A programmer at Santa Monica Studio emailed me regarding the Pressure Sensitive label on the God of War PS2 games and Kinetica (Another SMS developed PS2 game) and gave me permission to post their findings: "I saw your video on pressure sensitive buttons last night and your question about whether God of War even supported pressure sensitivity. I asked a coworker who worked on the God of War PS2 games: : lol, there is AFAIK no usage of pressure sensitivity in any of our games : I added pressure sensitive support to the code at a low level, and the E3 Demo of Kinetica used it. But the player response was soooooo bad we dropped it entirely. Of course I maintained technical support for it, but hey. [...] Me: ia801905.us.archive.org/27/items/kinetica-ps2-hiresscans/Kinetica%20-%20Box.jpg Me: Kinetica also says "Pressure Sensitive" on the back of the box : I definitely took it off the d-pad, pretty sure the accelerator, and the brake as well. I also dug through some ancient code and found the controller processing code from the original GoW. The function that reads the controller overwrites an array of analog values, setting every value to either 255 and 0, except the X and Y values of the analog sticks. This means it's unlikely any game code in GoW ever accesses the analog button pressure for any purpose. So, there you have it, the boxes are most likely wrong."
Weird, since I have the PSN versions of GTA 3, VC and SA, and none of them support pressure-sensitive acceleration. They supported that feature on PS2 and Xbox. And also on PC with mods.
It’s because Gran Turismo is a game that supported pressure sensitive buttons and that PS3 would have Gran Turismo and that the original controls game used the face buttons! None of the features for most backwards compatible games work, but I’m not sure if it affects all of them?
@@HydraSpectre1138The PS2 Classics (aka the PS2 games at PSN) has them disabled by default for idk reasons. Someone was able to modify the emulation configuration of the PS2 Classics to support pressure sensitivity and compatibility-related settings during 2020 though.
If you have a DualShock 3, that might be better. (If you can get it configured properly, anyway. Modern PCSX2 kind of broke it, not sure if it's fixed yet.) But if not, very little worry considering how many games used pressure sensitivity.
For most you should be fine with the normal mappings, but for some you might have to remap to the triggers. To get MGS2 and 3 Playable square and circle went to the right and left triggers respectively. Which is fine for gameplay, but weiiiirrrdddd for menus 🤣
I think there was a trick where you could use the DS3 pressure buttons on modern pcsx2 by copying DsHidMini's x_input.dll file in pcsx2's folder, and simply configuring the controller as xinput in the emulator. I could be wrong about the procedure, but I'm certain it is possible as I did it myself a few months ago. It sucks that we have to trick it into it tho
Slight correction about metal gear solid, its about how hard you hold the button. Holding it gently allows you to aim your gun, and pressing firmly does a trigger pull. It's most obvious with assault rifles, since semi auto guns dont fire until you release anyway. Grabbing enemies in 3 uses this aswell, pressing firmly will have snake kill the enemy while a gentle press will let you hold the enemy without stabbing them in the neck.
Good call and thanks for the explanation. I did just test the pistol and now that I think about it, you're right as automatic weapons would obviously work differently, thanks!
In metal gear solid sons of liberty and snake eater, you could press the button while you had the gun brought up and then you could slowly release the button to make him put the gun away without firing a shot.. If you went ahead and pressed it full force, it would fire, and if you slightly released pressure, he would put the gun away without firing it which simulated pulling the trigger all the way and pulling the trigger just enough to where the hammer comes back and then releasing it for the hammer to go back down!
It's actually about the release more than the push. Push it as hard or light as you want. It doesn't shoot until you release the button. If you quickly release the button, you shoot. If you slowly release the button, you put the gun away.
@@propheinx2250 I knew it was something like that it’s been a long time.. I remember if you ever so lightly released the button you could get him to put it away and let the hammer back down without firing off the shot..
There is a modern successor to the pressure sensitive button: The capacitive sensing button. They are mostly used in VR controller and can sense when your finger rests on a button or is near it. They are used to detect your hand position on the controller and to make your virtual hands match your real hands better, as well as to give simple gestures in multiplayer (e.g. thumbs up, pointing with your finger). Capacitive sensing is also present in touchpads and used for gyroaim, e.g. on the Steam Controller for example gyroaim gets activated when you rest your finger on the touchpad, this is much more pleasant to use than having to actually press down on the button to activate it. Finally, the QuestPro controller has an analog-touchpad-click (done like a trigger with a magnetic switch), it also has a pressure sensitive tip on the back that can be used like a stylus. Though Meta doesn't seem to have much confidence in either feature or the device itself, so it's not seeing much use, the whole touchpad wasn't officially announced at all, but only discovered after launch. Another thing worth mentioning: MIDI keyboards. They are also "pressure" sensitive, or so they appear, what they actually do is having two digital buttons under each key that are triggered at slightly different deflections of the key, thus allowing you to measure how fast a key was pressed, but not how hard it is pressed. Don't know if this kind of velocity sensitive button ever had any use in gaming.
The Steam Deck has analog pressure sensitive touchpads too, it just never uses that feature for anything It also has capacitive touch sensitive analog sticks, and activates gyro not only when your finger is on the touchpad, but also when it's on the stick
There's also analog keyboards these days. They use hall effect sensors to measure how far the button is pressed. In games it can just emulate an Xbox controller or something but I mostly got one for the customizability and rapid trigger function (like you can set the actuation point for individual keys and rapid trigger basically makes them very responsive) Company that makes them is called Wooting (though others have copied the idea)
@@zwenkwiel816 I remember Microsoft Research having an analog keyboard many years ago, back than it was proposed as a way to automatically correct typing mistakes, as you could infer the intended button by how much they were pressed compared to the ones hit by accident. It never entered production. Good to hear that somebody finally build one.
Just so you know, if you use a DualShock 3 on the Brook Wingman for PS2, it will work with the analog face buttons and pressure sensitivity all wirelessly.
Sony's inclusion of pressure sensitivity on the SixAxis/DS3 isn't really that mysterious. The likely main, and possibly only, reason was to support the original PS3's backward compatibility with PS2 games.
@@MarcoA3774 why would they get rid of the touch pad? Loads of games for the PS5 only, with no PS4 version, use the touch pad in various ways. Why do you think they'd get rid of it if it weren't for backwards compatibility?
I'm certain that more games supported it, but Burnout 2: Point of Impact (Playstation 2, 2002) was one of the only games I ever played that used analog inputs for L1, L2, R1, and R2. On the car select screen, pressing any of those buttons would change the angle of the camera/zoom on the vehicle. You could be extremely specific with your angle/zoom based on how hard you pressed the buttons. I noticed recently that it's extremely hard to use those analog buttons on the car select screen now that my controller is 20+ years old.
Another game that supports it is Crash Tag Team Racing. Not for the driving, but for the first person camera in the platforming segments. How hard you push the shoulder buttons controls the zoom. Another use of it is in Enter the Matrix. L1 & R1 strafe you, but how hard you press the button will determine whether it's a walk or run strafe. But yeah the shoulder buttons were rarely used at all. So little so that some people still think only the face buttons were pressure sensitive.
You can click any button you want in Mad Maestro, yes? So to help your muscle memory, you could just use different buttons for different pressures to aid in tricking your brain into handling each button differently.
I didn't think to try! I could see that possibly helping out - I'm wondering if there's a community for the game talking about all the pro-strats I missed out on..
When You open a DS4, You see a conductive film with all places where is a button, and even the triggers, making the PS4 controller has Sensitive pressure buttons but restricted to the L2 and R2 triggers. And is the same tech in the SIXAXIS/DS3. Those gamepads doesn't have other trigger mechanisms like a pontetiometer or magnetic sensors.
I always hated the pressure sensitive buttons on the Dual Shock 2. There is no feedback on how hard (or light) you can actually press the buttons which for example in racing games made me always press them too hard, making my thumb hurt. The NeGcon did that way better as you could actually feel the travel of the analog buttons.
@@Formedras The throttle and braking meters always display regardless the camera view. I think @knortn's point still stands on how unintuitive they are. That's why most racing games today use analog triggers instead.
