My Review Of The Pimax Sword Controllers! - A Serious Competitor To Index Controllers?

I agree more buttons would be better. Though will be moot if they get finger tracking. Plus as mentioned you have more buttons using combinations with mode shifting.

It is very curious why htc made almost 0 improvements on the wands.

1 Like

I donā€™t see finger tracking replacing buttons for much of what I play now or in the near future games. Only adding to them. For those using AB/Stick for years muscle memory is key.
People donā€™t like to change layouts they have practiced with for years.

IFT isnā€™t even accurate across all hand sizes but most can still manage to hit the B button with their thumb. Unless itā€™s missing.

1 Like

My XBone Afterglow controller and Steamcontroller give options to use AB and XY buttons on the bottom of the controller. This allows the thumbs to remain on the sticks for faster responses.

Finger tracking/capsense can be configured in similar way if done right. Each finger can in that respect have itā€™s own button.

I am disappointed though that Valve and pimax neglected to have standard shoulder buttons above the the trigger. HTC could have added a shoulder button in there v2.0 wands and failed.

Yes but I donā€™t want my index finger (for example) to be my B button. I want it on the B button on top next to my stick where it has always been.
Like i said, you can change the layout away from the convention if your big enough to influence change. Meta is. Valve is. Pimax ainā€™t.

This is going around in circles and the reception on Sword will speak for itself. Personally, I see Sword as important as my Wands which now only serve as paddles for one game so button count doesnā€™t matter there. We shall see.

1 Like

It is indeed something that time will tell. Without finger tracking enabled I do agree that Sword will likely not do as well as hoped. Had these been released shortly after the headsets it would do better as it is something HTC should have done minimally is change the form factor.

But we will see how things go as Etee has also had folks have a renewed interest in forward thinking design. However as you said ppl are stubborn; however we did move away from Stick D-pads when Nintendo released the NES and Sony changed things by making directional buttons vs using a pad hat that was you could say a joystick with the stick removed and replaced with a cross or bowl.

I know, the move is basically like a Wiimote with built in WiiMotionPlus.

Prior to the Motion Plus Wiimote could not measure Yaw. Basically it only had accelerometers which can only measure force.

I donā€™t followā€¦ ??

1 Like

Not really the wiimotes only really use IMUs. Where as the psmove uses IMUs and optical tracking. Though limited as it is only or was only 1 camera to track the coloured balls.

Think Vive Trackers. You want a Tennis racket attach a puck. Etcā€¦ Wii had this with plastic shells to put the wii mote in. Tennis Rackets, golf club, gun, steering wheel etcā€¦

So for example with the 12k prospect you could use simple devices or mockups in VR using the cameraā€™s. XB also had this idea with scanning an object with the kinect.

Sword was never supposed to have finger tracking though, I thought only the Sword Sense was supposed to. Hence the ā€œSenseā€ in the name.

The swords were supposed to be the basic featureless version of their flagship sword sense. A consolation product for those who cling to deprecated control methods.

Not quite, the Wiimote had the camera on the controller (IR) and the invisible led lights on the light bar.

Sony just flipped the placement. They lierally work the same.

Not correct originally both were supposed to have finger tracking until they announced they were going to make it senseless so they could offer a full package. But of course Sword still never released and then they had made a deal with Valve for IC.

Kickstarter both were sense, pre order after KS headsets were released both were sense. A year later+ they were going with Nonsense Sword. Now with the release Sword is back to potentially have Sense enabled and Sword Stick Sense is currently in the unknown if it will release.

1 Like

Actually it is correct most games only used tge Infra Red Camera as a pointer control.

Sony uses an Optical Tracking vs IR Camera. Now you can say that Oculus was the one that flipped it and added Cameras.

That being said there was some DiY projects that used the Wii Mote IR Camera as a head tracker by putting IR leds on glasses and such.

Games more used IMUs. I used to play bowling with the Wii Mote upsidedown for easier flick motion.

So damned confusing. I heard that the trackpad sword has finger tracking but it wont work until Pimax enables it.

Do you think they will ever enable it? Not that I care, finger tracking is a huge gimmick on these controllers

1 Like

I used to be big on wiimote hacking around 2012 and I was obsessed with using the IR cameras to create a mouse pointer for windows.

The wiimote was basically doing Iside out tracking The camera was 1024x768 and would track the leds on the sensor so you would get x/y coordinates.

Also the closer you moved the controller to the screen the space between dots would be used to calculate distance.

1 Like

Only Time will tell. If they partnered with Tg0 they maybe waiting on support to get it dialed in. But yes the hardware is present.

I do wish that they had evolved the controller. As they could have added extra buttons imho and simply did what they did on the headset and have a Vive Wand Mode. Where the extra buttons could be mapped as Vive wand alternate position buttons. Until DeVs added direct support for a 3rdparty controller.

Essentially of sorts what was done with Vive Cosmos controllers and others.

Yeah the Wii Mote projects were quite cool. Best one I saw was the head tracking one from a fellow that went to work for google iirc.

I was curious before about using Wii Motes like Oculus cams for tracking. There is a project on Hack-a-day using wireless cameras modified for ir used for a headset tracking roomscale or maybe more standing.

2 Likes

Microsoft, if you are talking about whom I think of - he did some neat projection and haptics experiments/concepts there. :7

2 Likes

Could be just recalled someone before had said he went to Google.

Here is the Fellow

Or were you refering to Hack-A-Day? I think that fellow was Jules something.

No, it was definitely Johnny Lee - he made quite a name for himself at the time - little surprise if he was headhunted. :7

Ah - seems he was still at uni, back when he did the stuff I mentioned - no idea where I picked up the faulty memory that that work was done under Microsoft. :7

(EDIT: Also having some synapses tickled by the mentions of project Tango, so yeah: Google. :7)

I donā€™t know whether any Hack-a-day fellow got recruited, although the name: ā€œJulesā€ does ring some distant bell ā€“ I do recall Calebā€™s vid, where he put colour LED:s out in the periphery on his Rift DK1ā€¦ Come to think of it, I think I saw him in some videocast that I clicked past just the other week, talking about some non-VR maker stuff, IIRC. :7

1 Like