It’s also important to note that you can set the trackpad up however you want under Valve’s system, you want the right side to only be buttons? Fine fine, just want the entire surface to be your stick? Also good, how’s about a blend? Want 16 buttons around the outside? Sure whatever!Īnother thing to point out is the example layout for Portal 2 they provided, where basically all functions you could want except perhaps push to talk were accessible without lifting your thumbs off the pads. This trackpad design should at least fix the inaccuracy, which I’d imagine would be very helpful for things like quadcopter piloting. I’ve been avoiding controllers where I can for being inaccurate, for instance my super meat boy experience on an xbox was that analogue meant not enough or all when it comes to running, and that you can’t switch directions as quickly as when you have separate appendages for directions. The ticking noise people refer to is I think the actual pads ticking to give you some feedback.Īs for the whole button/stick thing, I’m excited. It’s not meant to shake the controller out of your hands (hello Saitek controller of mine :/) and it’s meant to have a lot more fine control than current vibrators. Regarding haptics, no rumble motors or anything like that, afaik the only feedback comes from the twin trackpads essentially being glued to a speaker, so the trackpads should be able to move in and out at any speed, to various depths and probably with a bit of force. Let’s see, SteamOS seems to just be a layer on top of ubuntu, it’s fairly reasonable to say that the controller will be pretty open too. Posted in computer hacks Tagged steam, Valve Corporation Post navigation If you’re interested in joining the hardware beta, head on over here, but space is very limited. We’re curious to see what that exactly means, but it definitely sounds promising! We know that Valve already takes in tons of customer feedback through their Steam Community and Workshop contributors, but how open is this controller really going to be? To read more about it as the information unfolds, check out the topics in the Steam Universe forum. The Steam Controller was designed from the ground up to be hackable … We plan to make tools available that will enable users to participate in all aspects of the experience, from industrial design to electrical engineering. Not to worry though, the controller is not exclusive to the Steam Machines! Just this week they have made three announcements regarding the future of their company SteamOS, a linux-based operating system, Steam Machines (for running SteamOS), and the one we’re most interested in, the Steam Controller, an open controller. The folks over at Valve Corporation have been busy.