he was in charge of Marvel back in 2005, when they were trying to sue NCSoft for City Of Heroes letting you so egregiously violate Marvel’s copyright with pretend Lycra costumes. It struck me as funny then to make him as a character in the game, since it turned out his name wasn’t taken. It still strikes me as quite funny now. As far as I know he’s still somewhere in Paragon City.
08/01/2010 at 13:48 LewieP says:
I really do enjoy listening to Carmack speak.
08/01/2010 at 18:45 Carra says:
He’s showing a lot of enthusiasm. It’s infectious.
08/01/2010 at 19:59 msarge says:
I think he has an annoying voice.
09/01/2010 at 20:02 Bhazor says:
He still looks about 15.
Screw Angelina Jolie, this guy needs more coverage in Cosmopolitan.
08/01/2010 at 13:51 Jockie says:
I’ve never been the kind to part with cash for a fancy luxury periphal (I only recently bought a 360 controller for my pc after much agonising). I doubt this gizmo will change my ways, and I sincerely doubt Valve or anyone else will be daft enough to make it a requirement to play their games.
08/01/2010 at 13:56 CMaster says:
I’ve actually found it a rather underwhelming way of playing FPSes, as the only way to turn is to aim at the edge of your screen and rotate at a set rate. For sword fighting games it only really works with rather abstract game modes, due to the lack of feedback, even with the motionplus. Great fun for light-gun games (Dead Space Extraction is a lot of fun) and silly perform action things (Warioware Smooth Moves is great party fun, at least when it recognises the actions properly).
Will this stuff be great on the PC? We’ll have to wait and see.
That said, imagine this stuff combined with TrackIR and the NIA for a pretty complete and weird-text-based-input-device free gaming.
08/01/2010 at 14:14 Meat Circus says:
Have you played Metroid Prime on the Wii?
The target lock/free aim control system is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. The first time I played it, it felt so right.
08/01/2010 at 14:29 CMaster says:
@TotalBiscuit
Not yet – my housemate bought the third one for the wii a couple of months back. I don’t play the Wii very much on my own though, so haven’t tried it yet.
The thing he pointed out though was that a lot of the while you don’t have full control over where you look and the levels are mostly set up so enemies are normally in front of you, to avoid the tediousness that is turning with the Wii.
08/01/2010 at 14:30 CMaster says:
@myself
Erm, @MeatCircus that was meant to be. @Totalbiscuit was a reply in a DIFFERENT thread.
Sorry to all.
09/01/2010 at 00:27 invisiblejesus says:
@Cmaster
Your roomate’s just plain wrong. You have total control over where you look in Metroid Prime, and it’s difficult for me to imagine how one would find turning to be tedious. Imprecise compared to a mouse, sure, though it’s really not nearly as bad as some make it out to be. But it doesn’t even make any sense to me to call it tedious. And I can’t imagine how anyone would get the idea that you can’t control where you look. Just simply incorrect.
08/01/2010 at 13:57 Wolfox says:
Nice ALT text, by the way. ;-)
“I can shoot dead people” :-D
08/01/2010 at 14:07 John Walker says:
All the time.
08/01/2010 at 15:13 CMaster says:
Could you make it title text so us FF (and Chrome) users can see it on mouseover?
08/01/2010 at 17:27 D says:
And for Opera! It’s quite a heated topic within browser implementation but Alt text is IMO really just for blind accessibility, so use it to actually describe the images if you must use it. For everything else including snippy comments, use the title tag.
08/01/2010 at 17:34 Wisq says:
Re: title versus alt text, this discussion has been had before.
The conclusion at the time was, it’s WordPress’ fault for offering an easy way to do alt text and no easy (non-manual) way to do title text, if it isn’t easy to do the alt text then they’re probably not going to do it at all, and so the only way you’re going to see the alt text in FF is to use the plugin that lets you see alt text if there’s no title text.
(Chrome and Opera never came up in that conversation. Maybe they have something similar.)
Sucks that we have to make compliant browsers non-compliant to satisfy some blogging software’s incorrect choice of HTML attributes, but there you go. Of course, as a sysadmin who hates PHP and MySQL (and has been required to set up the occasional WordPress blog anyway), I’m already quite used to blaming WordPress for all the world’s evils, so no change there.
08/01/2010 at 17:48 D says:
Yeah it’s been done before and I’m sure they have good reason. They should just be aware that the alt texts entered are lost on the most of the readership. I’m afraid atleast Opera doesn’t have such a plugin fix. But what bothers me can be summed up in one word: s/alt/title/ ***Warning: Performing this regex on a site-wide basis is not being recommended by this person.***
08/01/2010 at 21:40 Zerrick says:
Popup ALT Attribute.
This is the add-on Wisq is referring to.
I use it myself, the only reason to use it the alt-texts here on RPS. :)
08/01/2010 at 14:05 goodgimp says:
Umm, no.
Unless Valve tells me to Throw My Hands in the Air / And Wave ‘em Like Ya Just Don’t Care. Then how can one say no?
08/01/2010 at 14:09 Ovno says:
Motion sensors don’t work for anything but casual games and even then theres so many games on the wii where you have to shake something in a buggy fashion instead of just pressing a button, it’s not worth it, it’s not fun and no one wants it anyway.
And besides if us pc lot moved with the times we’d all be on the consoles by now surely….
08/01/2010 at 14:18 Rich says:
My Mrs got Sonic and the Secret Rings with her Wii. I played it for about five minutes then gave up. OK, tilt to steer works all right, but flicking it forward to jump? Sluggish and unreliable I call it.
08/01/2010 at 14:41 bill says:
@Rich: Problem with secret rings was that they hobbled the controls at the beginning. If you play far enough you can upgrade the controls and moves and it actually plays really well. (except going backwards). Unfortunately most people don’t get that far. Dumb dumb move by the developers.
08/01/2010 at 15:02 Meat Circus says:
Play Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii, however, and you can experience a motion control system done oh-so-right.
As some have mentioned upthread, Metroid Prime Wii just feels so… tactile now.
08/01/2010 at 17:25 Ovno says:
Might have to have a go at metroid on the wii then if it’s that good :)
08/01/2010 at 17:31 invisiblejesus says:
The Metroid Prime trilogy is fantastic, but it should be noted that it only uses the Wiimote’s laser pointer. It doesn’t use any actual motion control. Still, I don’t share the general cynicism about this, implemented well it could be very cool. Implemented poorly… well, bad games are bad games. It’s tough for me to believe that a motion control setup is going to magically turn what would otherwise have been good and ruin it. I’ve played some Wii games with bad motion controls, and what people don’t often talk about is that nearly all of them would have been shit games even with good controls.