I’m calling bullshit on this one: The controllers after the first couple generations were not as good and required you to press the button so goddamn hard it was ridiculous- However, if you had one of the PS2 controller that came from the first few years that the PS2 was on the market, it had more sensitivity in each button as well as the D pad, than any of the analog sticks out at the time on the same controllers and other controllers like the Xbox and GameCube etc... If you had a good broke in first generation PS2 controller, The buttons on the controller allowed you to control the car better in Gran Turismo three and Gran Turismo four and it was the superior way to play the game! I had a controller from the first PS2 I had, that I wish I still had because it had so much sensitivity in the D pad for steering and in the face buttons for acceleration and deceleration, and I would always beat every single person I came across that would steer with the analog stick or race with any other shut up!! The only thing that could beat me with that controller, was somebody that had a recent wheel! That said, by the time the PS3 came out all of the pressure sensitive pads that were being put into the controllers were much cheaper and the controller was also cheaper and was not designed as well- Adding Bluetooth and wireless functionality might have made it to where they slacked on the pressure sensitive functionality and it’s why they eventually got rid of it.. gran Turismo was the main game that used it and metal gear solid sons of liberty and metal gear solid snake eater both use the pressure sensitive buttons to pull up the gun and pull back the hammer and then to be able to slowly release the hammer instead of firing a shot! But either way, the PS2 had the best pressure sensitivity out of any control method I have used for playing games with a controller since.. it just had to be one of the first generation PS2 controllers because by the time they made the slim model, they were cheapneed down a lot-
I remember switching from the PS1, dualshock 1 and GT2 to the PS2 dualshock 2 and GT3 and not understanding why the hell the cars were decelerating when I was sure I was holding the buttons and it was due to those awful pressure sensitive face buttons! And I had the first gen PS2, the giant 39001 model! It was really awful having to press that hard on the controller!
@@andremalerba5281 all I know is during the life of the PS two, ice experienced controllers that had the most sensitive buttons I have ever used in a game pad, and then I experience controllers that had the worst sensitivity I ever experienced in a game pad and that was usually after the first few years down the line when they started making the controllers with a much cheaper components.. Just like the PS3 controller, none of the PS3 controllers ever featured that great of pressure sensitivity because by the time the PS3 came out, all the controllers were being made cheaper- This was always a problem for Sony systems, whereas for the longest time when you bought an Xbox 360, no matter what your controller was always choice! Not including those BS ass colored controllers on the 360 just like on the PlayStation when you get a colored controller it’s cheaper.. The PS4 actually improved this a little bit, but the analog motors for the joystick and everything are cheaper inside- But there were controllers that were good and there were controllers that were bad- My first PS2 I got which I got a couple years after the launch of the PS two, after I broke in the controller, it was perfect!! Very rarely did I ever experience any other controllers that were that good- But I experienced way more controllers that I would say our “much cheaper and therefore have less sensitivity in their pressure sensitive buttons“ then the amount of controllers that I experienced where this feature was on point and was amazing?! Either way what I’m saying about how they started making them with cheaper components is true and the controllers that had pressure sensitivity that were good where are usually the controllers that had the sparkly paint in them at the beginning.. once they started getting cheaper, you ended up getting controllers that had mushy, squishy D pads and buttons you had to press too hard-
If you want a real pressure accuracy test, Evergrace uses them to gauge how much of your "stamina" you want to spend in a single strike which is actually fairly important. The settings menu has a calibration for this even, complete with a programmer placeholder looking menu which tells you the exact value from 0 to 255 as you mentioned in the video.
Mad Maestro actually had its own unique baton controller which only came out in Japan. I read somewhere that you move it like a Wii remote and it judges how hard your movements are, but I haven't actually seen it
Many racing games early on already had options for right stick gas and brakes, gran turismo 3 also allowed rebinding them to right stick, the thing gt4 did was make the right stick unrebindable and mapped only as gas and brake
You should do a video covering Hal-efffect joysticks. I think people should be outraged that the big companies opt to use potentiometers instead of using Hal-effect sensors in the sticks. They worked in Dreamcast controllers and many of them today still don’t have drift.
I'll definitely consider.. I had no idea the DC controller sticks had this feature! I own a kong-king 2 controller with Hal-effect sensors so I thought it was a fairly recent implementation
Also the DualShock 3 and some Sixaxis models use a kinda similar technology to the hall-effect analog sticks called MR analog sticks; it uses 4-pins, aftermarket analog replacements of the 4-pin model are kinda non-existent. The DS3 controllers manufactured when the Superslim came went back to the common 3-pin potentiometer design.
There is a new wave of hall-effect analog stick replacements for the 8th/9th Gen controller, the blue-colored (ANKES' K Silver) and the orange-colored one. The calibrating process is kind of a complicated process in order to get an error percentage lower than 8%.
Far cry Instincts on the Xbox supported this for an oddly specific feature in the map maker mode, how much a deform tool would affect the terrain, be it raise, lower, smooth or roughen. I thought it was neat.
One curious case of a PS3 that supported the pressure sensitivity was MotorStorn: Arctic Edge. That's actually how I figured out the controller had pressure sensitive buttons. I downloaded the demo and upon launching it, it would ask me to adjust the screen size to compensate overscan. It's in this very screen where I can lightly press the D-Pad to move the screen edges slower or fully press them to move the edges faster, and I think that's the only thing that game uses the pressure sensitivity for
Another interesting one was the Ratchet & Clank games on PS2, when you were diving if you pressed the rise button harder, you would rise to the surface faster
Another problem with pressure sensitive buttons is the amount of maintenance required is increased. The wear-out on these analog buttons are much worse than digital input buttons, and a similar instance happens when the buttons get dirty underneath. They don't age very well if not used properly and the inputs become very difficult to press it let go
1:24 Look mom, I'm on TV!! One more unexpected case of pressure-sensitive controls was the Nintendo DS - the touchscreen itself had a pressure sensor! ...which as far as I know, only got used by one app: a homebrew drawing tool called "Colors!". The DS' pressure sensitivity was so disused that the feature didn't even make it into the Nintendo DSi.
Fun fact: Looney Tunes: Back in Action on PS2 not only uses Pressure Sensitivity, the in-game tutorials actually talk to you about it. It's the only reason I know this feature even existed, that weird tutorial in a weird licensed game.
When talking about pressure sensitive buttons, my brain always starts with MG3. Softly holding the grab button will hold someone, rapid soft taps would jiggle their brain till they pass out, and a hard press would slit their throat. It just felt immersive for child me and you could feel the weight of choosing to press the button really hard.
It's always confused me why newer releases of GTA 3 VC and SA all use the A/X button for gas instead of remapping it to the trigger, given it was designed with the analog button in mind. Not having analog gas really bothers me and I'm sure it bothers other people too. Wonder if they fixed it with the "new" control features in Definitive edition. Haven't and probably won't ever pick up those versions personally though.
This explains a lot. I was playing Ace Combat on an emulator for PS2 and I saw one of the tooltips mention this feature and I was super confused. I had no idea that the PS2 even had this feature, so it's actually insane to me that I would learn about it this long after the console's lifespan.
The F-16 fighter jet prototype originally had a pressure sensitive joystick. The stick doesn't move, it detects the force the pilot put into it. All test pilots rejected the idea.
i noticed that the Original Xbox also had 'Analog' face buttons, while i was playing the game Mercenaries...if youre in a helicopter, the 'A' button makes you Ascend while the 'X' button makes you Descend/land...but i realized that you can control the "speed" of the vertical movement by pressing the buttons harder...
I remember Baulders Gate: Dark Aliiance 2 (and maybe DA1) had the feature where if you had the laser sight perk for bows, you could lightly hold the button for just the laser, and hold down all the way to fire arrows.
Ah the ps2 and it’s pressure sensitive buttons. When they work in Metal Gear It’s nice, when they stop its a pain. I’ve got a pile with dead circle buttons and dpads from killing guards in snake eater. The only thing worse is trying to crack one open and give it some TLC…
Apple Magic Trackpad still maintains pressure sensitivity and it's really useful for context menus and quick lookup. In conjunction with BetterTouchTool you can even do custom gestures with custom functions. It would suck to have it gone and I still miss 3D Touch a lot. Haptic Touch is a slow, less capable alternative.
@@SECONDQUEST Press trackpad soft, click. Press trackpad hard, internet search. Use third party apps to create fancy new gesture. Haptic Touch bad. 3D Touch good.
A note on pressure sensitive racing games for the PS2: A number of them only use the first ~20% of the pressure point before maxing out in-game, Gran Turismo 3 and 4 included. On physical hardware this makes more sense as to prevent the need to absolutely smash the X button to have the pedal all the way down all the time. When using a controller that has triggers and a mapping that places gas on said trigger, the 20% maximum becomes much more evident as it'll reach saturation pretty much instantly. If you're using PCSX2, you can set the trigger saturation to around 20-26% (you'll need to figure out exactly where a given game tops out) with a custom controller config per game (or shared if they're close enough) on the triggers and change settings in the game (if it supports it) to use L2/R2, albeit some games require you to flip the bindings for L1/R2 and R1/R2 (so R1/L1 are bound as the triggers on the physical controller) - Ridge Racer V and Shutokou Battle 0 (Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero) require flipped triggers and reduced saturation (I could be wrong on the saturation part, but definitely the flipped part), Test Drive (2002) only requires the a saturation fix as buttons can be rebound to the players exact preference; possibly a few other games out there that don't come to mind for me. I went to go verify I got the name of the term PCSX2 uses in its settings correct but it looks like it's been removed from the nightly builds for now for whatever reason. Gran Turismo 3 also supports right analogue stick binding for acceleration and brake - it's one of the few games I can think of that can be booted in a pretty short time to test every single function of a PS2 controller... _except_ L3 and R3. Burnout 2: Point of Impact supports face button controls on the Xbox, but I wouldn't really recommend it because it will feel awful on your thumb. The games you sadly cannot fix in PCSX2 without messing with menu controls is the Burnout series. The PS2 versions don't support L2/R2 binding for brake/gas, so you're stuck with face button controls. You can still get analogue face buttons on Linux though, and as far as I know there's a few drivers for windows you can jump through hoops to get working analogue support (limited) for the DS2 via the USB adaptors for PS3 or DS3s/Sixaxis, albeit probably not with the modern nightly builds of PCSX2 as last I remember the functions were part of the LilyPad controller driver for the PCSX driver model which has been long since removed.
