Vote! Who else prefer ambidextrous controllers in design over left/right ones?

Please consider this…
What are pros and cons?
I vote for ambidextrous and knuckles-like controllers!
What is your thought?

  • ambidextrous
  • Left/right

0 voters

And I would very much like to work with AA batteries, as in the Oculus-touch, and not from the built-in batteries, which is enough for 3 hours … One battery in the Oculus-touch was enough for 1,5-2 weeks of active use . I have specially bought Eneloop Pro for this purpose.

3 Likes

Obviously ambidextrous is less ergonomic.

2 Likes

Yet, if one breaks…

we should sacrifice ergonomic for the case of someone who would have to wait a week or two to replace his broken controller?

2 Likes

Design can be ambidextrous and ergonomic, i don’t see “obvious” opposition.

The obvious opposition is that ergonomic means taking into consideration the anatomical differences between your left and right hand.

3 Likes

I’m just tryng to think out the box…

https://www.posturepeople.co.uk/product/rockstick-mouse/

Steam VR, unity, and UE4 often mess up which hand is left and which is right, so ambidextrous is best so you can just switch. It is really annoying when the hands are reversed in game. I think the people voting for left/right haven’t considered the software annoyances.

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It’s a balance between pros and cons, I ve not heard yet anything beating ergonomic.

The thing is though, ambidextrous and ergonomic aren’t mutually exclusive.

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Both Oculus and Valve went with an anatomic design for their latest versions (which was actually also the first version in Oculus case). I have only used Valve’s “wands” shortly and while they were perfectly usable, I felt I was still a bit distracted by the shape.

My only concern is that it is much more difficult to make the anatomic design right for the generic population of people (imagine Xbox vs PS controllers), and that might be the reason why Valve takes so much time with their new version. From this point of view and considering the fact that the last controller prototypes from Pimax were considered poor, I have some doubts they will be able to pull it off.

all i want is for them to add thumb sticks, not stupid annoying touchpad. They could at least add thumbsticks to the left controller for movement in smooth locomotion games

2 Likes

Let me get this clear. What am I voting for here? A left/right mirrored hardware design IS ambidextrous, like the Pimax “knuckles”, touch and windows motion controllers. Except for named buttons like the touch’s ABXY, which I guess is not a problem, it’s the “same”. Or am I misunderstanding something?
The issue is software. We should, simply put, have the in app/game option to switch what hand we want to swing the sword with. :stuck_out_tongue:

I voted left/right but maybe by that you meant symmetric like the wands. I do not want that. I voted for left/right-specific - like the knuckles.

edit: I mean this could be confusing. The wands are individually symmetric but the knuckles become symmetric together because of the mirrored design.
So both the wands and the knuckles are symmetric and ambidextrous if you look at it that way.

“Ambidexterity is the state of being equally adapted in the use of both the left and the right hand.”

BTW, both solutions here ARE symmetric.

Wouldn’t knuckles be Left/Right?

To be clear, by ambidextrous controllers, I mean that :

  1. they are “hand-attached”, like Valve’s knuckles
    but
  2. they aren’t left or right-hand dedicated (we could use both either in right hand or left hand), unlike Valve’s knuckles.

In theory you could create ambidextrous knuckle controllers, but to do so you would either add the ability to flip the controller upside down or make it where the wrap around bit could swivel. There are issues with both design types that would need to be addressed. You could handle the flipping in the software, but this could introduce potential bugs that would/could affect everything else. For the second option you would then have to account for the mechanical stress of having a moving part… this would not be ideal in a VR controller. Look at the way Nintendo has designed all of their controllers. Either way you would have to account for which was operating as the Left or Right. And, if you accidentally put one on the wrong hand then there is the annoyance of either going into the settings and switching them or just physically switching them; knuckle controllers strap to your hand so this would be very annoying to me. If you mark one then you are just going right back to the Left/Right scheme anyway.

So really either would present design issues and could potentially drive the cost of R&D up. Whereas the existing Left/Right design is already fairly well known at this point.

At this point I would rather see Left/Right controllers than Ambidextrous controllers. IMO it’s easier to design a high quality aesthetically pleasing product with a Left/Right controller scheme on the knuckle controllers.

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Dollarama usb battery slim 1800ma most controllers & iphone 5 have something like a 450ma to 600ma built in battery.

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Difficulty with ambidextrous controllers vs left & right is grip capacitance buttoms locating.