Valve overhauled Steam Deck 'As Mouse' Gyro option in new Beta

Gyro with Stick is pretty confusing. I always tend to do both and it ends up doing nothing good. Gyro with trackpad is much better, because I don't have the reflexe to move my finger on the trackpad, while using the gyro. In that case, it's only Gyro and it works great.

This said, using the Gyro on the Steam Deck means that you are moving the screen... Sometimes it gets at weird viewing angles... It's much better suited for a standard controller, like the Steam Controller, imo.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 22 Sep 2023 at 12:46 pm UTC

I usually will put gyro as a toggle on the right stick "click" input and that makes for some nice fps game play where I want a toggle style gyro control. Some games like Shadow of Tomb Raider have it on the right trackpad touch action by default too. I use gyro all the time. Makes for really nice aiming that makes me miss mouse input much less than just having the thumb sticks would. Thumb sticks in FPS still sucks in my opinion. I've never seen a controller thumb stick setup that didn't make aiming in FPS style games feel clumsy as hell. Gyro is a very nice solution and something that makes the Steam Deck much better in my opinion.

It also gives off a weird "almost VR" feel. When you hold the deck in front of you and move the deck to look. It's like having a less immersive VR feel but without the motion sickness and the cumbersome headset strapped to your face.

Overall Gyro is amazing and has become something that would be quite hard to live without on the Deck.

Yaw vs. Roll Blend: you can now blend between "Yaw" or "Roll" mode.

Hey, maybe they could get round to not labelling them the wrong way round in the settings.

I use gyro on a lot of games, particularly anything that involves aiming or first person, I find it really helpful with shooters. Always happy to see improvements there.

1€ Filter: Smoothed low level gyro noise without adding delay.

What does a "1€ Filter" mean? Is that some technical term I haven't heard of?

1€ Filter: Smoothed low level gyro noise without adding delay.

What does a "1€ Filter" mean? Is that some technical term I haven't heard of?

It's either that they bought a filter that only cost them €1... or it's mojibake for a "first order filter." They have had mojibake in their patch notes before.

1€ Filter: Smoothed low level gyro noise without adding delay.

What does a "1€ Filter" mean? Is that some technical term I haven't heard of?

It's either that they bought a filter that only cost them €1... or it's mojibake for a "first order filter." They have had mojibake in their patch notes before.

I haven't heard the term mojibake before, but I think I can figure it out from context. That was my second thought, which I almost included in the post, but thought "Nah, it can't be that simple…"

1€ Filter: Smoothed low level gyro noise without adding delay.

What does a "1€ Filter" mean? Is that some technical term I haven't heard of?

It's either that they bought a filter that only cost them €1... or it's mojibake for a "first order filter." They have had mojibake in their patch notes before.

It's actually the name of "a simple speed-based low-pass filter for noisy input in interactive systems". Check out https://gery.casiez.net/1euro/ for some implementations and the science behind it.

Yaw vs. Roll Blend: you can now blend between "Yaw" or "Roll" mode.

Hey, maybe they could get round to not labelling them the wrong way round in the settings.

My community circles has been arguing about this for an week now, and we still haven't agree on which label is correct.

Yaw vs. Roll Blend: you can now blend between "Yaw" or "Roll" mode.

Hey, maybe they could get round to not labelling them the wrong way round in the settings.

My community circles has been arguing about this for an week now, and we still haven't agree on which label is correct.

!link

Valve have it the wrong way round, so setting it to "roll only" takes input from the yaw axis, and vice versa.

What it should be is that "roll only" means turning it like a steering wheel, and "yaw only" means pointing the Deck around the room to aim.


Last edited by CatKiller on 22 Sep 2023 at 8:22 pm UTC

Looking at that picture, the roll axis is clear, but which of pitch and yaw are which seems to kind of change depending how I look at it. One moment it looks like the Yaw stick goes down and the Pitch stick goes sideways, next it looks like the Pitch stick goes up and the Yaw stick goes sideways.

Looking at that picture, the roll axis is clear, but which of pitch and yaw are which seems to kind of change depending how I look at it. One moment it looks like the Yaw stick goes down and the Pitch stick goes sideways, next it looks like the Pitch stick goes up and the Yaw stick goes sideways.

Pitch up and pitch down are up and down. Yaw is side to side. Nodding and shaking your head, as another way to think of it.

What it should be is that "roll only" means turning it like a steering wheel, and "yaw only" means pointing the Deck around the room to aim.

Their definitions kind of make sense if they consider the base orientation of the deck to be horizontal or flat on its back, whereas you (and I'm inclined to agree) think that it is upright, with the screen facing you. That would swap the axes like you're describing. I guess they forgot that the Deck isn't a gamepad.

What it should be is that "roll only" means turning it like a steering wheel, and "yaw only" means pointing the Deck around the room to aim.

