Motion Control available on the Steam Controller

Taking a leaf out of Nintendo’s book, Valve implemented motion control into their Steam Controller, which becomes available on November 10th, 2015.

Among the hardware inside the anticipated Steam Controller is a gyrometer that makes the motion control possible.

Putting the Motion Control to Use

When using the Steam Controller, it’s noted that the motion control isn’t a feature that is automatically functional when booting up the controller. You’ll have to opt-in. Go into the Steam menu while in-game will prompt the option to enable it and also customize the sensitivity to your heart’s desire.

A Valve employee named Pierre-Loup Griffais posted a video on YouTube earlier this week showing off how the motion controls work, while also using the haptic pad. Giving some technical insight to how the Steam Controller can be fully customized, Griffais goes through the many options that could make his gameplay pure perfection.

The only hitch in the plan of using the motion control is that the controller has to be set up as a mouse and keyboard rather than the traditional controller configuration. The motion control feature actually emulates a mouse rather than the joystick set up. 

Setting up the gyro like a Wii-mote

While watching the video, Griffais describes how to get the most accuracy with the gyro, and it’s very similar to Nintendo’s Wii-mote set up. 

“To calibrate the gyro, set it to ‘always on’ instead of having a gyro enable button, and set the controller on a stable surface like a hard table. The drift should correct itself after a short while.”

-Valve Employee, Pierre-Loup Griffais

Similarly, when calibrating a Wii-mote for the first time, Nintendo also suggests to place it on a flat surface to yield accurate results when playing motion sensitive games like Skyward Sword.

It’s very cool that Valve decided to put in what could be considered a trivial technology nowadays, but could bring more precision to fast-paced games. 

What do you think of the motion control being implemented in the Steam Controller? What games could benefit from this tiny feature? Share your thoughts with us below!