08/01/2010 at 17:32 captain fitz says:
We’ve only had one real generation of the technology and you’re decrying it forever? It’s already making some pretty fun games if the wii’s marketshare is any indication. Once the technology is more refined I’m sure it will easily create some FPS games that make us wonder how we ever did it with a mouse.
08/01/2010 at 14:11 Meat Circus says:
PC’s answer to Project Natal?
I’d assume this was a no-go, but if Valve’s behind it, it might just crazy enough to work
08/01/2010 at 14:49 RogB says:
more like pc’s answer to sony’s answer to the wii. Natal is microsofts answer to sony’s eyetoy. (phew!)
08/01/2010 at 15:03 Meat Circus says:
The ambition behind Natal goes beyond it just being “an eyetoy clone”. They reckon they can deliver full tracking of all the body parts of four people in 3D in realtime.
If they can pull it off, together with a shiny gestural interface, it could be astounding.
08/01/2010 at 19:15 Gotem says:
For it to really work they will also need a boycott group.
08/01/2010 at 14:12 Tei says:
The controllers really limit what a videogame can do, so a new controler can unlock freedom to make some crazy things.
The ultimate interface for the PC mob community is the pitch and fork, anyway :-)
08/01/2010 at 14:12 AndrewC says:
True motion recognition controllers on an open platform? With an Internet? Oh my.
08/01/2010 at 14:18 Meat Circus says:
TBH, I expect Natal will be an open platform as well, in as much as there’ll be Windows drivers and an XNA api for probing its dirty bottom.
08/01/2010 at 14:21 AndrewC says:
Natal’s the one that gives you interaction in a 3d space without a controller? So you can touch anything?
08/01/2010 at 15:07 Meat Circus says:
Well, that’s the hype anyway. We shall see.
08/01/2010 at 15:15 AndrewC says:
I’ve got all the fingers of my left hand crossed.
08/01/2010 at 15:18 Lack_26 says:
I’m hoping that it’ll be open platform, there is a bit in NS about how it supposedly works.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.800-microsofts-bodysensing-buttonbusting-controller.html
08/01/2010 at 14:17 CraigL says:
I made my opinions on motion control quite clear a while ago. They have not changed.
08/01/2010 at 14:20 Dominic White says:
PC gamers are far, far too set in their ways. ‘Fun’ doesn’t factor into controls these days – it’s the highest DPI mouse possible, and the fastest keyboard in the west.
But y’know what? I really, really like the Metroid Prime trilogy on the Wii. Yeah, I’m less accurate than if I were playing with mouse/keyboard, but I’m having fun, and the shooting feels a lot more tactile and convincing.
08/01/2010 at 14:42 bill says:
what he said.
08/01/2010 at 21:52 Wulf says:
@Dominic White
I’m of the opinion that “fun” can’t be quantified by such simple reasoning, that “fun” is an incredibly subjective criteria based on how any individual reacts to different stimuli.
Fun can be reading a book, fun can be watching or playing football, fun can be working out, fun can be making out, fun can be work, fun can be escapism, fun can be owning people, and fun can be so many things because fun isn’t something we really understand. Fun is entirely dependent on the individual to decide. If something is fun for you, then you go guy, because you don’t need anyone to tell you what is or isn’t fun, and neither do we.
From my own personal perspective, fun isn’t reliant on a controller, a game isn’t made more or less fun by a waggly controller or a keyboard & mouse. Again, I perceive fun in a game as how much I can immerse myself in it, and the quality of that escapism, it comes from interesting environments, unexpected elements, and clever storytelling, it comes from atmosphere, and art, and culture, and lore, and exploration. The tools I use to explore don’t really matter to me.
Therefore, fun for me wouldn’t have anything to do with an immersion controller, and it’s more than a little presumptuous (to put it politely) to assume that anyone who isn’t into motion controllers is set in their ways. I’ve put this to you before in other arguments, I’ll put it to you again: Everyone is different, not everyone is you, and you are as valid as everyone else.
You shouldn’t have to feel defensive about it, you’re as valid as everyone else. Your sense of fun is as valid as mine or that of any other person, in as equal a way as possible.
Really, it all comes down to the basic understanding that everyone has fun in a different way, and that doesn’t make them any better or worse than anyone else.
08/01/2010 at 21:59 Wulf says:
@My Post
s/immersion controller/motion controller/
Almost missed that.
But yes, fun is wot fun is. Fun can be waggling a motion controller, if it is, have fun! That’s not fun to me, but neither is football, and that’s just how the human mind works, every one is different, no one should be afraid to be who they are and express that. Fun is part of that. Do what you want to do.
08/01/2010 at 14:30 mrmud says:
Im all for head tracking in games, but my TrackIR 5 does that quite well already.
08/01/2010 at 14:51 RogB says:
yup. looking around a cockpit = ace. flailing limbs = not ace.
08/01/2010 at 14:31 Theory says:
A mouse is 2D. These are 3D. Worth having, I think.
08/01/2010 at 17:50 captain fitz says:
THIS is more important than most people realize. Coupled with 3D displays–so that we actually have some depth perception–a third axis of control is where I can see this technology really benefiting us.
08/01/2010 at 14:33 rocketman71 says:
They don’t make the Carmacks like they used to time ago.
08/01/2010 at 14:36 Some Guy says:
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.
Simply looking at the software catalogue for the wii will give good enough reasons. The ratio of awesome:tripe is extraordinarily low
08/01/2010 at 14:46 Psychopomp says:
And that has what, exactly, to do with the control scheme? It’s the most popular console out there, there’s going to be a load of shovelware no matter what the controller is.
08/01/2010 at 15:39 Some Guy says:
Compared even to the PS2, it’s dire, though. Almost like it’s pretty damn hard to make a decent game with the controls provided.
FPSs just don’t work.
Anything which requires any degree of precision doesn’t work. (Yes, this is including Wii Motion Plus. Recalibration consistently required for that)
Getting a comfortable position to play in is much more tricky.
I have a wii. I have yet to be convinced wii controls are anything other than a retrograde step.