Their definitions kind of make sense if they consider the base orientation of the deck to be horizontal or flat on its back, whereas you (and I'm inclined to agree) think that it is upright, with the screen facing you. That would swap the axes like you're describing. I guess they forgot that the Deck isn't a gamepad.

If you view the tip of the wheel [picture above, I call it "Roll"] as the USB port (or as Media Molecule [developers of Dreams, Tearaway, LittleBigPlanet] calls it: the LED as a Flashlight Beam, note that it's also above the USB Port?) and not from "viewport"'s point of view, it's pretty much correct...

But the way how players are gonna hold their controllers/handheld/mobile devices while using Gyro Aiming is gonna be different, despite the current tooltip (as of this writing) already detailing how it works. I would suggest reading Player Space Gyro article by Jibb Smart, creator of Flick Stick, for more detail regarding the concept of Yaw + Roll merger.

CatKiller's comment might claimed that the Axis is the correct, but another side, who probably more used to Nintendo Switch's way of Gyro Orientation might've said "no, that's inverted". But add the concepts of Sensor Fusion/Gyro Space (which Steam Input currently doesn't support it...............yet) into the mix, and things start to get messing.

I'm not joking when my community circles has been debating about this for an week, even asking some game developers (including Jibb Smart) regarding it...but I think we might've come to the conclusion that players might have a mental models to how they see Orientation.

...but it's a moot point as it's gonna be addressed by John Valve anyway.


Last edited by AL2009man on 23 Sep 2023 at 12:09 am UTC

Pitch up and pitch down are up and down. Yaw is side to side. Nodding and shaking your head, as another way to think of it.

To take the analogy further, roll is the South Asian head wobble. Which loosely means I can hear you / meh / maybe.

What it should be is that "roll only" means turning it like a steering wheel, and "yaw only" means pointing the Deck around the room to aim.

Their definitions kind of make sense if they consider the base orientation of the deck to be horizontal or flat on its back, whereas you (and I'm inclined to agree) think that it is upright, with the screen facing you. That would swap the axes like you're describing. I guess they forgot that the Deck isn't a gamepad.

While that might be mathematically true, looking into the screen is definitely forwards. Anything else is ridiculous.

And with controllers that don't have a perfectly clear, perfectly well defined, entirely-consistent-with-game-conventions-forever forward direction, it's only really the N64 controller that's commonly likely to be held horizontally; modern controllers are much more upright than flat.

Yaw vs. Roll Blend: you can now blend between "Yaw" or "Roll" mode.

Hey, maybe they could get round to not labelling them the wrong way round in the settings.

My community circles has been arguing about this for an week now, and we still haven't agree on which label is correct.

!link

Valve have it the wrong way round, so setting it to "roll only" takes input from the yaw axis, and vice versa.

What it should be is that "roll only" means turning it like a steering wheel, and "yaw only" means pointing the Deck around the room to aim.

This is being corrected. A Valve dev in one of the communities AL2009man mentioned posted this: !link

You'll also be able to change that on a whim using the new "Tilt Angle" setting, which virtually offsets the yaw axis to accommodate any handheld or controller and in any (pitch) orientation they are being held.

Looking at that picture, the roll axis is clear, but which of pitch and yaw are which seems to kind of change depending how I look at it. One moment it looks like the Yaw stick goes down and the Pitch stick goes sideways, next it looks like the Pitch stick goes up and the Yaw stick goes sideways.

Some better illustrations of movement terms and equivalent camera movement terms

What it should be is that "roll only" means turning it like a steering wheel, and "yaw only" means pointing the Deck around the room to aim.

Their definitions kind of make sense if they consider the base orientation of the deck to be horizontal or flat on its back, whereas you (and I'm inclined to agree) think that it is upright, with the screen facing you. That would swap the axes like you're describing. I guess they forgot that the Deck isn't a gamepad.

The current definition also happens to make the most sense if you consider everything from the orientation of the inertial measurement unit microcontroller on each device's board. Which is understandable if you are in part a hardware company. This is a very early rework of the older gyro mouse option that otherwise has mostly the same sub-features so I expect the labels etc. to improve.

This is being corrected. A Valve dev in one of the communities AL2009man mentioned posted this: !link

You'll also be able to change that on a whim using the new "Tilt Angle" setting, which virtually offsets the yaw axis to accommodate any handheld or controller and in any (pitch) orientation they are being held.

Yay!

It took me about 2 weeks to be comfortable with right stick plus augmented gyro. Now? I can't live without it. I went so far as to actually ditch my elite 2 controller on my PC and replace it with an Xbox series controller with the armor x pro add-on. Just like it have gyro on my PC.

Is it for everyone? Maybe not. I will say it changed my life completely for playing video games.