The original 2 gow might have pressure sensitivity on the level up screen. I can't tell if there is but some times it feels like maybe it goes faster the harder I press. Could just be in my head though.
Also I am certain fable has pressure sensitivity. The bow is drawn further back if you press the button harder. If you release it the bow started to release
Pressure sensitivity for a volleyball game actually makes a ton of sense. Would have been cool if they did with the face buttons what they did with GameCube triggers - dual stage whatever, where there's the press/pull, and then a click at the end to signify the "heavy" input.
I know Sony have most likely been hard at work on the PlayStation 6 for years now, but I would like to see pressure sensitive buttons return on the PS6’s controller!
I had mad maestro as a kid! Whenever I got in trouble my mom would take away all my games except that one, because it was educational or something. At least now I know why I was always so bad at it...
So fun fact, while the Saddam Hussein building a supercomputer out of PS2s was false, it did inspire the US Navy to make a super computer out of PS3s when they still shipped with Linux preinstalled EDIT: Air Force, not the Navy
I would always rather bind acceleration and braking to the triggers than the buttons in GT5. It's way easier to tell what you are inputting because of the physical movement. Another thing I dislike is how crummy the pressure sensitive dpad feels, as I understand it it makes it easy for a left handed player to swap over the controls but for normal people using a joystick makes way more sense than an analog dpad. I still like and use the analog face buttons on my PC for things like the clutch and E brake in driving simulators, you could also potentially use them for flight controls in flight sims. They do have limited use in the end.
After a couple hours of playing racing games with pressure sensitive buttons my thumb always felt bruised. I'm really glad controllers don't have pressure sensitive face buttons nowadays.
I never realized the ps2 had pressure sensitive buttons until long into the ps3's life where one day I was playing jak 2 on my ps3 and realized that there was analog control on the buttons while driving.
I remember playing Vice City on PS2, and wondering why to run you had to tap X, to sprint you had to tap X faster, when in Mario 64, the further you moved the analog stick, the faster you moved. Also remember if you held X(accelerate) about half way down, you would drive at a constant speed(like cruise control), and in helicopters if you held the D-Pad up halfway in, the helicopter tilted enough to move forward, but not enough to lower its altitude. Also remember playing Colin McRae Rally 3 on the Original Xbox, and getting frustrated that the car didn't seem to be accelerating fast enough, and was thinking it's not like if I push the button harder, it'll go faster, before proceeding to press the button harder and going faster... Also on GTA IV on PS3, I was having difficulty controlling a motorbike, thought maybe the analog stick had started to drift, took me a while to realise I still had SixAxis movement on, so tilting the controller was offsetting the amount I was pushing the analog stick.
I have wondered since I was like nine years old why the PS2 controller had an Analog button on it. Then I forgot about that question for many years. Then I watched this video and the question was answered, and *then* I remember that I had the question in the first place.
One of the things I hated more about playing F1 '05 on the PS2 was that the X button that is used for acceleration and it's a sensitive pressure button so I ended up with pain in my finger due to how hard I pressed the button until I found out that you could accelerate with the right joystick and that made the game to play more smoothly
If you had one of the first generation PS twos with the higher quality Pressure sensitive pads in the controller, as well as the build design of the controller was tighter, this did not happen! I only ever had one good controller and that was from the very first PS2 I got about two years after the PS2 hit the market!! After that, the majority of them you had to press so hard because they reduced the amount of money they were investing in materials to make the damned things and as such it made where you had controllers with “gummy/mushy buttons“ and yes, you had to press them really hard to get full pressure! If they have made all of the controllers quality like the first few years, then everybody would’ve liked the feature because it made it to where you had way more control over your car and games like Gran Turismo and Formula One, games where you had to use X and square for throttle and brakes and either the analog stick or the D pad which had more sensitivity than the analog stick, for steering especially once it was broken and glass smooth! I remember in Gran Turismo three and Gran Turismo four I could race the car so smoothly with my broke in PS2 controller! I could get an even more perfect line going into corners by barely pressing my D pad and not having to tap it as much because of how sensitive it was!
@@turismofoegaming8806 I have one that's pretty decent to control and doesn't need to be pressed too hard, but the dpad is mushy. i guess the buttons feels great. do you still have that controller and others?? I am thinking it could just be how old or dirty it is - (kids are yuck). pressure is measured by how much the half ball at the bottom of the button is flattened against the foil on the PCB. And unresponsive buttons always means the foil is either dirty, or less conductive than before. Also might explain the mush haha😬 This is a little message about cleaning the yuck 20yo things, which isn't hard. but also i'm so curious, do i have a good one? I got it 2nd hand
@@XPimKossibleX I always kept my controller spotless clean so it’s gotta be something else? I do remember it was often very difficult to get a controller that did not have the mushy D pad.. and whenever you got one that had the Moshe D pad plus mushy buttons, you might as well go back and return it or just try to find another one… I guess this is why they quit designing them because it was too hard to be consistent in the manufacturing process? To answer your question better: I experienced PS2 controllers that had the Mushy D pad as well as mushy buttons brand new out of the box! Best controller was the first one I had and the D pad on it was glass smooth, I kept the controller very clean as I have always cleaned my controllers every week or so just to get any grime or debris from my hands out of the pad.. even the plastic on it was smooth down to a reflective sheen!! It worked perfectly, it had more sensitivity in the D pad than there was in the analog stick!
@@XPimKossibleX I always kept my controller spotlessly clean inside and out so it wasn’t the fact that it was dirty- I think the little balls and pads that determined the level of sensitivity, worked better on certain manufactured controllers the more they were used? All I know is I bought brand new controllers that had the mushy D pad and buttons that you had to press way too hard! They were brand new.. and often times sucked which is why I thought it was just using keeper components on Sony‘s end? I guess it was really just all a gamble?
@@turismofoegaming8806 that's super weird then. i thought with controllers they get less conductive - people scrape pencil lead on to help. And haha i reckon all dpads give you more control, you can really finesse how fast you tap and how many times. But if you're talking about holding it down and changing pressure, that's bonkers. I've gotta try that. the analogue sticks are pretty bad though, the deadzone is huge compared to modern ones. doesn't bother me unless i'm playing an ps2 fps which... makes you feel why they didn't take off yet. lol i guess even xbox must've managed it better. so my last question is if you're taling about holding it down and varying presssure, and how that compares to a ps4/xbone analoge stick's sensitivity
I feel like any game that used the analog buttons to simulate light or heavy punches could've worked just as well, if not better with regular buttons using quick taps and long presses. Still, I'm kinda fond of this feature because of how well it was implemented in the Metal Gear games, which might just be the most important games on the PS2. So I'm a little miffed about it's loss because it means that any future re-release of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 are inevitably going to feel kind of scuffed. Heck, if the choice stood between that silly light bar + touch pad combo and pressure sensitive buttons, I'd choose the buttons any time of the day. Combined with the advanced haptics of the Dual Sense they may have been able to pull it off for real.
I think the "❌" button was the only face button that made any sense being pressure sensitive, as that was usually the gas button for games. All the others were unnecessary.
19:45 I've been using the sticks to accelerate in Gran Turismo since Gran Tursimo 1 :D . Since the very first title Gran Turismo had a highly customizable controls, stupidly enough so you can set, for example, pushing to the right the left sitck to accelerate, pushing up the right stick to brake, and pusigh left or right the right stick to steer. Being said, my way to go was using the right sitck to control the wheel, and the left sitck to accelerate and brake, emulating the RC stick transmitters.
Man, when I was a kid the idea of pressing harder a button to accelerate faster or hit harder was this urban legend you'd heard other kids in the courtyard talk about, like my cousin showed me it is true but you never knew if it was true because maybe you were playing a game that didn't support the feature so in the end it was like this joke instead, but turns out it was true, saw limited use no wonder there were people saying it worked as well. Funny thing I remember playing Most Wanted on Gamecube and I felt so weird when I pressed the big A button and my car stood there and this kid told me, you accelerate and brake with the triggers, it felt so unnatural, funnily enough it is now going back to old games or hell Mario Kart and drive with the face buttons that feel so unnatural.