08/01/2010 at 14:46 toni says:
omg, ANOTHER “next gen” controller Valve endorses. wasn’t there another input device that supposedly will “take off” and “revolutionize”. Well, I’m the guy that always goes into the settings menue to turn off vibration, you won’t get any money for that from me. I wanna sit or hang back on the couch, not wave around or jump around infront of the TV. I do it for relaxation, I play videogames because it is NOT physical work/sport, at least to a very small degree. such input devices will always be for a “special” audience imo, not the FPS masses.
08/01/2010 at 14:47 IM19208 says:
The Motion Tracking Controller For PC is the wiimote.
08/01/2010 at 14:50 bill says:
I do think that motion controls help immersion in a lot of ways… but of course they can also totally break it if used in stupid ways.
to be honest, the main purpose of most game tech is to create immersion. (depending on the game type – chess games excluded.). Good graphics, great sound, dramatic music, great graphic design, good voice acting, nice story, shaders and polygons – all these aren’t the be-all-and-end-all of a game… they are there to get us involved in the game. in many ways motion controllers CAN do that better than pressing a key… though possibly not as efficiently. Sometimes that lack of efficiency can break immersion. Paradox.
While I’d probably win more fights if I just pressed a button to release my Kamehameha, it’s much more fun to do the action while shouting Kamehamehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! ;-)
08/01/2010 at 14:50 mbp says:
Am I the only one who hates the Wii controller? Its fine for a few minutes of virtual tennis but there is no way I would put in a solid multi-hour gaming session with it. I’m a gamer for heaven’s sakes – I don’t have the muscles to wave that thing about for that long.
08/01/2010 at 15:10 Meat Circus says:
You don’t have to “wave it around” to play most games. Typically it’s held at much the same height as any other game controller.
08/01/2010 at 15:29 Larington says:
The last time I tried playing the Lost Winds: Winter of Melodias I gave up after getting armstrain, I honestly don’t think the wiimote is a good option for long bouts of sustained action. The wiisports games often give you lots of short breaks between actions, like say with the tennis game.
I’m sure it’s quite realistic that after holding up a gun for long enough your arm will start to feel really tired, but is it fun?
08/01/2010 at 15:31 Dominic White says:
Yeah. A lot of people seem to think that you use the Wii controller by jumping out of your seat and flapping your arms around like you’re having a seizure.
In reality, you seldom make any gesture larger than you would with a mouse. For most games it just uses pointer-based controls anyway, which is, effectively, a 3D mouse. You’ve got standard X and Y movement, it has limited Z-axis detection so that you can push and pull things into/out of the screen, and it does twist as well so that you can rotate stuff.
Accelerometer controls often come in as secondary, contextual stuf.
@Larington – You don’t have to hold your arm up the entire time. Just rest your arm on your leg or chair-arm or something. All you need to move is your wrist, and if you’re so terribly enfeebled that small wrist movements tire you out, that’s a matter for healthcare professionals, not interface designers.
08/01/2010 at 15:07 Monchberter says:
Haven’t Valve also being going crazy about the Novint Falcon?
http://home.novint.com/products/novint_falcon.php
The ‘other’ future of tactile gaming.
08/01/2010 at 18:44 Bhazor says:
I actually quite like the Novint Falcon.
Partly because it’s a much more focused in its goals (being a gun with tactile feedback) and executes this with decent finesse rather than trying to be a tennis racket, that is also a gun, that is also a steering wheel, that is also a baseball bat that is also the paint brush of the gods.
But mainly because it looks like a robot’s sex toy.
Edit: of course I then look on the site and see it’s now host to Pii sports guff. Still beats wii for having some tactile feedback though.
08/01/2010 at 15:11 Dominic White says:
This thread is further reinforcing my belief that PC gamers don’t deserve the PC. You have an immensely powerful, modular, versatile-beyond-belief system that can do pretty much anything you throw at it, and the moment someone suggests a new control method everyone digs their heels in and writes it off before they’ve even given it a look.
Ridiculous, really. You give people near-infinite freedom, and what do they do with it? Recycle the same concepts year upon year with marginally better graphics.
08/01/2010 at 15:32 Larington says:
A lot of that stubborness seems to come from the belief that theres little wrong with the mouse/keyboard method of interacting with games. It took me a very long time before I even considered buying a gamepad for the PC, because aside from specialised cases (Racing games) I’ve never felt the need to buy one.
But thats the purpose of marketing for stuff like this, it’s to make us understand that something is worth getting.
08/01/2010 at 15:38 Psychopomp says:
I just have to wander where these people were for, say, X-Wing.
08/01/2010 at 17:51 MrMud says:
TIE-Fighter killed mice…
08/01/2010 at 21:32 Dominic White says:
And in revenge, Mice killed TIE-Fighter, and most of the space sim genre along with it. PC gamers forgot about the hundreds of different peripherals available for the system, and fell into a long, incredibly dull and uneventful love affair with mouse and keyboard. Then they got married and settled down and had a millon mouse/keyboard kids.
Then console ports start happening again, and people forget that there’s more control methods than M&KB, and start marking games down for not being built around gods own control layout. If you can’t click on a dudes head to kill him, it’s not a proper PC game, innit?
08/01/2010 at 15:19 Pidesco says:
Whenever I see motion tracking technology, I see a bright future for gaming. But not yet.
08/01/2010 at 17:53 captain fitz says:
Exactly. Hopefully it can gestate on the consoles and be brought to PC once it is fully realized.
08/01/2010 at 15:22 chesh says:
I was wondering if that was the same Avi Arad.
08/01/2010 at 15:36 SAeN says:
I think this is the first time Carmack has said something I can understand lol
08/01/2010 at 15:52 Utharda says:
Do not want.
08/01/2010 at 15:56 Drexer says:
Here’s the thing that interests me:
If they release this, with proper developer backup, and a way to allow indie and all developers to use this as a control scheme, be it an SDK or a USB-mouse/keyboard-like configurable interface, then we might just get a very good revolution of gaming going. The biggest problem with the previous motion controls were that in the end they just happened to be quite closed, if we get such an object which pretty much everyone can use in their games, we might get very good innovations from around the world, ranging perhaps from a proper lightsaber game, to mayhaps(and this is a huge dream of mine) Oblivion with motion control?
In the end, if you give the tools to the fans, we might just get something amazing.
08/01/2010 at 17:43 D says:
I am all for this idea you have of a standardized 1:1 movement motion tracking open platform controller. Samurai sword fighting game involving the actual tactical and strategic decisions you’d have to make in such a one-hit-kill engagement, is mine.
