Valve shows the Steam Deck trackpad and gyro controls
Valve’s latest demo shows how the Steam Deck’s gyro controls can be used to fine-tune your in-game focus.
We’ve seen a lot of Steam Decks in the week since Valve’s announcement. Most of them aren’t anything particularly new – just cutting edge PC hardware that has been built into a portable case. But the latest tech demo (courtesy IGN) shows something really innovative that could revolutionize controller technology as we know it.
Valve designer Scott Dalton explains how the Deck’s gyro controls combine with its capacitive touchpads and joysticks to produce a whole new way to control your favorite games.
“We have capacitive touch controllers,†Dalton begins, “and one of the really cool things about that is that we can use it in tandem with our gyro to kind of turn gyro aiming and control controls on or off. movement in games. ”
Dalton then presents how it works. With his thumb resting on the Deck’s trackpad or controller, he is able to tilt the entire Deck himself to control his view of the game world. And because the gyroscope offers much finer movements than you would get. on the trackpad or the controller, it allows the player to become much more precise in his objective.
These are the same “precise little micro-movements†you’d get from a mouse, Dalton explained, and it doesn’t take long for your brain to wrap around all of the thumb gyro controls.
Best of all, this trick works on any game the Deck can play (i.e. everything on Steam). If the developers wanted, they could even code new games specifically to use the Deck’s gyro controls and fine motion ability.
But perhaps more importantly, this tech doesn’t look like it should be limited to the Deck. Imagine if the DualSense or Xbox controller had a similar gyroscope combined with capacitive touch controllers to perform the same trick. Then suddenly we could be in a world where controller users have the same exact purpose as mouse and keyboard users.
We can dream.
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