Your voice and accent remind me a lot of another small gaming related channel, Displaced Gamers. Lol. He mostly covers assembly programming for the NES. I swear you two have got to be brothers based on your voices.
people will never know this, but the best version to Destiny back in the day was in the Ps3, nobody knows this but the Jump imput had sensitivity, and it was amazing switching to the Jumperbumper scheme because the L2 trigger was just perfect to make any kind of small jumps, so good that perfoming the Titan Skating technique was extremelly easy and warlocks could hover barrely touching the ground and basically move like gundams around the map, in this kind of features Destiny 2 is a complete Ass remake, and bungie is happy to people never noticing that this feature ever existed, but i wont forget
I remember injuring my thumb as a child from too much full throttle driving in TOCA Race Driver 2 on the PS2. I don't know if the game had options to change the throttle sensitivity, but I never noticed them, and so I couldn't get to full throttle without pressing uncomfortably hard.
Dude, gran torismo 4 is great for this. Before they realized analog triggers were better for gas and brake, gt4 used x for gas, and it was pressure sensitive
Fact is, pressure sensitive button IS better for brakes, it allows you to be more percise and better mimick the real thing too. Not for accelerator, it would be too tiring if it required full force. And pressure sensitive d-pad gives you more control than a stick does.
Analog trigger IS better for brakes, pressure sensitive button would only be better if the only other option was a digital button (no analog trigger available)@@shortcat That's why the Dreamcast was the first console that was great for racing games with the standard controller, it had analog steering with the stick, and analog acceleration/braking with the two triggers. PS2 you could use the left analog stick to steer, and the right analog stick to accelerate/brake, but only gas OR brake, not both at the same time.
9:11 MGS 2 and MGS 3 are the gifts that keep on giving, all these years and I didn't knew that detail, although tbh I never played those games on PS2, but it really shows the dedication to detail Kojima had not only on the game but with the console itself
metal gear solid 3 snake eater on PS2's pressure sensitivity is pretty interesting the CQC mechanic has good usage of pressure sensitivity, if its a hard press while having the person grabbed they die, you can also interrogate them to get intel, and use them as a body shield
Evergrace for the PS2. Pre souls series souls like where the degree in which you press the button determines how much stamina your attack uses. It's really early fromsoft so it is janky and weird, I love it
I personally would really like a controller with pressure sensitive buttons and bumper layout for PC. If I can use a configurator like Steam Config to choose where, when and how pressure sensitivity is implemented, there would be a lot of neat things I could do. As long as I choose how it's used, I am a lot more likely to find a method that feels intuitive to me.
i remember stumbling across this in GTA back in the day, at the time i put it down to consuming too much weed but funny to find out years later its actually a thing
It's alright. Not that weird due how unpopular those inputs are and they're pretty much extinct today. Personally, I don't miss it because how unintuitive using them because of the very short pressing travel of the buttons and no haptic feedback signalling you what input level you're applying. It's why analog triggers remain popular to this day.
I think pressure sensitivity could be used more usefully as an extension to regular button press rather than as a separate action. For example, I often press buttons harder unconsciously when I am panicking in high paced action games. With actions that features deliberate input delay between pressing buttons and the result of action could reduce that delay when people pressed buttons harder, to provide some sort of coyote time leniency. Players might not even realize that the game just saved them from certain death, but it could be an interesting use case for that kind of feature.
4:20 ish you made a comment implying that people were foolish for believing ps2's could be chained and used for missle guidance. this is a bit of an oopsie on your part - one of america's strongest supercomputers was a ps3 chain. it was america's fastest in 2010. this mistake really goes to show the youtubers understanding of playstation supercomputers at the time 😎
btw instead of looking up things pretty much almost all game cases you can spread out straight and just pull up the paper in the case thats used for the design
Ace combat 04, 5 & Zero, all on PS2, used pressure sensitivity on atleast the square button, and all 4 triggers & it makes a large difference in control of your plane- it really let you control your plane with far more finesse & that could save you if you had the skill to utilize it.
I thought the analog button was for opening some kind of menu like every other controller with a third button in the middle (ps3, 360, wii, etc). Hell even the adapter I have to use ps controllers on a pc opens up the Steam overlay when I hit that button (though it takes like an entire second befor it opens and good luck using button combos like opening the keyboard you can its just hard with the lag).
5:55 Wait a minute... I have always understood what the analog button does, so that's not an issue. But I originally didn't know the face buttons were analog, too. And there was _one_ game, where I know the Sticks only worked with analog On, but the Face buttons only worked with it Off. I didn't understand what the difference was, and I didn't care, really, cause I had other controllers-presumably with digital face buttons-that _did_ work. But still, it was so confusing, and now it all makes so much sense! I just never considered that the analog toggle would also affect the face buttons
the funny thing about PS4/5 controllers on PS3 is that neither analog triggers, tilts controls OR THE PLAYSTATION BUTTON work, as they are treated as generic controllers
while i dont see pressure sensitivity coming back, i really hope gyro controls for shooter games takes off. i feel like it feels a lot more natural and precise than using the right stick. splatoon is really on to something i think
Baldur's gate dark alliance had a theoretically decent implementation of pressure sensitivity. You would light press the button to be able to aim your spell and then you would hard press it to fire. However, given the fact at any point in that game you were usually firing off spells as fast as your thumb could move it was between barely noticeable to sometimes a hindrance.
The missed inputs thing is right but also fitting for metal gear solid. I would be hard time to control my gun or knife in mgs2 or 3 but it was also entirely immersive as being in control with reasons for pressure is all it was perfect, immersive use of feature prone for missed inputs. I just had weird feeling the one time I used knife-point in MGS3 HD and ended up slitting my captives throat without even realizing I had built up that much pressure. Also in MGS2 and 3 If I recall right, later automatic weapons swap the pressure function; light for aim and hard for let it rain. Really MGS2 and 3 are best showcases for immersive functionality of Analog Buttons and how pistols work in 2 and 3 are best simulation on trigger discipline under pressure that even VR is yet to match. You can also zoom cutscenes in MGS2, 3 and 4, and in 4 it is DPAD up instead of... A button I forgot in 2 and 3 but if you feel like the feature is missing in 4, it isn't it just uprooted it's life and moved to different state she's still there if you visit her.
When I tried playing GT on an emulator with PS5 controllers I mapped the face buttons to the triggers to get analog input because you need that in a racing game
A programmer at Santa Monica Studio emailed me regarding the Pressure Sensitive label on the God of War PS2 games and Kinetica (Another SMS developed PS2 game) and gave me permission to post their findings:
"I saw your video on pressure sensitive buttons last night and your question about whether God of War even supported pressure sensitivity. I asked a coworker who worked on the God of War PS2 games:
: lol, there is AFAIK no usage of pressure sensitivity in any of our games
: I added pressure sensitive support to the code at a low level, and the E3 Demo of Kinetica used it. But the player response was soooooo bad we dropped it entirely. Of course I maintained technical support for it, but hey.
[...]
Me: ia801905.us.archive.org/27/items/kinetica-ps2-hiresscans/Kinetica%20-%20Box.jpg
Me: Kinetica also says "Pressure Sensitive" on the back of the box
: I definitely took it off the d-pad, pretty sure the accelerator, and the brake as well.
I also dug through some ancient code and found the controller processing code from the original GoW. The function that reads the controller overwrites an array of analog values, setting every value to either 255 and 0, except the X and Y values of the analog sticks. This means it's unlikely any game code in GoW ever accesses the analog button pressure for any purpose.
So, there you have it, the boxes are most likely wrong."
What a cool update, great video!
Box's designer just got lost. 😅
How nice of the Programmer and thank you for sharing!
Incredible.
I would assume another factor as to why the PS3 probably retained it was because the initial model of the PS3 was reverse compatible with the PS2.
And all models support ps1 games
Weird, since I have the PSN versions of GTA 3, VC and SA, and none of them support pressure-sensitive acceleration.
They supported that feature on PS2 and Xbox. And also on PC with mods.
@HydraSpectre1138 That's because those versions are PS2 classics from PSN.
Sony didn't programmed pressure sensitivity into the emulator on the ps3.
It’s because Gran Turismo is a game that supported pressure sensitive buttons and that PS3 would have Gran Turismo and that the original controls game used the face buttons!
None of the features for most backwards compatible games work, but I’m not sure if it affects all of them?
@@HydraSpectre1138The PS2 Classics (aka the PS2 games at PSN) has them disabled by default for idk reasons.
Someone was able to modify the emulation configuration of the PS2 Classics to support pressure sensitivity and compatibility-related settings during 2020 though.
I was just thinking about this when considering emulating ps2 games with my xbox one controller. Perfect timing.
If you have a DualShock 3, that might be better. (If you can get it configured properly, anyway. Modern PCSX2 kind of broke it, not sure if it's fixed yet.) But if not, very little worry considering how many games used pressure sensitivity.