08/01/2010 at 15:57 Snuffy (the Evil) says:
With a Bluetooth adaptor, a Wiimote and some software, you can use your Wii remote as a controller. Cutting-edge on a budget!
08/01/2010 at 15:58 rei says:
I was prepared to scoff at this, but the tech sounds worlds better than Wii MotionPlus/Sixaxis/Natal/whatever. Also, Valve has absolutely no reason to jump onto any bandwagons that they don’t genuinely believe in, and they’re not fools.
I’ve never managed to get excited about this whole motion tracking thing, but genuine 1:1 simulation could be pretty nice, even beyond the obvious kendo/fencing/boxing stuff.
08/01/2010 at 16:05 wat says:
1. Offer head attachment
2. Head tracking for everyone, hooray.
3. Everyone is annoyed by uncomfortable headwear
08/01/2010 at 17:39 D says:
Head tracking exists already and is no more uncomfortable than wearing your favorite cap.
08/01/2010 at 16:12 Richard Beer says:
This barely sounds like a game controller (at least for today’s games). From what Carmack says it’s an entirely new and accurate way to interact with an environment. You could sculpt in 3D, pick up objects in front of you, create architectural constructs etc. Gaming is just the tip of this iceberg.
08/01/2010 at 16:12 Jocho says:
The only practical difficulty I can see is how I’m supposed to play if I’m not using it. The Wiimote needs to be aimed at all times (Love Metroid Prime 3′s controls, btw), so the aiming can become really strange at times (say, after a loading screen or picking up/putting down the controller), but if they’ve solved that, it might be the mouse of the third direction.
And I have real difficulties believing its supposed to complement the key board. You’ll still have to type on the key board, right? Not to mention hot-keys, WASD movement (oh how I’d wish an analog stick for movement) and Cntr+alt+del. ;)
08/01/2010 at 16:39 Jocho says:
According to this video I found, I was wrong: It may intend to replace the keyboard for gaming, too. It seems to have an analog stick, too. But it doesn’t have anywhere near as broad an interface (read: not as many buttons) as a keyboard…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VBMEN5Bvpg
09/01/2010 at 06:07 Psychopomp says:
And just how many PC games that you would even consider using it for, would require more than four or five buttons?
09/01/2010 at 12:11 Jocho says:
What I had in the time of writing was MMOs generally, as they use hot keys for a bunch of spells and windows, but thinking about it there’s also RTSes where hot keys are used for a lot of commands such as grouping, selecting groups, choose commands for said groups. These are also the genres that have had most difficulty being done well on consoles, and I think that’s co-related.
And, unless the game supports VoIP, communication is often through typing, which requires a lot of the key board. That argument sort of fails these days, however, as VoIP-services (whether it’s voice-chat on MSN, Skype or Ventrilo) is fairly well-spread.
08/01/2010 at 16:18 Sinnerman says:
It sounds like something that could help a lot doing things like creating mods for 3d games but I’m not really that interested in light sabre games. Actually, a full 3d Dungeon Keeper/Evil Genius game would be good. Also, imagine something like Black & White were the god’s hand control was less awkward. It’s odd that FPS companies are the ones who are getting excited about it but I guess they are the ones people go to for quotes about new PC hardware.
08/01/2010 at 16:44 Calabi says:
It could take off as long as the really think about it and really make it better than the entrenched alternatives, and it works with normal windows browsing.
Surely something like this is the future init. We’ve got have something like this eventually, the sooner the better so we cant start learning how to use it and the developers to take advantage of it.
It wont ruin pc development, because it doesnt have an idiotic overarching dicator like Nintendo(they must be forcing the other devs to make rubbish games).
08/01/2010 at 16:47 Jayt says:
Think I gagged a little bit reading the Valve quote
08/01/2010 at 16:52 Vinraith says:
Because what the PC needs is a horribly inaccurate control peripheral, to continue to remove all the advantages it has over consoles. Yahtzee actually put it best, without any kind of tactile feedback this kind of thing quite simply can’t work well.
08/01/2010 at 17:43 Lilliput King says:
I agree. On the other hand, I wouldn’t say M+K are God’s Own User Input Device. In some ways, they’re seriously deficient. I’m looking forward to this gizmo’s release just to see how successful it is. This may not be the one that catches on, but it’s progress, eventually culminating in a interface revolution that’ll tear down our scepticism.
I’m imagining some kind of cross between a wiimote and a novint falcon.
08/01/2010 at 18:34 Bhazor says:
Thats pretty much my issue with the whole Natal… thing. People don’t seem to realize how heavy an arm is when you’re holding it straight out with nothing to lean on (such as the driving demos we were shown). The other point is that unless you strap the screen to your forehead like a donkey’s carrot you can’t have a game that involves say walking or turning without needing additional controllers.
If developers are so determined in immersion why can’t we just have better written games?
08/01/2010 at 17:02 BigJonno says:
I do think there is a lot of potential in motion control for more “serious” or “hardcore” games, but I think we’re going about it completely the wrong way. Rather than shoehorning waggle into traditional game genres, how about looking at things like paintball, airsoft and live-action role-playing games for inspiration?
08/01/2010 at 17:15 Ian says:
I love how Metroid Prime 3 controls for the Wii. Probably the best controls of a console FPS (The Conduit could have taken it if the actual game wasn’t so, well, shit) but I still prefer the ol’ mouse ‘n’ keyboard.
08/01/2010 at 17:17 cjlr says:
A good mouse is extremely precise and extremely responsive. When some other control scheme approaches it for accuracy and simplicity, let me know.
1 to 1 motion tracking my ass. I’ll believe that when I see it. Remember how the Wii was hyped, everyone? Using the wiimote light-gun style (ie Metroid Prime) is fun, or in the handful of other titles where that’s implemented well. You need it to be almost a rail shooter, though, because turning around is still a huge chore. Really, that’s where it falls apart – motion detection is great for doing interaction, but it’s absolute shit for controlling movement.
As for the problems with the interaction modeling itself, a lot of it is the software – it’s pretty damn hard to code in, let’s say, a sword-fighting engine that can generate a dynamic response to every actual controller movement. Which brings up another thing: you need multiple sensor points to track motion properly. The wiimote’s this little rectangle, yeah? But with only one position sensor it can’t take into account angular motion. It tries with the infrared, but… Yeah. We all know how well that works.
