I've never seen someone seriously compete in an FPS with a trackball.
Dollars to doughnuts this has more to do with peer stigma than with utility. Thumb trackballs are the shit. It's a declining market, though, and some of the best models are in the past and never improved on.
I've never seen someone seriously compete in an FPS with a trackball.
Dollars to doughnuts this has more to do with peer stigma than with utility. Thumb trackballs are the shit. It's a declining market, though, and some of the best models are in the past and never improved on.
Nope. It has nothing to do with stigma. A trackball is actually just awful for an FPS.
In terms of precision and speed the arm muscles are the best. Watch anyone who is really pro at drawing or FPS they move the mouse/pen with their arm. The hand, wrist, fingers are usually locked in. With a thumb trackball, you are requiring your thumb to constantly make fast and precise movements. Not going to happen.
Also, a trackball is just an upside down ball mouse. The precision of the rollers on that ball are crap compared to a laser mouse with a zillion dpi.
Lastly, you can only get a trackball to move the cursor as fast as the ball can spin. To get more precision you need a bigger heavier ball. As the weight and size of the ball increases, acceleration becomes a problem.
A pro can snap the mouse cursor to any precise point on the screen in a fraction of a second. You may be able to do that with a trackball, but not more than once in a row! While that ball is spinning up, you have to now fight it to get it to spin down. By then you are already dead.
Let's say you don't spin the trackball, you just move it. In that case it is no different than an analog stick since the limit of its movement is when your thumb/hand hits the edge. Even if you calibrate the sensitivity such that the ball maps 1:1 with the screen, the ball is round and the screen is rectangular.
Peripheral manufacturers have tried to make every kind of device imaginable to make gaming better. Pro gamers have tried them all in order to try to get any kind of possible advantage. They all still use really boring keyboards and mice. I can assure you their desire to win outweighs any stigma. Who will laugh at their trackball if they have the championship trophy? Nobody. They will buy trackballs the next day. They haven't because the mouse is king.
I've never tried an FPS using a trackball but it seems about as awkward a thing as I can imagine: but I will take your word that it is indeed a highly effective method for those who are used to it.
I finger my mouse like I finger my...
Umm... I use three fingers on my mouse. Scroll wheel and middle button is super huge in 3D modeling.
Tho recently I got a 3D spaceball after using one at work, and it's pretty amazing for 3D design work. I wish I could use it for looking around in games like ARMA, or moving, and I'm sure there's some way to do so, but no time!
Back when we played TF2 for a while here on the forum, leading up to a "tournament", I used a trackpad that entire time. I think I was the worst player on my team, but I don't think I dragged it down. I think I also played almost all the way through Portal using a trackpad too.
Back when we played TF2 for a while here on the forum, leading up to a "tournament", I used a trackpad that entire time. I think I was the worst player on my team, but I don't think I dragged it down. I think I also played almost all the way through Portal using a trackpad too.
TF2 isn't exactly a game where aim matters that much.
I don't even know how people use a two finger mouse posture on a modern 3-button mouse with a scroll wheel. I'm trying it now and even if I do not scroll much (though I do), I still just let my middle finger take a break there to rest from all the birds I be flippin'
But seriously get on the three-finger god-tier, ergonomics in your hand will love you.
Lastly I just boosted my mouse at work to the highest windows speed and realized that although Rym's mouse usage sounds mystical and strange, I realized that I too use a similar method. The wrist moves naught. let your thimb and pinkie fingers move the mouse like a bug in a spider's legs.
An optical trackball is not "just an upside down ball mouse".
You may have something with arm muscle precision, I dunno, but I find a thumb trackball far more comfortable and accurate for gaming than a mouse I have to drag across a desk.
There's no fighting "spin" on a thumb trackball. I'm not talking about a bowling ball sized device like on an old Centipede machine, here...
There are 3200 DPI equivalent trackballs out there, apparently. But if that's a Gaming-level sort of DPI, well, I guess we'll have to see what you consider to be gaming-level DPI.
I've not seen anyone use trackball for an fps, but I've seen an aquitance of mine play fps;es with drawing tablet and do decently. Don't know if drawing tablet could work in pro level, but he won the Warsow competition.
I've not seen anyone use trackball for an fps, but I've seen an aquitance of mine play fps;es with drawing tablet and do decently. Don't know if drawing tablet could work in pro level, but he won the Warsow competition.