For most you should be fine with the normal mappings, but for some you might have to remap to the triggers.
To get MGS2 and 3 Playable square and circle went to the right and left triggers respectively. Which is fine for gameplay, but weiiiirrrdddd for menus 🤣
I think there was a trick where you could use the DS3 pressure buttons on modern pcsx2 by copying DsHidMini's x_input.dll file in pcsx2's folder, and simply configuring the controller as xinput in the emulator. I could be wrong about the procedure, but I'm certain it is possible as I did it myself a few months ago. It sucks that we have to trick it into it tho
@@TWTFYC still works and really well from my experience using it in mgs2 and 3
Slight correction about metal gear solid, its about how hard you hold the button. Holding it gently allows you to aim your gun, and pressing firmly does a trigger pull. It's most obvious with assault rifles, since semi auto guns dont fire until you release anyway. Grabbing enemies in 3 uses this aswell, pressing firmly will have snake kill the enemy while a gentle press will let you hold the enemy without stabbing them in the neck.
Good call and thanks for the explanation. I did just test the pistol and now that I think about it, you're right as automatic weapons would obviously work differently, thanks!
@@Shanmania yeah I figured it was a case of not having a save file with every weapon to test, easy mistake to make. Great video though
In metal gear solid sons of liberty and snake eater, you could press the button while you had the gun brought up and then you could slowly release the button to make him put the gun away without firing a shot..
If you went ahead and pressed it full force, it would fire, and if you slightly released pressure, he would put the gun away without firing it which simulated pulling the trigger all the way and pulling the trigger just enough to where the hammer comes back and then releasing it for the hammer to go back down!
It's actually about the release more than the push. Push it as hard or light as you want. It doesn't shoot until you release the button. If you quickly release the button, you shoot. If you slowly release the button, you put the gun away.
@@propheinx2250 I knew it was something like that it’s been a long time..
I remember if you ever so lightly released the button you could get him to put it away and let the hammer back down without firing off the shot..
There is a modern successor to the pressure sensitive button: The capacitive sensing button. They are mostly used in VR controller and can sense when your finger rests on a button or is near it. They are used to detect your hand position on the controller and to make your virtual hands match your real hands better, as well as to give simple gestures in multiplayer (e.g. thumbs up, pointing with your finger). Capacitive sensing is also present in touchpads and used for gyroaim, e.g. on the Steam Controller for example gyroaim gets activated when you rest your finger on the touchpad, this is much more pleasant to use than having to actually press down on the button to activate it.
Finally, the QuestPro controller has an analog-touchpad-click (done like a trigger with a magnetic switch), it also has a pressure sensitive tip on the back that can be used like a stylus. Though Meta doesn't seem to have much confidence in either feature or the device itself, so it's not seeing much use, the whole touchpad wasn't officially announced at all, but only discovered after launch.
Another thing worth mentioning: MIDI keyboards. They are also "pressure" sensitive, or so they appear, what they actually do is having two digital buttons under each key that are triggered at slightly different deflections of the key, thus allowing you to measure how fast a key was pressed, but not how hard it is pressed. Don't know if this kind of velocity sensitive button ever had any use in gaming.
I imagine some arcade machines used it where speed not pressure is what is being measured.
The Steam Deck has analog pressure sensitive touchpads too, it just never uses that feature for anything
It also has capacitive touch sensitive analog sticks, and activates gyro not only when your finger is on the touchpad, but also when it's on the stick
There's also analog keyboards these days. They use hall effect sensors to measure how far the button is pressed. In games it can just emulate an Xbox controller or something but I mostly got one for the customizability and rapid trigger function (like you can set the actuation point for individual keys and rapid trigger basically makes them very responsive)
Company that makes them is called Wooting (though others have copied the idea)
@@zwenkwiel816 I remember Microsoft Research having an analog keyboard many years ago, back than it was proposed as a way to automatically correct typing mistakes, as you could infer the intended button by how much they were pressed compared to the ones hit by accident. It never entered production. Good to hear that somebody finally build one.
for some midi keyboards there's also "aftertouch" in addition to velocity which is true pressure sensitivity
Just so you know, if you use a DualShock 3 on the Brook Wingman for PS2, it will work with the analog face buttons and pressure sensitivity all wirelessly.
I didn't even think to test that! Thanks!
@@Shanmania 5:13 please man. Is that you with the painted nails
@@alexmcphee6789You got a problem with that ?
@@alexmcphee6789??? Obviously?
@@alexmcphee6789So what if it is? People been decorating their bodies for our entire existence as a species.
Sony's inclusion of pressure sensitivity on the SixAxis/DS3 isn't really that mysterious. The likely main, and possibly only, reason was to support the original PS3's backward compatibility with PS2 games.
I guess that's the reason why the dualsense still has the touchpad.
@@MarcoA3774 why would they get rid of the touch pad? Loads of games for the PS5 only, with no PS4 version, use the touch pad in various ways. Why do you think they'd get rid of it if it weren't for backwards compatibility?
The NeGcon's name makes sense if you're Japanese. Neji = screw, Nejiru = to twist. So it's not an awful name, it's just punny.
I'm certain that more games supported it, but Burnout 2: Point of Impact (Playstation 2, 2002) was one of the only games I ever played that used analog inputs for L1, L2, R1, and R2. On the car select screen, pressing any of those buttons would change the angle of the camera/zoom on the vehicle. You could be extremely specific with your angle/zoom based on how hard you pressed the buttons. I noticed recently that it's extremely hard to use those analog buttons on the car select screen now that my controller is 20+ years old.
Another game that supports it is Crash Tag Team Racing. Not for the driving, but for the first person camera in the platforming segments. How hard you push the shoulder buttons controls the zoom.
Another use of it is in Enter the Matrix. L1 & R1 strafe you, but how hard you press the button will determine whether it's a walk or run strafe.
But yeah the shoulder buttons were rarely used at all. So little so that some people still think only the face buttons were pressure sensitive.
You can click any button you want in Mad Maestro, yes?
So to help your muscle memory, you could just use different buttons for different pressures to aid in tricking your brain into handling each button differently.
I didn't think to try! I could see that possibly helping out - I'm wondering if there's a community for the game talking about all the pro-strats I missed out on..
For the most part, yeah. But getting access to the encore is on Triangle only. (And rejecting the encore is anything but Triangle.)
When You open a DS4, You see a conductive film with all places where is a button, and even the triggers, making the PS4 controller has Sensitive pressure buttons but restricted to the L2 and R2 triggers.
And is the same tech in the SIXAXIS/DS3. Those gamepads doesn't have other trigger mechanisms like a pontetiometer or magnetic sensors.
I always hated the pressure sensitive buttons on the Dual Shock 2. There is no feedback on how hard (or light) you can actually press the buttons which for example in racing games made me always press them too hard, making my thumb hurt.
The NeGcon did that way better as you could actually feel the travel of the analog buttons.
Try Gran Turismo 4 for that, it DOES show you how hard you're pressing throttle and brake. Might not be in all camera views, though?
@@Formedras The throttle and braking meters always display regardless the camera view. I think @knortn's point still stands on how unintuitive they are. That's why most racing games today use analog triggers instead.
I’m calling bullshit on this one:
The controllers after the first couple generations were not as good and required you to press the button so goddamn hard it was ridiculous-
However, if you had one of the PS2 controller that came from the first few years that the PS2 was on the market, it had more sensitivity in each button as well as the D pad, than any of the analog sticks out at the time on the same controllers and other controllers like the Xbox and GameCube etc...
If you had a good broke in first generation PS2 controller, The buttons on the controller allowed you to control the car better in Gran Turismo three and Gran Turismo four and it was the superior way to play the game!
I had a controller from the first PS2 I had, that I wish I still had because it had so much sensitivity in the D pad for steering and in the face buttons for acceleration and deceleration, and I would always beat every single person I came across that would steer with the analog stick or race with any other shut up!! The only thing that could beat me with that controller, was somebody that had a recent wheel!
That said, by the time the PS3 came out all of the pressure sensitive pads that were being put into the controllers were much cheaper and the controller was also cheaper and was not designed as well-
Adding Bluetooth and wireless functionality might have made it to where they slacked on the pressure sensitive functionality and it’s why they eventually got rid of it.. gran Turismo was the main game that used it and metal gear solid sons of liberty and metal gear solid snake eater both use the pressure sensitive buttons to pull up the gun and pull back the hammer and then to be able to slowly release the hammer instead of firing a shot!
But either way, the PS2 had the best pressure sensitivity out of any control method I have used for playing games with a controller since.. it just had to be one of the first generation PS2 controllers because by the time they made the slim model, they were cheapneed down a lot-
I remember switching from the PS1, dualshock 1 and GT2 to the PS2 dualshock 2 and GT3 and not understanding why the hell the cars were decelerating when I was sure I was holding the buttons and it was due to those awful pressure sensitive face buttons! And I had the first gen PS2, the giant 39001 model! It was really awful having to press that hard on the controller!
