Nintendo has filed a patent for ‘smart fluid’ joysticks, perhaps to eliminate drift | VGC
Nintendo has filed a patent for ‘smart fluid’ joysticks, perhaps to eliminate drift | VGC
The fluid can become elasticated when used with a magnetic field…
Let's hope this isn't just a random patent, and we actually get better sticks next generation.
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It is absolutely amazing that nobody seems to have clicked through to the actual article.
So for all the "just use hall effect sticks" people, the patent is apparently not just for a solution to drift but also a way to add variable pressure to sticks, kinda like what Sony does to triggers.
It took me like fifteen seconds to read deep enough to find that.
For what it's worth, I think it could be interesting, especially if applied in a Nintendo-like way, bur proprietary stuff like that tends to go underutilized. You know, like the triggers on the PS5 controller.
You do know Sony utilizes hall effect in the triggers?
For the haptic feedback? No, it's a mechanical screw with a physical stop to keep it from turning at the right time. You can see it disassembled here. The sensor may be a hall effect sensor, I don't actually know, but once again, the patent isn't about drift.
Watching that video gave me flashbacks about how much of a pain in the ass these are to disassemble, too, which is why I have several of these with stick drift issues just gathering dust instead of actually repairing them.
It’s not clear, then, whether developers would be able to change the resistance of the fluid to provide some sort of force feedback, or a resistance similar to that of the triggers in the PS5‘s DualSense controller (for steering in racing games, for example).
For someone who supposedly read the article you seem to be making big assumptions
No, I read the whole thing, including that line, but that's entirely editorializing from the reporter. The quotes from the actual patent are pretty clear, machine translation word soup aside.
You being nitpicky made me go dig up the full patent, which makes it even clearer: "(...) The intensity of the magnetic field can be designated from the application. Thus, it is possible to perform flexible control in accordance with the application".
I don't blame the commenters for not going that extra step, though, that's just me being fastidious. I do blame the reporters focusing on stick drift because mah clicks for not reading the patent properly, though.
EDIT: For what it's worth, I find the idea of a stick being full of ferrofluid or whatever else they're using for this to be... likely finicky and potentially messy and fragile, depending on how much you need in there to make it work properly. This sounds intriguing and weirdly high-tech, but if you made me bet I wouldn't feel comfortable putting money on this showing up on a Switch 2 just yet. Could be wrong, though.
Reading your edit here.
I won't buy a Nintendo controller again until they're out for awhile and I know they're good.
The two I have are garbage and I didn't even get drift. The stick flick makes a lot of high precision games unplayable. And most of the time I use a third party controller that's better, more reliable, and half the price.
I mean, that's fair enough, I suppose. Like I said elsewhere I've had more problems with the PS5 controllers than the Switch ones, but my guess is this is luck of the draw. Some people just don't like the Joycon form factor, and that's also fair. I have some wrist issues and split controllers are amazing for my specific issues, so I'm very on board with the design for very specific reasons.
FWIW, I suspect a lot of the issues people report with those things are down to connectivity, not build quality. The BT antenna in those is terrible and it's being power starved to run on their tiny batteries. I've used literally hundreds of Joycon at one point or another and rarely seen legit stick drift, but I've had controllers where in a noisy environment just your hand grip could make the connection get all flaky. What the Switch does in that scenario seems to be to just hold your stick position and call it a day, which isn't great.
I found a comment about the accuracy of the reader combined with a factual difference from the article very ironic and should be elaborated, which you did. +1