This is wild to me. Holding my arms perfectly still is practically impossible for me. The idea of a game using my pose and unconscious arm movements as input is positively gameplay-wrecking.
I thought the same thing, but per it’s suggestion I tried using it for fine tuning on the steam deck and I was pleasantly surprised. I’d never use it for for large motions, but on a game designed with mouse motion in mind it can be a little tricky to get those fine motions locked in.
I tried with portal and it made it a lot easier to get little adjustments lined up that were tricky without it. Since it exclusively kicked in when I wanted it to it wasn’t as wacky as a lot of gyro controls are for games that focus on them, and I think it was as simple as “press your thumb a bit more roundly onto the joystick”.
It’s not going to supplant the mouse for fast precise motions, but it at least means you can skip the wild overcorrection that sometimes happens with joystick on unoptimized configurations.
The joysticks on the steam deck are touch sensitive and can bet set as the gyro aim activation you can also set it to be a combination of that + another button so aim down sight and finger on aim joy could activate it if you want or some other combination. Its slick as shit
A bit how, most of the time in Breath of the Wild, the gyros don’t do anything. They only activate while aiming a bow, using Magnesis or a few other context-sensitive moments. Because yeah, if it was constantly doing something like camera control that would get turned off immediately.
I have mine set so if I want it to stay still, I lift my thumb off the movement joystick, turning off the gyro control. If I still need to move, I nudge from the side where the sensor isn’t
One is lateral movement, the other is aiming. My deck’s offline at the moment, so I’m going from memory… but now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I have the right stick set to aim. Then I have the gyro set to only activate when my thumb is on the right stick. Big rapid changes in direction I use the stick and the fine adjustments don’t much matter; then for fine control I hold the stick still, with thumb on top, and physically shift the deck to aim. Sometimes bracing my wrists on my knees or whatever’s handy.
Then when I end up angled weird, I lift my thumb and settle back in. My play style tends to end up with me twisting around while I play anyway, this just lets me harness it a bit!
Same, I always have to disable it or greatly dial it back, for example in fallout nv I leave it on with low sensitivity while I’m holding the trigger to ads, so I can have the fun aiming experience when I want to, what I really can’t stand is “thumb on joystick activates gyro” MF I leave my thumb on the thimbstick when I want to use it, why would I want to trigger gyro?
I play shooters and rts games with a gyro toggle, and I only toggle gyro off when I am putting my steam deck down or some other random thing. To each their own!
It is very effective for me, I can play multiplayer fps games against mouse and keyboard players fine and honestly I enjoy it more than mouse and keyboard, probably because I grew up playing xbox/consoles (not that I find it difficult to use a mouse and keyboard, just not as fun) but also because it just feels like I am aiming so snap shots and such are wayyyy more satisfying to me than if I just moved a mouse to click on them.
In practice it isn’t necessarily easy to tell I am using gyro except for when I do brief quick reaction shots just relying on gyro for aim, the rest of the time I don’t ever think about using the gyro consciously, I just use the joysticks for rough aim and let my brain figure the rest out with the gyro. Recoil in FPS games is also way more fun to control with gyro, it is a more direct control relationship rather than dragging a mouse down a mousepad, at least for me.
I don’t move the Steam Deck much though, it isn’t like I am getting a work out whipping the Steam Deck around, the gyro is really just there to lock in broad joystick movements to be accurate and on target consistently thus avoiding the small aim adjustment problem that joystick deadzones create. Also once I got used to it, my brain automatically cancels unintended gyro movements with joystick movements and thus I don’t have to hold the Steam Deck totally still in order not to have my aim utterly thrown off from a normal amount of arm shake/movement.
So you leave gyro on all the time in game? That’s what I do, and I don’t even move my whole arm really, just my fingers. I still use both joysticks. Gyro’s almost like aim assist, but instead of some algorithm doing the fine adjustments it’s my own muscle memory.
This is wild to me. Holding my arms perfectly still is practically impossible for me. The idea of a game using my pose and unconscious arm movements as input is positively gameplay-wrecking.
I thought the same thing, but per it’s suggestion I tried using it for fine tuning on the steam deck and I was pleasantly surprised. I’d never use it for for large motions, but on a game designed with mouse motion in mind it can be a little tricky to get those fine motions locked in.