@@andremalerba5281 all I know is during the life of the PS two, ice experienced controllers that had the most sensitive buttons I have ever used in a game pad, and then I experience controllers that had the worst sensitivity I ever experienced in a game pad and that was usually after the first few years down the line when they started making the controllers with a much cheaper components..
Just like the PS3 controller, none of the PS3 controllers ever featured that great of pressure sensitivity because by the time the PS3 came out, all the controllers were being made cheaper-
This was always a problem for Sony systems, whereas for the longest time when you bought an Xbox 360, no matter what your controller was always choice!
Not including those BS ass colored controllers on the 360 just like on the PlayStation when you get a colored controller it’s cheaper.. The PS4 actually improved this a little bit, but the analog motors for the joystick and everything are cheaper inside-
But there were controllers that were good and there were controllers that were bad-
My first PS2 I got which I got a couple years after the launch of the PS two, after I broke in the controller, it was perfect!!
Very rarely did I ever experience any other controllers that were that good-
But I experienced way more controllers that I would say our “much cheaper and therefore have less sensitivity in their pressure sensitive buttons“ then the amount of controllers that I experienced where this feature was on point and was amazing?!
Either way what I’m saying about how they started making them with cheaper components is true and the controllers that had pressure sensitivity that were good where are usually the controllers that had the sparkly paint in them at the beginning.. once they started getting cheaper, you ended up getting controllers that had mushy, squishy D pads and buttons you had to press too hard-
If you want a real pressure accuracy test, Evergrace uses them to gauge how much of your "stamina" you want to spend in a single strike which is actually fairly important. The settings menu has a calibration for this even, complete with a programmer placeholder looking menu which tells you the exact value from 0 to 255 as you mentioned in the video.
Your videos are incredible and super underrated, I'm excited to see more from you and hope to see your channel grow! 🍻
Mad Maestro actually had its own unique baton controller which only came out in Japan. I read somewhere that you move it like a Wii remote and it judges how hard your movements are, but I haven't actually seen it
There's a baton controller for the game Maestromusic on the ps1, there's a handful of videos of it on youtube.
Man you deserve way more subs and views than you're currently getting- this video's production and research was top tier
Many racing games early on already had options for right stick gas and brakes, gran turismo 3 also allowed rebinding them to right stick, the thing gt4 did was make the right stick unrebindable and mapped only as gas and brake
Right stick (or left) could be used as acceleration/braking all the way back in Gran Turismo 2 (possibly GT1 as well? not sure)
You should do a video covering Hal-efffect joysticks. I think people should be outraged that the big companies opt to use potentiometers instead of using Hal-effect sensors in the sticks. They worked in Dreamcast controllers and many of them today still don’t have drift.
I'll definitely consider.. I had no idea the DC controller sticks had this feature! I own a kong-king 2 controller with Hal-effect sensors so I thought it was a fairly recent implementation
Also the DualShock 3 and some Sixaxis models use a kinda similar technology to the hall-effect analog sticks called MR analog sticks; it uses 4-pins, aftermarket analog replacements of the 4-pin model are kinda non-existent.
The DS3 controllers manufactured when the Superslim came went back to the common 3-pin potentiometer design.
There is a new wave of hall-effect analog stick replacements for the 8th/9th Gen controller, the blue-colored (ANKES' K Silver) and the orange-colored one.
The calibrating process is kind of a complicated process in order to get an error percentage lower than 8%.
Hold up so pressing harder DID help my car go faster in racing games? Oh I’m so gonna rub this in my dads face 😂
Balls
Far cry Instincts on the Xbox supported this for an oddly specific feature in the map maker mode, how much a deform tool would affect the terrain, be it raise, lower, smooth or roughen. I thought it was neat.
Thanks for pointing this out. Surprised I didn't know this, but I jumped in with _Predator_ on the 360.
One curious case of a PS3 that supported the pressure sensitivity was MotorStorn: Arctic Edge. That's actually how I figured out the controller had pressure sensitive buttons. I downloaded the demo and upon launching it, it would ask me to adjust the screen size to compensate overscan. It's in this very screen where I can lightly press the D-Pad to move the screen edges slower or fully press them to move the edges faster, and I think that's the only thing that game uses the pressure sensitivity for
Another interesting one was the Ratchet & Clank games on PS2, when you were diving if you pressed the rise button harder, you would rise to the surface faster
Another problem with pressure sensitive buttons is the amount of maintenance required is increased. The wear-out on these analog buttons are much worse than digital input buttons, and a similar instance happens when the buttons get dirty underneath. They don't age very well if not used properly and the inputs become very difficult to press it let go
1:24 Look mom, I'm on TV!!
One more unexpected case of pressure-sensitive controls was the Nintendo DS - the touchscreen itself had a pressure sensor! ...which as far as I know, only got used by one app: a homebrew drawing tool called "Colors!". The DS' pressure sensitivity was so disused that the feature didn't even make it into the Nintendo DSi.
Fun fact: Looney Tunes: Back in Action on PS2 not only uses Pressure Sensitivity, the in-game tutorials actually talk to you about it. It's the only reason I know this feature even existed, that weird tutorial in a weird licensed game.
Wow, what a gem of a video I was recommended haha! Great editing and topic, can't wait to see more.
I sit in rush-hour traffic every day, most people have analog gas and brake buttons.
When talking about pressure sensitive buttons, my brain always starts with MG3. Softly holding the grab button will hold someone, rapid soft taps would jiggle their brain till they pass out, and a hard press would slit their throat. It just felt immersive for child me and you could feel the weight of choosing to press the button really hard.
Ace combat 5 radar button also has analog input. It zooms out depending on how hard you press.
I didn't even think about that but you're right, I didn't discover that until like 5 years after I first got the game
I kept waiting to hear a “HIYAHH!” in the background around the 7 min mark 😂 Love hearing the Croc music in the wild. Such an underrated soundtrack.
It's always confused me why newer releases of GTA 3 VC and SA all use the A/X button for gas instead of remapping it to the trigger, given it was designed with the analog button in mind. Not having analog gas really bothers me and I'm sure it bothers other people too.
Wonder if they fixed it with the "new" control features in Definitive edition. Haven't and probably won't ever pick up those versions personally though.
This explains a lot. I was playing Ace Combat on an emulator for PS2 and I saw one of the tooltips mention this feature and I was super confused. I had no idea that the PS2 even had this feature, so it's actually insane to me that I would learn about it this long after the console's lifespan.
The F-16 fighter jet prototype originally had a pressure sensitive joystick. The stick doesn't move, it detects the force the pilot put into it. All test pilots rejected the idea.
Wow, that’s funny the pilots didn’t like that
i noticed that the Original Xbox also had 'Analog' face buttons, while i was playing the game Mercenaries...if youre in a helicopter, the 'A' button makes you Ascend while the 'X' button makes you Descend/land...but i realized that you can control the "speed" of the vertical movement by pressing the buttons harder...
Didn't realize that. Thanks!
I remember Baulders Gate: Dark Aliiance 2 (and maybe DA1) had the feature where if you had the laser sight perk for bows, you could lightly hold the button for just the laser, and hold down all the way to fire arrows.
Ah the ps2 and it’s pressure sensitive buttons. When they work in Metal Gear It’s nice, when they stop its a pain.
I’ve got a pile with dead circle buttons and dpads from killing guards in snake eater.
The only thing worse is trying to crack one open and give it some TLC…
Apple Magic Trackpad still maintains pressure sensitivity and it's really useful for context menus and quick lookup. In conjunction with BetterTouchTool you can even do custom gestures with custom functions. It would suck to have it gone and I still miss 3D Touch a lot. Haptic Touch is a slow, less capable alternative.
What
@@SECONDQUEST Press trackpad soft, click. Press trackpad hard, internet search. Use third party apps to create fancy new gesture. Haptic Touch bad. 3D Touch good.
A note on pressure sensitive racing games for the PS2: A number of them only use the first ~20% of the pressure point before maxing out in-game, Gran Turismo 3 and 4 included. On physical hardware this makes more sense as to prevent the need to absolutely smash the X button to have the pedal all the way down all the time. When using a controller that has triggers and a mapping that places gas on said trigger, the 20% maximum becomes much more evident as it'll reach saturation pretty much instantly. If you're using PCSX2, you can set the trigger saturation to around 20-26% (you'll need to figure out exactly where a given game tops out) with a custom controller config per game (or shared if they're close enough) on the triggers and change settings in the game (if it supports it) to use L2/R2, albeit some games require you to flip the bindings for L1/R2 and R1/R2 (so R1/L1 are bound as the triggers on the physical controller) - Ridge Racer V and Shutokou Battle 0 (Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero) require flipped triggers and reduced saturation (I could be wrong on the saturation part, but definitely the flipped part), Test Drive (2002) only requires the a saturation fix as buttons can be rebound to the players exact preference; possibly a few other games out there that don't come to mind for me. I went to go verify I got the name of the term PCSX2 uses in its settings correct but it looks like it's been removed from the nightly builds for now for whatever reason.
