How accurate are analog sticks?

[oramay]

How accurate are the analog control of different consoles? I read somewhere saying about 20% dead zone with Wii and 360 sticks, what would that percentage mean in this context? (Dead zone is about error, right?)

E.g. if I push the stick in the 45 degrees (north-east) direction, displacing the stick from center by 20 degrees, how accurate will the signal fed to a game be? Does the error vary substantially depending on the angles you push the stick?

Thanks.

 

[Thowllly]

Dead zone is an area around the center position where all positions are considered to be in the center position. A 20% fixed dead zone sounds strange, and a bit large, it should be up to the developers to decide what area should be considered a dead zone.

I don't know how large the error is, but it should be much less than 20%, and not vary much with neither displacement nor direction.

 

[Rainbow Man]

Purely from personal use, it seems the analog sticks on today's consoles are quite accurate and sensitive. The deadzone is also quite small - a few degrees at the very most.

I believe the potentiometers used these days are based on magnetism and not mechanical friction/electrical resistance. This probably explains why they perform so well.

Peqace.

 

[Color me Dan]

I remember having had a bit of trouble with my DualShock controller when i would release one and see my characters turn around in Disgaea or my aim starting to drift in Killzone and it was only off by a millimeter. According to Sonys manual you should twirl the sticks around 360 degrees with your thumbs before playing to kind of reset them. but i always had trouble with that one stick...

I can't see why the dead zone would increase in size and thusly decrease accuracy when they are refining their production with every console generation.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

My friend was commenting just last night he thinks one of his XB360 controllers is a bit off, with Bioshock tending to move right when the stick is at rest. I don't know if the XB360 has a stick calibration tool. Seems like something games would need when working with analogue input, but I've never known it in any console game.

 

[ERP]

Thy auto calibrate.
But some are worse than others, I've seen sticks that keep reading fairly significant alues when returned to center.

The dead-zone is usually something of a none issue, most players only ever jam the sticks over to the maximum anway,ar tap them over if they want less input. You pretty much have to treat them as directional pointing devices.

 

[Tap In]

My friend was commenting just last night he thinks one of his XB360 controllers is a bit off, with Bioshock tending to move right when the stick is at rest. I don't know if the XB360 has a stick calibration tool. Seems like something games would need when working with analogue input, but I've never known it in any console game.

It's important not to be touching the sticks when booting up the system as I'm pretty sure that's when they calibrate.

I have the same problem if my controller is laying on it's side on a chair or something when I start a game.

 

[AntShaw]

My friend was commenting just last night he thinks one of his XB360 controllers is a bit off, with Bioshock tending to move right when the stick is at rest. I don't know if the XB360 has a stick calibration tool. Seems like something games would need when working with analogue input, but I've never known it in any console game.

I had a similar situation. With it even going to the right.

At first I tried, re-starting, making sure not to hold the controller, to it would re-calibrate by default. No dice.

I checked the right analog and it was ever so slightly leaning to the right. I centered it, re-started and problem hasn't occured again. This is the same controller I have been using since launch.

 

[Acert93]

Just as relevant... how accurate are thumbs? Anatomically they are pretty poor for the task tbh.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

But some are worse than others, I've seen sticks that keep reading fairly significant alues when returned to center.

Yep. The PSP thumbstick is probably the worst I've had to work with in this regard. So much so, that I've found it not particularly safe to take less than 50% as deadzone (and much of the demo code does the same). That said, it is extremely sensitive and has a very tiny range of motion, so even that 50% is very little movement for a human thumb, whether that of an adult or a child.

Many of them you just do it because the sticks can be a little wobbly and loose, and possibly prone to settle a little off-center due to hysteresis. Either way, what the OP seems to be concerned about is not that big a deal. It's not a lot in terms of degrees, but it can look like a lot when you quote it in percentages. 20% just means acquired values ranging from -25..+25 (out of -128..+127) are ignored, and that's really not a lot of physical movement.

Just as relevant... how accurate are thumbs? Anatomically they are pretty poor for the task tbh.

Well, that's why games don't give a character 100 different speeds of locomotion and instead quantize down to 2 or 3. The stick itself is way more precise/sensitive than what the thumb can give you.

 

[Acert93]

Well, that's why games don't give a character 100 different speeds of locomotion and instead quantize down to 2 or 3. The stick itself is way more precise/sensitive than what the thumb can give you.

True, which is my complaint with using a thumb for the sort of motions you game devs are asking thumbs to do They are pretty poor for fine, nuanced motor movements and quick, variable reactions. Which is off topic to a degree, so I won't drone on, only to reinforce my hate for dual analog sticks for games like faster paced shooters. I will give devs credit though, a lot of work has been done on the software aim with auto-aim and adhesion as well as pacing the action and character speed enough to work well within the gamepads limitations. So kudos to all the devs who spent sleepless nights trying to nail their gamepad controls.

 

[Arwin]

Just as relevant... how accurate are thumbs? Anatomically they are pretty poor for the task tbh.

Strangely enough, the thumbs have evolved from the least useful finger to the most, and people's abilities to do things with them accordingly.

Getting back to the analog stick, part of the technical bit that we can discuss, is how accurate a signal they give you. I think the sixaxis precision is 10bit, up from 8bit in dualshock controllers.

I don't know about the others. I sure do notice though that the PS3's dual analog sticks have improved, but possibly a bigger part in that is that the dualshock had a slightly stronger resistance to being moved from the center position. So you had to give more power to move it away from center, making it harder to be precise and not overshoot. The original Xbox controllers were better in that regard, I think.