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.
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.
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...
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.
defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1
defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.trackpad.scaling -1
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).
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.
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.
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.
My 1600DPI L-Trac disagrees.
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.
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.