Gran Turismo 3 also supports right analogue stick binding for acceleration and brake - it's one of the few games I can think of that can be booted in a pretty short time to test every single function of a PS2 controller... _except_ L3 and R3. Burnout 2: Point of Impact supports face button controls on the Xbox, but I wouldn't really recommend it because it will feel awful on your thumb. The games you sadly cannot fix in PCSX2 without messing with menu controls is the Burnout series. The PS2 versions don't support L2/R2 binding for brake/gas, so you're stuck with face button controls. You can still get analogue face buttons on Linux though, and as far as I know there's a few drivers for windows you can jump through hoops to get working analogue support (limited) for the DS2 via the USB adaptors for PS3 or DS3s/Sixaxis, albeit probably not with the modern nightly builds of PCSX2 as last I remember the functions were part of the LilyPad controller driver for the PCSX driver model which has been long since removed.
The original 2 gow might have pressure sensitivity on the level up screen. I can't tell if there is but some times it feels like maybe it goes faster the harder I press. Could just be in my head though.
Also I am certain fable has pressure sensitivity. The bow is drawn further back if you press the button harder. If you release it the bow started to release
Pressure sensitivity for a volleyball game actually makes a ton of sense.
Would have been cool if they did with the face buttons what they did with GameCube triggers - dual stage whatever, where there's the press/pull, and then a click at the end to signify the "heavy" input.
The people, they love you ma boy
8:20 "I had a great time driving in GTA" followed by crashing into someone 😂
I know Sony have most likely been hard at work on the PlayStation 6 for years now, but I would like to see pressure sensitive buttons return on the PS6’s controller!
The Pinball Arcade is like the only Pressure Sensitive PS3 game ive ever played.
I had mad maestro as a kid! Whenever I got in trouble my mom would take away all my games except that one, because it was educational or something. At least now I know why I was always so bad at it...
So fun fact, while the Saddam Hussein building a supercomputer out of PS2s was false, it did inspire the US Navy to make a super computer out of PS3s when they still shipped with Linux preinstalled
EDIT: Air Force, not the Navy
I remember discovering my X button was pressure sensitive while dicking around in Stuntman's arena
I would always rather bind acceleration and braking to the triggers than the buttons in GT5. It's way easier to tell what you are inputting because of the physical movement.
Another thing I dislike is how crummy the pressure sensitive dpad feels, as I understand it it makes it easy for a left handed player to swap over the controls but for normal people using a joystick makes way more sense than an analog dpad.
I still like and use the analog face buttons on my PC for things like the clutch and E brake in driving simulators, you could also potentially use them for flight controls in flight sims. They do have limited use in the end.
This channel rocks
lets go new shanmania
After a couple hours of playing racing games with pressure sensitive buttons my thumb always felt bruised. I'm really glad controllers don't have pressure sensitive face buttons nowadays.
I never realized the ps2 had pressure sensitive buttons until long into the ps3's life where one day I was playing jak 2 on my ps3 and realized that there was analog control on the buttons while driving.
I remember playing Vice City on PS2, and wondering why to run you had to tap X, to sprint you had to tap X faster, when in Mario 64, the further you moved the analog stick, the faster you moved.
Also remember if you held X(accelerate) about half way down, you would drive at a constant speed(like cruise control), and in helicopters if you held the D-Pad up halfway in, the helicopter tilted enough to move forward, but not enough to lower its altitude. Also remember playing Colin McRae Rally 3 on the Original Xbox, and getting frustrated that the car didn't seem to be accelerating fast enough, and was thinking it's not like if I push the button harder, it'll go faster, before proceeding to press the button harder and going faster...
Also on GTA IV on PS3, I was having difficulty controlling a motorbike, thought maybe the analog stick had started to drift, took me a while to realise I still had SixAxis movement on, so tilting the controller was offsetting the amount I was pushing the analog stick.
I wonder if David jaffe remembers what parts of God of war has the pressure control functions
I remember with the GameCube controller, if you held the Left or Right trigger all the way in, it clicked and acted as a button press.
I have wondered since I was like nine years old why the PS2 controller had an Analog button on it. Then I forgot about that question for many years. Then I watched this video and the question was answered, and *then* I remember that I had the question in the first place.
17:00 As a Big RaC Fan I give a thumbs up for the Soundtrack of Planet Kerwan, Metropolis :D
One of the things I hated more about playing F1 '05 on the PS2 was that the X button that is used for acceleration and it's a sensitive pressure button so I ended up with pain in my finger due to how hard I pressed the button until I found out that you could accelerate with the right joystick and that made the game to play more smoothly
If you had one of the first generation PS twos with the higher quality Pressure sensitive pads in the controller, as well as the build design of the controller was tighter, this did not happen!
I only ever had one good controller and that was from the very first PS2 I got about two years after the PS2 hit the market!!
After that, the majority of them you had to press so hard because they reduced the amount of money they were investing in materials to make the damned things and as such it made where you had controllers with “gummy/mushy buttons“ and yes, you had to press them really hard to get full pressure!
If they have made all of the controllers quality like the first few years, then everybody would’ve liked the feature because it made it to where you had way more control over your car and games like Gran Turismo and Formula One, games where you had to use X and square for throttle and brakes and either the analog stick or the D pad which had more sensitivity than the analog stick, for steering especially once it was broken and glass smooth!
I remember in Gran Turismo three and Gran Turismo four I could race the car so smoothly with my broke in PS2 controller! I could get an even more perfect line going into corners by barely pressing my D pad and not having to tap it as much because of how sensitive it was!
@@turismofoegaming8806 I have one that's pretty decent to control and doesn't need to be pressed too hard, but the dpad is mushy. i guess the buttons feels great. do you still have that controller and others?? I am thinking it could just be how old or dirty it is - (kids are yuck). pressure is measured by how much the half ball at the bottom of the button is flattened against the foil on the PCB. And unresponsive buttons always means the foil is either dirty, or less conductive than before. Also might explain the mush haha😬
This is a little message about cleaning the yuck 20yo things, which isn't hard. but also i'm so curious, do i have a good one? I got it 2nd hand
@@XPimKossibleX I always kept my controller spotless clean so it’s gotta be something else?
I do remember it was often very difficult to get a controller that did not have the mushy D pad.. and whenever you got one that had the Moshe D pad plus mushy buttons, you might as well go back and return it or just try to find another one…
I guess this is why they quit designing them because it was too hard to be consistent in the manufacturing process?
To answer your question better:
I experienced PS2 controllers that had the Mushy D pad as well as mushy buttons brand new out of the box!
Best controller was the first one I had and the D pad on it was glass smooth, I kept the controller very clean as I have always cleaned my controllers every week or so just to get any grime or debris from my hands out of the pad.. even the plastic on it was smooth down to a reflective sheen!!
It worked perfectly, it had more sensitivity in the D pad than there was in the analog stick!
@@XPimKossibleX I always kept my controller spotlessly clean inside and out so it wasn’t the fact that it was dirty-
I think the little balls and pads that determined the level of sensitivity, worked better on certain manufactured controllers the more they were used?
All I know is I bought brand new controllers that had the mushy D pad and buttons that you had to press way too hard! They were brand new.. and often times sucked which is why I thought it was just using keeper components on Sony‘s end?
I guess it was really just all a gamble?
@@turismofoegaming8806 that's super weird then. i thought with controllers they get less conductive - people scrape pencil lead on to help.
And haha i reckon all dpads give you more control, you can really finesse how fast you tap and how many times. But if you're talking about holding it down and changing pressure, that's bonkers. I've gotta try that.
the analogue sticks are pretty bad though, the deadzone is huge compared to modern ones. doesn't bother me unless i'm playing an ps2 fps which... makes you feel why they didn't take off yet. lol i guess even xbox must've managed it better.
so my last question is if you're taling about holding it down and varying presssure, and how that compares to a ps4/xbone analoge stick's sensitivity
I feel like any game that used the analog buttons to simulate light or heavy punches could've worked just as well, if not better with regular buttons using quick taps and long presses.
Still, I'm kinda fond of this feature because of how well it was implemented in the Metal Gear games, which might just be the most important games on the PS2. So I'm a little miffed about it's loss because it means that any future re-release of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 are inevitably going to feel kind of scuffed. Heck, if the choice stood between that silly light bar + touch pad combo and pressure sensitive buttons, I'd choose the buttons any time of the day.
Combined with the advanced haptics of the Dual Sense they may have been able to pull it off for real.
1:49 aww yee
I think the "❌" button was the only face button that made any sense being pressure sensitive, as that was usually the gas button for games. All the others were unnecessary.
Square ⬜ for brake is necessary 😂
You just lack imagination.