If a Cintiq was fast enough with a 1:1 mapping, it might be the best possible controls. It might also remove all the skill of aiming. It turns the FPS into something more like whack-a-mole.
I've not seen anyone use trackball for an fps, but I've seen an aquitance of mine play fps;es with drawing tablet and do decently. Don't know if drawing tablet could work in pro level, but he won the Warsow competition.
If a Cintiq was fast enough with a 1:1 mapping, it might be the best possible controls. It might also remove all the skill of aiming. It turns the FPS into something more like whack-a-mole.
I suddenly feel sorry for the poor asshole that gets too frantic playing CS, and puts his stylus through the panel.
I always wondered if a Cintique or modern tablet would be awesome for RTS gaming.
I had a tablet PC that my brother has somewhat inherited for college. Used to play C&C Generals on it and the pen was fun but got old when I had to do some things, maybe right clicking or whatever.
I tried FPS games and thought that it could be like you say, just tap on the bad guy and he goes down, but it diddnt quite seem to work as such. I think the problem is that you still have to drag the camera around to where your target is screen center, you can't just shoot "over there". And having the head rotating to where you tap, it isn't always the exact same point of aim once you physically move the camera to look at it. Perspective is a bitch.
With a game like ARMA maybe that would work as the cursor moves only the gun and the head/eye was not mapped 1:1 to the point of impact, but never tried.
Comments
In terms of precision and speed the arm muscles are the best. Watch anyone who is really pro at drawing or FPS they move the mouse/pen with their arm. The hand, wrist, fingers are usually locked in. With a thumb trackball, you are requiring your thumb to constantly make fast and precise movements. Not going to happen.
Also, a trackball is just an upside down ball mouse. The precision of the rollers on that ball are crap compared to a laser mouse with a zillion dpi.
Lastly, you can only get a trackball to move the cursor as fast as the ball can spin. To get more precision you need a bigger heavier ball. As the weight and size of the ball increases, acceleration becomes a problem.
A pro can snap the mouse cursor to any precise point on the screen in a fraction of a second. You may be able to do that with a trackball, but not more than once in a row! While that ball is spinning up, you have to now fight it to get it to spin down. By then you are already dead.
Let's say you don't spin the trackball, you just move it. In that case it is no different than an analog stick since the limit of its movement is when your thumb/hand hits the edge. Even if you calibrate the sensitivity such that the ball maps 1:1 with the screen, the ball is round and the screen is rectangular.
Peripheral manufacturers have tried to make every kind of device imaginable to make gaming better. Pro gamers have tried them all in order to try to get any kind of possible advantage. They all still use really boring keyboards and mice. I can assure you their desire to win outweighs any stigma. Who will laugh at their trackball if they have the championship trophy? Nobody. They will buy trackballs the next day. They haven't because the mouse is king.
I finger my mouse like I finger my...
Umm... I use three fingers on my mouse. Scroll wheel and middle button is super huge in 3D modeling.
Tho recently I got a 3D spaceball after using one at work, and it's pretty amazing for 3D design work. I wish I could use it for looking around in games like ARMA, or moving, and I'm sure there's some way to do so, but no time!
But seriously get on the three-finger god-tier, ergonomics in your hand will love you.
Lastly I just boosted my mouse at work to the highest windows speed and realized that although Rym's mouse usage sounds mystical and strange, I realized that I too use a similar method. The wrist moves naught. let your thimb and pinkie fingers move the mouse like a bug in a spider's legs.
Or if my hand gets tired or lazy I use my arm.
You may have something with arm muscle precision, I dunno, but I find a thumb trackball far more comfortable and accurate for gaming than a mouse I have to drag across a desk.
There's no fighting "spin" on a thumb trackball. I'm not talking about a bowling ball sized device like on an old Centipede machine, here...
I had a tablet PC that my brother has somewhat inherited for college. Used to play C&C Generals on it and the pen was fun but got old when I had to do some things, maybe right clicking or whatever.
I tried FPS games and thought that it could be like you say, just tap on the bad guy and he goes down, but it diddnt quite seem to work as such. I think the problem is that you still have to drag the camera around to where your target is screen center, you can't just shoot "over there". And having the head rotating to where you tap, it isn't always the exact same point of aim once you physically move the camera to look at it. Perspective is a bitch.
With a game like ARMA maybe that would work as the cursor moves only the gun and the head/eye was not mapped 1:1 to the point of impact, but never tried.