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The news around the Steam Deck keeps on coming in, with a new video posted up by (surprise) IGN that checks out the Steam Deck's Trackpad and Gyroscopic controls.

IGN of course being probably the biggest around, we don't need to wonder why Valve has a seemingly exclusive deal with them to show off everything first. So for now, until the Steam Deck releases and our unit arrives sometime in Q1 2022, we're mostly relying on what Valve say to IGN.

Valve are no stranger to Trackpads of course, with the Steam Controller (R.I.P) having two of them and they were a lot of fun to use and setup. On the Steam Deck we have Valve mentioning how "We have capacitive touch joysticks and one of the really cool things about that is we can use that in tandem with our gyroscope to turn on or turn off gyroscopic aiming and motion controls in games." — Valve designer Scott Dalton. It seems to work a lot like the Steam Controller too, allowing you more freedom in how you aim.

Check out the new video:

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It works thanks to Steam Input so Valve and game developers can set it up however they like. Presumably then, it means users will still get access to adjust everything as they want just like we can do so now.

One of the worries with such a handheld is joystick drift, something that has been a problem elsewhere like with the Nintendo Switch. I've seen it myself and it can get quite bad, thankfully Valve said previously (that we missed) how they don't think it will be a problem "We purposely picked something that we knew the performance of, right? We didn't want to take a risk on that, right? As I'm sure our customers don't want us to take a risk on that either." — Steam Deck designer John Ikeda.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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furaxhornyx Jul 28, 2021
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Quoting: denyasis
Quoting: grumpytoadI'm just glad they're calling it a PC, so we can finally put that mainstream mentality that a PC is a windows OS to bed.

Maybe I'm reading it weird, but from the context, I'm less certain they don't mean "PC is Windows" and thier understanding of proton is so poor they are confusing the basics.

I think it was a reference to mentions like "[New shiny game] will be released on XBox, PlayStation, and PC", when in fact "PC" should read "Windows", assuming that a PC can only be running Windows.

With the Steam Deck being announced both as a "PC" and running an OS built on Proton Linux, we can hopefully that theses annoucements will stop. Hopefully...
denyasis Jul 28, 2021
Agreed!
CatKiller Jul 28, 2021
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Quoting: LoftyI see the same thing with the steam deck, the need for two haptics is limited.. one i can see for use as a mouse but two i don't really get..
Mostly, I suspect, because having a big chunk of blank space there on an otherwise symmetric control scheme would be weird, but you can restrict either touchpad to particular regions of the screen so you could use the left mouse just for minimaps, mini-menus, macros, and things like that, while the right mouse does right mouse things.
CatKiller Jul 28, 2021
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I wonder if the trackpads will support gestures? Motion-analogous controls like Heavy Rain, or drawing runes to cast spells, could be really cool. They'd have to be optional, of course, because people are also going to want to play those games with keyboard and mouse.

I could also see a resurgence in marble rolling games.


Last edited by CatKiller on 28 July 2021 at 7:33 am UTC
BlackBloodRum Jul 28, 2021
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On a slightly different note, I thought of something this morning. When travelling abroad, going through airports I much prefer to have encrypted devices.

So now I'm wondering if or how much reinstalling SteamOS but instead with an encrypted drive will impact game performance.

On modern desktops, the performance hit of LUKS is negligible (thanks to CPU AES). But how would that be with the deck?

(Assuming you get your deck back after going through airport security, I lost a phone in dubai that way once, put my phone in the tray.. tray came back with no phone when questioning it they just denied all knowledge 😂)


Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 28 July 2021 at 9:20 am UTC
Purple Library Guy Jul 28, 2021
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: LoftyI see the same thing with the steam deck, the need for two haptics is limited.. one i can see for use as a mouse but two i don't really get..
Mostly, I suspect, because having a big chunk of blank space there on an otherwise symmetric control scheme would be weird, but you can restrict either touchpad to particular regions of the screen so you could use the left mouse just for minimaps, mini-menus, macros, and things like that, while the right mouse does right mouse things.
Also having that blank touchpad-sized space on the left could be quite disappointing for left-handed players.
I resemble that remark.
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