19:45 I've been using the sticks to accelerate in Gran Turismo since Gran Tursimo 1 :D . Since the very first title Gran Turismo had a highly customizable controls, stupidly enough so you can set, for example, pushing to the right the left sitck to accelerate, pushing up the right stick to brake, and pusigh left or right the right stick to steer. Being said, my way to go was using the right sitck to control the wheel, and the left sitck to accelerate and brake, emulating the RC stick transmitters.
Man, when I was a kid the idea of pressing harder a button to accelerate faster or hit harder was this urban legend you'd heard other kids in the courtyard talk about, like my cousin showed me it is true but you never knew if it was true because maybe you were playing a game that didn't support the feature so in the end it was like this joke instead, but turns out it was true, saw limited use no wonder there were people saying it worked as well.
Funny thing I remember playing Most Wanted on Gamecube and I felt so weird when I pressed the big A button and my car stood there and this kid told me, you accelerate and brake with the triggers, it felt so unnatural, funnily enough it is now going back to old games or hell Mario Kart and drive with the face buttons that feel so unnatural.
Your voice and accent remind me a lot of another small gaming related channel, Displaced Gamers. Lol. He mostly covers assembly programming for the NES. I swear you two have got to be brothers based on your voices.
people will never know this, but the best version to Destiny back in the day was in the Ps3, nobody knows this but the Jump imput had sensitivity, and it was amazing switching to the Jumperbumper scheme because the L2 trigger was just perfect to make any kind of small jumps, so good that perfoming the Titan Skating technique was extremelly easy and warlocks could hover barrely touching the ground and basically move like gundams around the map, in this kind of features Destiny 2 is a complete Ass remake, and bungie is happy to people never noticing that this feature ever existed, but i wont forget
I remember injuring my thumb as a child from too much full throttle driving in TOCA Race Driver 2 on the PS2. I don't know if the game had options to change the throttle sensitivity, but I never noticed them, and so I couldn't get to full throttle without pressing uncomfortably hard.
The Magic Trackpad for Mac supports pressure sensitivity. Pressing harder brings up context menus
Dude, gran torismo 4 is great for this. Before they realized analog triggers were better for gas and brake, gt4 used x for gas, and it was pressure sensitive
Fact is, pressure sensitive button IS better for brakes, it allows you to be more percise and better mimick the real thing too. Not for accelerator, it would be too tiring if it required full force. And pressure sensitive d-pad gives you more control than a stick does.
That's why the transition to PSP (aka GT4 -> GT PSP) isn't a very smooth experience.
Analog trigger IS better for brakes, pressure sensitive button would only be better if the only other option was a digital button (no analog trigger available)@@shortcat That's why the Dreamcast was the first console that was great for racing games with the standard controller, it had analog steering with the stick, and analog acceleration/braking with the two triggers. PS2 you could use the left analog stick to steer, and the right analog stick to accelerate/brake, but only gas OR brake, not both at the same time.
9:11 MGS 2 and MGS 3 are the gifts that keep on giving, all these years and I didn't knew that detail, although tbh I never played those games on PS2, but it really shows the dedication to detail Kojima had not only on the game but with the console itself
aw yeah let's go - i fixed a DS2 recently and this hits just right now :)
lol the irony that fable definitely DID have it and that it was the game that taught me this was even a thing
Found your channel recently good content, subbed.
Dayum Shamnia is kinda a baddie.
metal gear solid 3 snake eater on PS2's pressure sensitivity is pretty interesting
the CQC mechanic has good usage of pressure sensitivity, if its a hard press while having the person grabbed they die, you can also interrogate them to get intel, and use them as a body shield
Evergrace for the PS2. Pre souls series souls like where the degree in which you press the button determines how much stamina your attack uses. It's really early fromsoft so it is janky and weird, I love it
I personally would really like a controller with pressure sensitive buttons and bumper layout for PC. If I can use a configurator like Steam Config to choose where, when and how pressure sensitivity is implemented, there would be a lot of neat things I could do.
As long as I choose how it's used, I am a lot more likely to find a method that feels intuitive to me.
this is how i find out i played sh2 with only heavy attacks
Lolz
nintendo considered having pressure sensitive, or analogue, a and b buttons on the gamecube controller, but dropped them before production
i remember stumbling across this in GTA back in the day, at the time i put it down to consuming too much weed but funny to find out years later its actually a thing
For some reason I tought Sony was still using Pressure Sensitive Buttons today. Goes to show how unpopular it was
It was honestly more about cost-cutting. Sony tried removing haptic feedback for financial reasons too.
The GameCube had pressure sensitive triggers
Is it weird that I'm a game developer and didn't even know this was a thing?
Like I knew about trigger sensitivity, but never face button sensitivity.
It's alright. Not that weird due how unpopular those inputs are and they're pretty much extinct today.
Personally, I don't miss it because how unintuitive using them because of the very short pressing travel of the buttons and no haptic feedback signalling you what input level you're applying. It's why analog triggers remain popular to this day.
The Wii Classic Controller (not the Pro, however) had pressure sensitive triggers
3:36 Sorry,, with today's inflation, you might be able to get 30 McChickens, if you're lucky.
Truuu...
I think pressure sensitivity could be used more usefully as an extension to regular button press rather than as a separate action. For example, I often press buttons harder unconsciously when I am panicking in high paced action games. With actions that features deliberate input delay between pressing buttons and the result of action could reduce that delay when people pressed buttons harder, to provide some sort of coyote time leniency. Players might not even realize that the game just saved them from certain death, but it could be an interesting use case for that kind of feature.
4:20 ish you made a comment implying that people were foolish for believing ps2's could be chained and used for missle guidance.
this is a bit of an oopsie on your part - one of america's strongest supercomputers was a ps3 chain. it was america's fastest in 2010.
this mistake really goes to show the youtubers understanding of playstation supercomputers at the time 😎
btw instead of looking up things pretty much almost all game cases you can spread out straight and just pull up the paper in the case thats used for the design
Ace combat 04, 5 & Zero, all on PS2, used pressure sensitivity on atleast the square button, and all 4 triggers & it makes a large difference in control of your plane- it really let you control your plane with far more finesse & that could save you if you had the skill to utilize it.
I thought the analog button was for opening some kind of menu like every other controller with a third button in the middle (ps3, 360, wii, etc). Hell even the adapter I have to use ps controllers on a pc opens up the Steam overlay when I hit that button (though it takes like an entire second befor it opens and good luck using button combos like opening the keyboard you can its just hard with the lag).
Wait.... so you mean i was doing something when i was holding X down harder in racing games?!?!
5:55 Wait a minute...
I have always understood what the analog button does, so that's not an issue.
But I originally didn't know the face buttons were analog, too.
And there was _one_ game,
where I know the Sticks only worked with analog On,
but the Face buttons only worked with it Off.
I didn't understand what the difference was, and I didn't care, really, cause I had other controllers-presumably with digital face buttons-that _did_ work. But still, it was so confusing, and now it all makes so much sense! I just never considered that the analog toggle would also affect the face buttons
i truly miss the 3d touch on the iphone, it was so intuitive and made navigating the phone much quicker.
Ace Combat Zero had 3 level of zoom on the minimap based on how hard you press the button
the funny thing about PS4/5 controllers on PS3 is that neither analog triggers, tilts controls OR THE PLAYSTATION BUTTON work, as they are treated as generic controllers
while i dont see pressure sensitivity coming back, i really hope gyro controls for shooter games takes off. i feel like it feels a lot more natural and precise than using the right stick. splatoon is really on to something i think
Baldur's gate dark alliance had a theoretically decent implementation of pressure sensitivity. You would light press the button to be able to aim your spell and then you would hard press it to fire.
However, given the fact at any point in that game you were usually firing off spells as fast as your thumb could move it was between barely noticeable to sometimes a hindrance.
The missed inputs thing is right but also fitting for metal gear solid. I would be hard time to control my gun or knife in mgs2 or 3 but it was also entirely immersive as being in control with reasons for pressure is all it was perfect, immersive use of feature prone for missed inputs. I just had weird feeling the one time I used knife-point in MGS3 HD and ended up slitting my captives throat without even realizing I had built up that much pressure.
Also in MGS2 and 3 If I recall right, later automatic weapons swap the pressure function; light for aim and hard for let it rain. Really MGS2 and 3 are best showcases for immersive functionality of Analog Buttons and how pistols work in 2 and 3 are best simulation on trigger discipline under pressure that even VR is yet to match.
You can also zoom cutscenes in MGS2, 3 and 4, and in 4 it is DPAD up instead of... A button I forgot in 2 and 3 but if you feel like the feature is missing in 4, it isn't it just uprooted it's life and moved to different state she's still there if you visit her.
I didn’t even know that was a thing. Although I didn’t own a PlayStation console since PS3 and mine wasn’t backwards compatible.
When I tried playing GT on an emulator with PS5 controllers I mapped the face buttons to the triggers to get analog input because you need that in a racing game