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New Product: Ultimarc UltraStik 360 Analog/Digital Mappable Joystick

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1UP:
I am looking at the possibility of adding the circuitry from this stick onto my existing Tron base, as a possible replacement of the 49-way design.  The 49-way adds a lot of parts I'd rather not deal with.

Have not had time to put it all together yet, so don't hold your breath.  It will be a while before a final product is available.   :(

refusnik:

--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on June 26, 2006, 11:30:57 pm ---
Analog was limited to 256 in the old school gameport.  This is not true anymore with modern win9x/XP & USB.  USB can do far higher precision values per axis.  If the sensors and other hardware are designed correctly, they can do 32 bits per axis (256 vs 4,294,967,295 values).  This is done without any special drivers; the standard windows HID drivers already handling your current controllers are the only drivers needed.

--- End quote ---
Just to clarify, HID standard, indeed, alows for 32 bit variables.  But most (if not all) Windows applications work with USB input devices through DirectX component called DirectInput.  Internally, DirectInput scales logical range of USB variables to unsigned integer 16 bit so unless software talks directly to HID driver (this is Royal pain as you have to dig through USB devices list, find the one that looks like a joystick, get its descriptor, parse it, then work with raw data, etc) extra bits beyond 16bit resolution will be simply lost.

u_rebelscum:

--- Quote from: refusnik on July 11, 2006, 01:16:10 pm ---Just to clarify, HID standard, indeed, alows for 32 bit variables.  But most (if not all) Windows applications work with USB input devices through DirectX component called DirectInput.  Internally, DirectInput scales logical range of USB variables to unsigned integer 16 bit so unless software talks directly to HID driver (this is Royal pain as you have to dig through USB devices list, find the one that looks like a joystick, get its descriptor, parse it, then work with raw data, etc) extra bits beyond 16bit resolution will be simply lost.

--- End quote ---

Really?  I'm not doubting you as I only know the API of directInput, not the inners, but ... then why does directInput output the analog axis states as LONG variables (32bit in winXP)?  Was this for future use? ???

Either way, 16bit or 32bit, that's at least hundreds of times higher resolution than the old 256. :applaud:

RandyT:

--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on July 11, 2006, 08:29:45 pm ---Either way, 16bit or 32bit, that's at least hundreds of times higher resolution than the old 256. :applaud:

--- End quote ---

Which, IMHO, is also hundreds of times more than what is sufficient.

Here's a fun exercise for folks to demonstrate to themselves what that archaic old 256x256 really means in practical terms:  Crank up the res on your monitor and use your favorite drawing/CAD program to draw a 256x256 grid, making sure you can see some clear division between each and every position.  Difficult, isn't it?  Maybe close to impossible.

Each one of those dots represents a possible position for the standard analog stick from yesteryear. 

Outside of, say, a surgical simulator for the medical field, is there some killer application that requires this new level of precision?  It sure ain't classic arcade games :)

RandyT

u_rebelscum:

--- Quote from: RandyT on July 11, 2006, 09:03:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on July 11, 2006, 08:29:45 pm ---Either way, 16bit or 32bit, that's at least hundreds of times higher resolution than the old 256. :applaud:

--- End quote ---
Which, IMHO, is also hundreds of times more than what is sufficient.

Here's a fun exercise for folks to demonstrate to themselves what that archaic old 256x256 really means in practical terms:  Crank up the res on your monitor and use your favorite drawing/CAD program to draw a 256x256 grid, making sure you can see some clear division between each and every position.  Difficult, isn't it?  Maybe close to impossible.

Each one of those dots represents a possible position for the standard analog stick from yesteryear. 

Outside of, say, a surgical simulator for the medical field, is there some killer application that requires this new level of precision?  It sure ain't classic arcade games :)

RandyT

--- End quote ---

Some games you want it to be impossible to see the divisions you talk about:
Any lightgun game with at least one axis with resolution >= 256 and small targets.
Any positional gun game with the hardware to see better than 256, and small targets.

Other times the possible hardware output may be 256x256, but your game/mame might see less:
When the throw is restricted and the stick's firmware can't adjust (US360 does, though).  Then you have less than 256x256.  While if you started with 1024x1024, you can restrict it to one sixteenth the area (one quarter movement each direction) and still get true 256x256 at the game.  Again, the UltraStik360 with it's internal 12 bit resolution is able to adjust its output to 256x256 for both with & without restictors.


Take term2 (400x256 screen), for example.  With 256x256 joystick, you can almost hit 2 out of every 3 columns (you hit 256 out of 400, which is 2 out of 3.125).  You lose more than 1 (1.08) out of every 3 pixels; IOW you can't hit one third of the screen, interlaced with what you can hit.  It doesn't really hurt hitting the near targets, but this makes hitting the small, far, already-hard-to-hit targets even harder.

Another example, lightgun games with 320x256 resolutions (pointblank, area51, most other lightgun games after nintendo's), with 256x256 joystick, you can't hit one fifth of the screen ( (320-256)/256 = 1/5 ).  So if you hacked an analog controller with 256x256 hardware to your positional gun and moving 3/4 of the full range (distance) covers the screen, and joystick calibration is software-only (not in firmware), then you'll have 196x196 covering a 320x256 screen, meaning you can only hit less than half the pixels.


I agree many controllers and most (but not all) games don't need any more than 256x256.  IMO thumb analog sticks for example don't need more than 64x64.  But when it comes to thumb control, I'm all th--, err ... "not precise", so this might be just me. ;)  And ATM 1024 (10 bits) is all that's needed for those few games that need > 256.

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