I tried with portal and it made it a lot easier to get little adjustments lined up that were tricky without it. Since it exclusively kicked in when I wanted it to it wasn’t as wacky as a lot of gyro controls are for games that focus on them, and I think it was as simple as “press your thumb a bit more roundly onto the joystick”.
It’s not going to supplant the mouse for fast precise motions, but it at least means you can skip the wild overcorrection that sometimes happens with joystick on unoptimized configurations.
The joysticks on the steam deck are touch sensitive and can bet set as the gyro aim activation you can also set it to be a combination of that + another button so aim down sight and finger on aim joy could activate it if you want or some other combination. Its slick as shit
A bit how, most of the time in Breath of the Wild, the gyros don’t do anything. They only activate while aiming a bow, using Magnesis or a few other context-sensitive moments. Because yeah, if it was constantly doing something like camera control that would get turned off immediately.
I have mine set so if I want it to stay still, I lift my thumb off the movement joystick, turning off the gyro control. If I still need to move, I nudge from the side where the sensor isn’t
You use both thumbsticks for identical movement control?
One is lateral movement, the other is aiming. My deck’s offline at the moment, so I’m going from memory… but now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I have the right stick set to aim. Then I have the gyro set to only activate when my thumb is on the right stick. Big rapid changes in direction I use the stick and the fine adjustments don’t much matter; then for fine control I hold the stick still, with thumb on top, and physically shift the deck to aim. Sometimes bracing my wrists on my knees or whatever’s handy.
Then when I end up angled weird, I lift my thumb and settle back in. My play style tends to end up with me twisting around while I play anyway, this just lets me harness it a bit!
That sounds like too much cognitive load. Stick go left, guy go left.
Like I said, I tend to move like this regardless; this just lets it actually do something!
Same, I always have to disable it or greatly dial it back, for example in fallout nv I leave it on with low sensitivity while I’m holding the trigger to ads, so I can have the fun aiming experience when I want to, what I really can’t stand is “thumb on joystick activates gyro” MF I leave my thumb on the thimbstick when I want to use it, why would I want to trigger gyro?
I play shooters and rts games with a gyro toggle, and I only toggle gyro off when I am putting my steam deck down or some other random thing. To each their own!
Super weird to me. I can’t imagine playing DOOM like that.
I played through Doom Eternal like that on my Steam Controller where I mapped mouse to the touchpad for quick turns, gyro activated on touch, and mapped some of the weapons on the touchpad so I could swap to them when I clicked by setting up a dpad modeshift on right pad click with an inverted outer ring for center click.
Turned off aim assist and went my way.
It is very effective for me, I can play multiplayer fps games against mouse and keyboard players fine and honestly I enjoy it more than mouse and keyboard, probably because I grew up playing xbox/consoles (not that I find it difficult to use a mouse and keyboard, just not as fun) but also because it just feels like I am aiming so snap shots and such are wayyyy more satisfying to me than if I just moved a mouse to click on them.
In practice it isn’t necessarily easy to tell I am using gyro except for when I do brief quick reaction shots just relying on gyro for aim, the rest of the time I don’t ever think about using the gyro consciously, I just use the joysticks for rough aim and let my brain figure the rest out with the gyro. Recoil in FPS games is also way more fun to control with gyro, it is a more direct control relationship rather than dragging a mouse down a mousepad, at least for me.
I don’t move the Steam Deck much though, it isn’t like I am getting a work out whipping the Steam Deck around, the gyro is really just there to lock in broad joystick movements to be accurate and on target consistently thus avoiding the small aim adjustment problem that joystick deadzones create. Also once I got used to it, my brain automatically cancels unintended gyro movements with joystick movements and thus I don’t have to hold the Steam Deck totally still in order not to have my aim utterly thrown off from a normal amount of arm shake/movement.
Sounds like lot more work than “move stick left, guy go left”
No I only use the gyro for aim, movement is just the left joystick like normal controller style FPS controls!
So what is the right stick for?
left joystick - movement
right joystick - broad aim adjustment
gyro - fine aim adjustment (toggleable off for menus and stuff)
So you leave gyro on all the time in game? That’s what I do, and I don’t even move my whole arm really, just my fingers. I still use both joysticks. Gyro’s almost like aim assist, but instead of some algorithm doing the fine adjustments it’s my own muscle memory.