For all the people using the word tactile: I do not think it means what you think it means. It does not mean motion. It means touch. A keyboard is abstract enough that it’s not noticeable. Hit a button, observe an action. When you actually act out performing the action, it becomes more immersion breaking, because there’s no feedback from the action.
08/01/2010 at 17:23 Walter says:
I sit under 2 feet from my screen there is no space to wave crap at it.
08/01/2010 at 17:43 Donkeydeathtasticelastic says:
I think motion sensing is pretty gimmicky.
And nowadays, joysticks don’t work for FPSes because they’re too complex.
But damned if I’m gonna be using a mouse for something like XvT. I just wish there were more games of that type. You know, space flyan, laser shootan, physics ignoran.
08/01/2010 at 17:54 D says:
An added bonus of this is that we’ll get to see the long term effects of immersing a sizable population of people in a strong electromagnetic field. I’m looking forward to the results of this science experiment.
08/01/2010 at 18:01 cjlr says:
@D
Are you kidding? Compared to the background radiation all of our shit already produces (all the more so, now that wireless is god) the extra EM from a dinky little controller like this will have all the impact of a hamster fart in a crowded gymnasium.
08/01/2010 at 17:56 Grind Axis says:
Dear Valve and John Carmack,
No thank you.
Love,
Grind Axis
08/01/2010 at 18:08 Stupoider says:
Needs more buttons!
08/01/2010 at 18:11 Jimbo says:
Isn’t waving a magnet / magnetic field around near your PC generally considered a pretty bad idea?
Anyways, not very interested in a light gun, but if you tell me that one controls a sword and the other controls a shield, I will certainly listen to what you have to say.
08/01/2010 at 18:20 the wiseass says:
Only because you CAN do it, doesn’t mean you SHOULD do it. I’m not against motion capturing or 3d imaging, but please let the technology ripe before presenting it as the next best thin since buttered French toast.
Motion capturing as it is right now has 3 major flaws, that makes it inferior to any gamepad mouse or keyboard:
1. No force feedback.
Slicing and hitting with a sabre will never feel the same because you just slice through anything and everything without any resistance.
2. Sensitivity
After playing mario kart on the Wii for example you just wish to go back to a traditional gamepad. Most games are not suitable for wacky controls that behave in a random way. Make motion capturing too precise and even the slightest body movement may have undesirable results. So either the controls are imprecise are will require a greater amount of body control from the player.
3. The Way of least resistance
Why would I want to move my whole arm, when I can have the same effect by just moving my fingertip? It just makes no sense, motion capturing requires more “work” for the same effect while it should actually require less.
The solution?
Thought control! I think that really is the future of interfacing but alas, it is not sufficiently developed yet. But we are working on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FBCWmtLTCc
08/01/2010 at 18:24 Bhazor says:
Oh good.
Just when QTE starts to die down we change to the even more irritating obligatory waggle sections.
08/01/2010 at 18:51 Carra says:
The use of the Wii mote depends on the game. I tried out the World of Goo demo on the Wii. It felt sluggish and I had a hard time quickly selecting a few blobs. The PC version felt superior.
And then I tried out Madworld. You can chop enemies in by swinging your remote vertically or horizontally! It’s giving the game that extra boost as you’re physically cutting them down!
In the end, a motion tracker is a controller just like any other, it needs great games to support it. I suspect that this new items success will depend on the games it’s launched with. If they can get Valve to support it they’ll surely have a great start.
08/01/2010 at 18:56 l1ddl3monkey says:
Things I don’t want: One of these.
08/01/2010 at 19:34 Tom says:
But,
It’s the lightsaber!!!
and maybe also the end of the couch-potatoes…
08/01/2010 at 20:26 Kadayi says:
It was always inevitable that someone was going to develop a wand controller for the PC, given the potential for developers who make games for the other platforms being able to bring their products to the PC, esp with Natal around the corner. The problems I foresee for it though are the fact that as opposed to a console sat in your living room, your PC is generally either tied to a desk or it’s a laptop. As soon as you put yourself a couple of meters back from your screen for various wand waving exercises (ooh err missus), suddenly that crisp 1680 x 1050 resolution is working against you. Ok you could feed through your TV, but in which case why not instead just buy a console and save yourself the bother of cable swapping?
Secondly, consoles like the Wii & to a lesser extent the 360 are very much face to face social devices, where as with PCs by and large short of Lan Parties most people are playing socially online. So suddenly you’re in the realms of people having headsets (because everyone hates the guy using open speakers in Teamspeak) rather than speakers & that just complicates matters (more cables unless your minted).
Something like this is only going to work if it’s both all encompassing & hassle free & and I’m not convinced it’s going to be either initially.
08/01/2010 at 22:45 Aemony says:
1650×1080? Don’t you mean 1680×1050?
But still, you speak the truth. Not only mentioning the fact that I don’t think any gamers are willing to throw out even more money for an accessory which they only use in a couple of few games.
08/01/2010 at 20:56 Mike says:
As you say, I’m sure the tech is well-developed and accurate, it’s just – would we really want to use it? We don’t play Left4Dead wishing that we could melee the zombies by flailing, do we? I don’t know, maybe we do.
08/01/2010 at 21:48 Chemix says:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/ces-10-peregrine/60586
alternative
08/01/2010 at 22:44 Urthman says:
I was going to say something about giving motion sensing the 15+ years or so that the mouse + keyboard combination has had to mature.
But I realized that mouse and keyboard were every bit as perfectly suited for games 17 years ago like Doom and Dune 2 and Myst as they are for the FPS, RTS, & Point-n-click games of today.
08/01/2010 at 23:22 Vadermath says:
Bah! Called me old fashioned, but keyboard and mouse for life, dog![/blackgangmanaccent]
Seriously now, having such a controller would be…Wiiish. And how would we make complex hand moves (no pornography innuendo here folks, move along!) with this thing whilst sitting in a chair? Imagine. PC gamers. Playing games. While standing. It just brings a tear to the eye.
But hey, to each their own. I image there are people out there that would gladly play like this. So, as long as the PC games of the next few decades offer mouse and keyboard support (insert nerd-like giggle), I suppose an alternative wouldn’t hurt.
08/01/2010 at 23:30 Wooly says:
I for one welcome our Valveian overlords!
08/01/2010 at 23:35 y3k-bug says:
I don’t understand the appeal of this project.
