You can push a thumb to the very edge of the pad to keep moving continuously. You can sweep your thumb across the pad to turn on your heel, then move it a tiny bit more to line up a headshot without having to compensate for a joystick's return motion. The touchpads are surprisingly accurate, and they make first-person shooters and other mouse-friendly games far more accessible than any analog stick can afford. "I think we might come back to that someday," says Coomer.Ī learning curve, but crowdsourced controls could helpīut it wasn't that the controls didn't work well, they were simply unfamiliar. Such a device could know when you’re scared or excited, for instance, and adjust the experience to match.Īnother prototype controller also had a detachable "handheld input communication and computing core" instead of the touchpads, which you could insert into racing wheels and other peripherals as well. However, the team hinted to me - strongly - that an unannounced future VR headset might measure your body's reaction to games at the earlobe. Though Valve co-founder Gabe Newell told us that the company wanted to put biometric sensors into game controllers, the team discovered that hands weren't a good source of biofeedback since they were always moving around. What Valve left out of the Steam Controller is almost as intriguing as what went in. ![]() The entire shape of the controller went concave so the fleshy base of a user's thumbs wouldn't interfere with the touchpads. Valve added tiny solenoid actuators to provide haptic feedback. One trackpad became two (and two became a giant touch surface before Valve came to its senses). The trackball made way for a trackpad, which could be programmed not just to emulate a mouse, but also support gesture control. "At some point we said 'screw this, let's make all the buttons a touch surface.'"įrom there, design evolved organically. The team walked me through a succession of over a dozen different prototypes, starting with a crazy magnetic break-apart Xbox 360 controller with Wii-like motion controls for both hands, buttons behind each finger, and an embedded trackball, of all things. Valve designer Greg Coomer says that starting out, the question was open-ended: "Clearly a mouse and keyboard isn't going to be the right thing for someone wearing a computer around, so what should we build?" the team asked itself. Valve wanted something that would work in the living room, but would also support virtual reality and wearable computing down the road. ![]() While the company's Xbox-sized gaming PC is only a model to inspire hardware partners, Valve tells us it will produce and sell the Steam Controller all by itself.įor the past two years, the company's been trying to design an input device with the precision of a mouse and keyboard, but the versatility of a gamepad. The box isn't the primary thing that Valve's prototyping, though.
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