New Valve Knuckles Prototypes Add Thumbsticks, Now Shipping To Devs valves latest prototype appears to mount a stick and a mini touchpad.
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Woah, best of both worlds.
The placement of that stick looks like a ergonomic nightmare
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Still. I think the Leap motion unit AND the Captoglove haptic feedback are way more immersive than these knuckles. But thats from a personal point of view.
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fascinating! sauce? also that pad is so strange.
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So these will probably be available before the Pimax controllers making Pimax 1 year late on delivery. Why would anyone want the Pimax controllers when they can have these beauties?
i actually way prefer the industrial design of the pimax controller to this. im concerned this will result in another round of delays on the pimax controllers to match the input spec, but even more concerned that valve keeps changing them and may do so again.
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The touch-pad seems to be for scrolling up/down only, right? That would make sense… but then again Im not sure if it really is needed? Maybe in SteamVR dashboard and a few games… Interesting design choice though!
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it looks too vitally placed to me to be something for the dashboard. what if they found that a variable / analogue input for turning caused nausea and so limit left and right on that pad to either on or off, but have analogue via the length of the pad to allow different movement speeds.It is a very curious layout to me, but guessing will have to see how it feels. That stick looks way out of the way though.
like if pimax had dropped this on the forum as a concept i think people would have shredded it XD.
edit
it seems that pad does detect both x and y motion as well as having a force sensor.
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Folks with the fact Pimax’s controller design was well publicized & was based on using the knuckle reference design. It’s only natural that design’s inspire changes.
Just look at LG’s Ultragear steam headset. The initial published design had inspirations from Vive & Psvr for headset elements. The controllers were based & looked very much like Vive wands with ascetic changes to give it an LG spin. Now if LG moves forward it will need Tracking v2 & knuckle based controllers.
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I would like to see Pimax revise their controllers to be more similar to the Valve design. That will allow for better software compatibility with future Steam games.
One of the reasons I did not pre-order Pimax controllers is that I wasn’t sure whether a joystick or track pad was the better option. Now I can have both, but only if I buy them from Valve.
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I don’t think Pimax has anything to worry about. I mean this is Valve were talking about here. They probably wont release the knuckles for at least another 2 years.
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Personally I still like the 2 flavour option & the Pimax controllers the team is looking into making them extensible to support new tracking options as they become available.
But that’s my personal Opinion. I can see though making the system button have a cap sense for swiping in 4 directions much like my old Samsung Omnia phone had with the optical sensor. (Otherwise horrible windows mobile 6.0 phone)
I ordered a set of both stick & pad. With Valve’s new reference it doesn’t take into consideration folks who may want the stick for the right hand & left having the pad. Where as it would be simple to have 4 skus
- Pure Trackpad
- Pure stick
- Left Stick, Right Pad
- Left Pad, Right stick
Final detail needed is to have game software companies pull controller pic to represent what you are using in VR. Ie shows Vive Wands, Oculus Touch, Pimax Controllers, valve knuckle etc. This would have been great for the Razer Hydra for example & more.
The pimax 4k for example shows a pimax hmd in the steamvr window instead of the vive headset icon in green.
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See thing is if knuckles has pad and stick it will have higher total number of inputs. I’m hoping given earlier patents where they had removable tops with stick or pad they have shared or redundant function so that having a wand or pimax controller won’t be a severe limitation.
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now that weve seen the EV2. i wonder if pimax will do another prototype the has both in one. because if this the future design, then i feel both the stick and trackpad ealier prototypes are both deprecated designs now and wont be good enough.
if they do, I think instead of ordering one of each set, i’d move that money to the hand tracking module.
you’re mistaken. Both controllers have a stick. The picture above was just comparing the old and new design
Well regardless. As @SweViver pointed out the “Trackpad slot” appears to be more for scrolling or swipe up/down. Not a full trackpad like WMR.
A full new design imho is not necessary. To add swipe functionality take the Home/System button & change it to incorperate an Optical Track sensor like the Samsung Omnia (WinMobile v6.0) had to both controller setups.
Not only would it add delays; but what happens if Valve decides to release a new revision 2 months from now? Scrap the design again?
Plus pimax is looking into making the controllers have a modular support to add other tracking solutions to the controller as they become available.
he is incorrect according to devs who have it. the pad has a very acceptable left to right input .
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I would still go with Optical Trackpad hat so to speak.
The Game Deadlinger is an excellent example of constantly changing designs. (In that case game engines… Orgre to Unity to Unreal to dead project)