Is there a casual gaming PC market that is clamoring for this? Certainly there is a casual market… but one that is looking to use a motion controller, while sitting at a desk? On a gaming system that features a screen that is more often than not too small to accurately see from the distances necessary to facilitate full range motion?
If this were being drummed up by a company like Popcap, I could at least see the idea behind it. But Valve? John Carmack?
What?
08/01/2010 at 23:37 Y3k-Bug says:
This seems even more weird in light of there already being a system to which they can make these games for, that has a massive install base and is extremely easy to develop for…
08/01/2010 at 23:48 Dominic White says:
This thread is so badly in need of a word-filter. Replace ‘waggle’ with something else, because it’s a horribly abused word and barely even factors into the discussion.
This whole thing is just horribly depressing. PC gamers have become elitist to the point of cutting off their nose to spite their face. Immediately rejecting new technologies because it reminds them of their supposedly inferior console cousins? Jesus wept…
PC gamers really don’t deserve the PC. It’s too good, and too flexible a platform to be held back by such a boring, curmudgeonly audience.
09/01/2010 at 00:03 Vinraith says:
It’s virtually trolling to claim that honestly disliking the overused tech-du-jour is in some way elitist or implies any kind of close-mindedness. I’m sorry Dominic, I wanted a Wii when I originally heard the idea, I thought it was brilliant. Then I actually played one, saw how horrifically unresponsive and imprecise the motion control was, and realized it was pretty much designed for children and drunk party-goers who would be amused rather than annoyed at being unable to do anything accurately.
If you want to talk about novel control schema for the PC, go right ahead. Let’s start with the Novint Falcon which, while impractical and undersupported at the moment, has a hell of a lot more long term potential than stick-waggling (exactly the right term, IMO, as the lack of controlled movement is clearly implied) control devices. Tactile feedback is a must, precise 1-to-1 control is a must, anything that doesn’t include these two elements is a losing proposition and good for nothing more than a brief bit of novelty.
09/01/2010 at 00:14 Bhazor says:
You give me a good Wii game and I’ll show you an above average PS2 game that requires a £10 plastic gonk to be playable.
The best Wii games (Mario Galaxy where it’s restricted to a shake, Metroid where it uses lock on rather than pointi ) are good in spite of their controller, not because of it. I for one don’t want all games machines to become end of pier simulators.
Though yes, PC gaming is big enough to handle whatever people throw at it. Just don’t expect me to praise it as a zeitgeist setting revolutionary world changing add on until it is a zeitgeist setting revolutionary world changing add on. Till then all I see is no less than 5 Wii games simulating crooked fair ground attractions which are outselling every PC game. But still, go ahead and call me Mr Cyril Cynical.
09/01/2010 at 00:14 Drexer says:
@Vinraith
Have you tried some gaming with the WiiMotionPlus? Or mayhaps even some old Metroid Prime? The first case pretty much ilustrates that you ca use the command with a huge degree of precision, while the second demonstrates the use of the mechanic in a proper game. This command allows acute precision, so it can be used for very good gameplay mechanics. As long as that’s what the developers build upon.
09/01/2010 at 00:27 Y3k-Bug says:
You just took an elitist stance to condemn an elitist stance.
That was epic.
09/01/2010 at 20:22 Vinraith says:
@Drexer
“Have you tried some gaming with the WiiMotionPlus?”
I haven’t, my Wii-owning friend doesn’t have one. I’ve been curious to see whether that would fix the problem, but I have my doubts.
09/01/2010 at 20:28 CMaster says:
@Vinrath – the motionplus means the wii can accurately tell which way it is pointing and even which way it is rotated all the while now. You can still easily top out the accelerometers in the remote itself, so full power in anything is easy to achieve, but then you don’t want to have to put massive effort in constantly to play a game. The motionplus does however need pretty frequent calibration, and it’s frankly shameful that Nintendo are selling an addon to make their console do what they always claimed it could.
The challenge now is just to get developers to make sensible use of motion control, not just adding annoying shake/jolt the remote sections. Also to realise that conventional games often won’t work – we need to come up with new gameplay ideas.
Still, nothing about the Wii really says that motion control on the PC is a bad idea. It does say that it won’t be replacing M+KB for a lot of things, but you could guess that anyway. It does say that lots of developers will fail at using the control system. Plenty fail at just making a good game, so we shouldn’t be suprised at that either.
That said, I am more excited about mind control (OCZ NIA). Motion controls of all types have some pretty awful limitations.
09/01/2010 at 00:22 invisiblejesus says:
@Bhazor
“Metroid where it uses lock on rather than pointi )”
That’s simply untrue; the option is available for the Wii Metroid games to use lockon, but it’s disabled by default and has to be enabled in the options if you want to use it. By default, the game uses the pointer control to aim, and even with lockon enabled you can use the pointer to aim by just not locking onto targets. Even if you had the old-style lockon enabled, it would be literally impossible to play a Wii Metroid game and not clearly see that it does use the pointer.
09/01/2010 at 03:22 bhlaab says:
This is going to be nice for Wii emulation and… not much else, really.
09/01/2010 at 03:23 bildo says:
jesus, everyone quit your bitching. I’m begining the to think hivemind is a bunch of old women. Nintendo fucks up motion control and everyone thinks this is going to be the same exact thing….why do you all think that? Did everyone call eachother up, light a cigarette, pop open a diet coke and discuss how Nintendo is the end all of motion control while watching their nails dry? How is it that the PC gamer world is so divided on their controller input? I’ve been PC gaming for well over 15 years now and I think I’m ready to foray into a brave new input world. It might be fun : )
09/01/2010 at 06:52 malkav11 says:
No, it’s true, just because Sony and Nintendo both fucked up motion control and the PC is designed to be used from a seated position a couple of feet from the monitor doesn’t -necessarily- mean that motion control as envisioned by Valve (or whoever) for PC might not be some epochal game changer that will make gaming 1000% better.
But….well, I don’t see it happening. For those reasons, and because I can’t think of a single instance where I have -ever- wanted to use motion control over mouse and keyboard. Not one. I don’t see any advantage to an actual gamer. It’s theoretically more intuitive to the previously non-gamer, hence the popularity of the Wii (although their implementation is, imho, less intuitive because it so rarely does what you want or expect it to do). But the main reason I support any motion control functionality at all on consoles is that the way the Wii does it, it makes a semi-passable substitute for a mouse in shooters. And that’s it. On a platform that already comes with a mouse…why bother?
The main argument I’ve heard is immersion. Well, frankly, screw immersion that comes at the cost of playability. And I’d much rather have the sort of immersion where my hyper-trained badass assassin is hyper-trained and badass and all I have to do is point him in the right direction and give some general hints as to what I expect (i.e., Assassin’s Creed), than the sort of immersion where I have to actually be able to jump and kick and do splits and throw things.
09/01/2010 at 10:09 Kadayi says:
No ones doubting it from a technical viewpoint that it can’t be made to work (and work well). The main issue is wide scale adoption by PC gamers Vs the expenditure to be up and running. This isn’t a case of buying the kit & your good to go, as with a console. The entire culture of PC gaming is built around close proximity to your monitor/machine.
09/01/2010 at 03:44 the wiseass says:
By the way, here is the thing in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ePLRaEMtB0
09/01/2010 at 05:25 Chemix says:
After watching the video, I have to say, to those complaining that this is useless; melee. I’ve been looking for something suitable for melee weapon control for years now on PC (my only system), and while I’m mildly jaded by Red Steel’s utter failure, even the rough version shown offers promise. Instead of a Katana, imagine a light saber, and imagine playing Jedi Outcast or Jedi Academy with one of these things.
Having said this, I think I’ll go the cheap route and download Johny Lee’s Wiimote control software and buy a 40 dollar wiimote, unless this is cheaper, which, I doubt
09/01/2010 at 05:58 Psychopomp says:
It would take some damn good force feedback to make that feel right, but yes, this.
09/01/2010 at 07:31 invisiblejesus says:
@Chemix
“Having said this, I think I’ll go the cheap route and download Johny Lee’s Wiimote control software and buy a 40 dollar wiimote, unless this is cheaper, which, I doubt”
A 40 dollar wiimote? What? What country’s dollars are you talking about? A brand new wiimote doesn’t cost close to that much in the US or Canada, never mind a used one.
Seriously, I’m trying to be reasonably positive here and not single people out to bust on them, but between all this talk about $40 wiimotes, not being able to control where you’re looking in Metroid Prime, and all the other nonsense about Wii controls and Wii games here, I gotta ask. Who here has, y’know, actually played a good quality game on the Wii? No, I don’t mean Family Shovelware Sports Cash-In Active Life Wii, I mean an actual good game. It seems to me that very few people on this thread, particularly those people who’re bellyaching about the Wii controls, have actually played a quality Wii game. And yes, I know, most WIi games are shovelware. But there are some excellent ones, on par with some of the great PC stuff. Did you play The Void? The Wii version of Okami called. It says “You’re welcome”.
Seriously, I’m not saying everyone has to like motion controls, and I’m not jumping on the “PC gamers don’t deserve a PC” bandwagon or any of that other bullshit. But could we all please just try to stop spreading dumb misinformation and actually deal with facts? That’d be refreshing.
09/01/2010 at 07:32 invisiblejesus says:
To be clear, most of that isn’t aimed at Chemix. I’m just really annoyed at the amount of bullshit being shoveled on this thread, overall.
09/01/2010 at 13:58 Bhazor says:
Yeah Okami was pretty good when I played it. Two years before the Wii port. As I said before most good Wii games avoid the whole waggle thing like Mario RPG and Galaxy.
Also what does The Void have to do with anything?
09/01/2010 at 08:01 bill says:
Well, I’ll be happy for any improvement over a mouse. I get muscle strain from moving the mouse a quarter of an inch. It’s such hard work.
09/01/2010 at 08:03 bill says:
reply fail, but can’t be assed to fix it because of the stupid CAPTCHA, which never recognises even if i do type the right code, in the box that isn’t acutally a box.
I think I need some form of newfangled controller just to be able to comment these days….
09/01/2010 at 08:03 Vadermath says:
Hmrph. While playing Jedi Knight with this thing (if it were polished enough for such a thing) would be nice, it’d probably require me to do so standing up. One of the largest appeals of the PC is the comfort I feel in my awesome chair (considerably more than, say, on my couch). And, if that were so, I’d need to elevate my monitor, or probably hang it on the wall, in order to look at it evenly (and not from above). All of this would be turning the PC into something it isn’t.
09/01/2010 at 08:37 feighnt says:
ooh, i’m nervous about this idea. if they dont eliminate the option of proper mouse/keyboard controls, i wont mind, but, yeah, i’m not much fond of what’s been done with motion-control remotes as of yet.
what particularly worries me is *Valve* championing it, particularly saying that it’d be ideal for fps’es… i’ve played a handfull of first person shooters on the wii, and they’ve all controlled (in my view) dreadfully – for reasons i hadnt foreseen. i’m not talking about simple matters of poor calibration or the like, i’m thinking of the difficulty of being able to look around while moving as freely as you can with a keyboard and a mouse. when i played COD3 on the Wii, i was wondering why they didnt just allow you to freely look around, with the crosshairs focused on the dead centre of the screen at all times… then i played Metroid, and discovered the reason – if you do it like that, you’ve got to have your controller pointing directly at the centre of the screen at all times, or else Samus would start spinning around staring at the ground the moment your hand gets tired. just doesnt happen with a mouse! so, in order to keep this from happening, you *have* to enable a sluggish turn with the wiimote, which is hardly fluid or useful in a frantic situation (as fps’es frequently feature).
really, about the *only* suitable use for a motion-tracking controller is, as others suggested, stuff like melee combat. even in these cases, they’d still have to deal with the problem i mentioned above, unless the game was a completely on-rails first person melee game (which could be fun, i suppose, but it doesnt appeal as much as one which allows proper free movement).
if they can figure out a really good solution to this, then i’m game (no pun intended).
09/01/2010 at 09:00 GRIMDARK says:
I bought a Novint Falcon and I’m still regretting it. I never use that damn thing. I’m done with crazy controllers.
09/01/2010 at 10:49 Joseph says:
If valve ever really did stand for something great in the eyes of PC gamers, then this should be the day that that image dies.
First L4D2, and now this.
*sighs in quiet disbelief*
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/razer-and-sixense-hook-up-for-motion-sensing-pc-gaming-periphera/
You want to swing something in real life, then one whole second later see it happen on screen? Needs to be near-instant to capture that visceral feeling a mouse gives you. As it stands (in that video), it is a gimmick.
09/01/2010 at 10:52 Kadayi says:
Oh noes its the end of the world!!! Valve are the Judas!!! Burn them!!!!
Grow up.
It’s a potential future control scheme, not the end of the world.
09/01/2010 at 14:05 Joseph says:
Oh noes, somebody has an opinion other than your own, quickly, freak out, freak ouuuuuuut! D:
Tell them to grow up!
Say some big words that mean nothing! You’re so clever! Awesome!
09/01/2010 at 15:33 Kadayi says:
Outrage isn’t an opinion.
10/01/2010 at 01:27 Lilliput King says:
What’s the big word here?
Is it… Is it potential?
It’s not vast, if I’m honest.
09/01/2010 at 12:44 Mull says:
Strangely, I think it’s actually the nunchuck which PC’s could do with – pair it with a mouse and you have a more realistic set up with 360 degrees of strafing movement and analog walking, instead of the digital run/stop WASD strangeness we have today.
Sure, twitch shooter players would moan, but it would mean better, more realistic movement than with a keyboard as well as being ergonomically superior – you can sit with it in your lap like some kind of nunchukbater if you fancy. Add some waggle stuff to that and a bunch of buttons for reload and you’re sorted for a lot of games.
09/01/2010 at 18:17 Joseph says:
They write on Kotaku (http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/01/left-4-dead-2-vs-the-motion-control-apocalypse/) that they expect a lower latency (“40ms or less”) for the final product :O
I take it back. This sounds awesome.
@Kadayi: My original post was a little over the top, but it was still essentially what I thought of it. How is that not an opinion. Anyway, whatever, go nuts, talk about some more nothing. Enjoy yourself.
09/01/2010 at 18:27 Joseph says:
If all you saw was outrage and no opinion, then you didn’t read my post.
“Needs to be near-instant to capture that visceral feeling a mouse gives you.”
Actually means, “I think this product needs to be faster to be enjoyable.”
Just so we’re on the same page.
10/01/2010 at 12:17 Kadayi says:
“This new, currently only prototyped gadget is yet to be named”
That alone should be indicative of the fact that what you’re seeing is very much a WiP, not the finished product. So there’s no point burning down the house over it quite yet. If you’d read my earlier posts you’d have seen that I’m quite sceptical about it myself, but there is a rationale behind my thoughts on this.
10/01/2010 at 00:52 Pep8 says:
Well, that sounds interesting, i’ve been trying to use some availiable free soft to emulate the wii, and, with my overpriced and fat xbox 360 controller with a loooong wire that adapts to my usb port (it was fairly cheaper than the wireless one, oh, I’m from Argentina) we’ve been getting better results than with an older usb joystick…. mmm , i’m only guessing ¿is my windows 7 poorly configured ?
10/01/2010 at 03:03 Malibu Stacey says:
Personally I’m pretty happy with my keyboard + mouse for PC gaming supplemented by a DualShock 2 (that’s a PlayStation 2 joypad for those not old enough to remember them) when the need arises e.g. Spelunky, Geometry Wars,
However where was the angry mob with pitchforks when VALVe were announcing their adding of support for the Novint Falcon to their Source Engine games (see http://store.steampowered.com/news/?term=novint+falcon)? Do you all really think VALVe or any other established PC developers are going to say “fuck it lets make games where the only control method is this new-fangled motion sensing controller”? If so I have a bridge you may be interested in buying.
10/01/2010 at 03:57 Vinraith says:
@Malibu Stacy
If I may ask, how did you get a DualShock 2 to work on PC? I’ve tried a couple of adapters with absolutely no success. I finally settled on a Logitech pad that’s basically a look-alike, but I’d love to be able to use the real thing.
10/01/2010 at 14:15 malkav11 says:
I had a Super Joy Box 5 or somesuch adapter myself, and it worked pretty well with a little tweaking for most anything that I tried doing with it, including emulators (my main purpose, as there are very few PC games I care to play with gamepad rather than simply playing a console version). Except Playstation emulation, weirdly enough. Something broke there and I couldn’t tell you what, but it didn’t like any PSX emulator, for different reasons for each.
Then I got a 360 controller and found that it was infinitely easier to just use that.
10/01/2010 at 16:54 Dominic White says:
Controller-wise, I use two. For anything with analogue/3D gameplay, aformentioned 360 controller is the way to go. It has a pretty weak D-pad, but the sticks and triggers are more precise than on their PS2/PS3 equivalents (and yes, I own a PS3).
For retro/2d/emulated stuff, I use a Sega Saturn pad. Just hit Ebay and search for ‘USB Saturn’. Most of them ship out of Hong Kong, but they’re authentic second-gen Sega Saturn gamepads (the fastest, clickiest, most responsive gamepad ever designed – the next best thing after an expensive arcade stick setup) with USB cables, and they work on both PC and PS3, plug and play.
A pair set me back £25 including postage, and the quality of my Street Fighter 4 game went up massively when I started using it. Zangeifs harder throws are a cakewalk on a decent pad, where they’d be nigh impossible on keyboard and just hilariously wooly on the 360.
10/01/2010 at 18:29 Vinraith says:
@malkav11
“Then I got a 360 controller and found that it was infinitely easier to just use that.”
I’ve no doubt that’s the easiest solution, but I find those things hideously uncomfortable. To be honest, if the choices are “play it with a 360 pad” or “don’t play it at all” I’ll take the latter.
10/01/2010 at 13:56 Pep8 says:
well, i think the model it’s not actually windows 7, but free aplications, so, if I know how to use them, I can emulate the wii with mi Intel Core Duo, and play a Nintendo Game with my wii mote, so, I don’t have to pay that _creeeepy_ bill gates fellow that everybody was talkin’ about a couple of *years* ago, if you know how to use the PC, just pay for what u need, right now, I don’t wanna buy the new xbox controller, I want that bloody nintendo controller that they were using when my _windows 98_ was crushing right in front of my eyes and I couldn’t pay the people how could fix it, because I didn’t even knew who they were…. a little long, but, it’s ok.
10/01/2010 at 14:44 Starky says:
I’m vastly more excited by this technology for use in 3D sculpting (mudbox or zbrush) than I am any gaming application.
10/01/2010 at 17:35 Ziv says:
I knew Avi Arad was a familiar name. he was the producer of iron man and now I understand some other marvel movies.
15/01/2010 at 17:59 Pep8 says:
wow, that’s a lot of useful data, thanks everybody ;D