Input

[Pesmerga]

Keyboards. Mice. Controllers. Joysticks.

The most plausible input devices for a video game. The first two are the most common, but are we really limited to individual buttons? The reason I ask is, well, with the growing evolution of gaming, it's become apparent to me that, while the keyboard and mice work nicely when you're given time to do something, it restricts real-time, fast paced interactivity.

I wonder if there is such a device possible that could utilize a very quick responding brain to do many complicated yet accurate manuevers.

Theories on VR are not acceptable

 

[giant384]

umm the mind controller

 

[BlindTelepath]

I would say no. There isn't a way to interact with a game that doesn't inherently take at least as long as my reaction time + action time + controller delay + processing time, and there isn't really a way to change that. Even if you could somehow access more than simple analog/digital up-down-left-right type commands, it'd be phenomenally difficult to process them in a meaningful way. Think about how many different ways a game can be commanded to do things now, and exponentially increase that for every order of controller-fidelity magnitude you want to use. Before long, we'd have Graphics Processing units, Physics Processing units, and Input processing units, all costing $500 apiece (and think what a pain it'd be if you couldn't play HL4 because your computer couldn't talk to your brain fast enough).

The current level of input sophistication is such that it perfectly balances how many inputs can be made with how many inputs need to be made with how many outputs a developer can account for.

 

[Pesmerga]

It bothers me to think that our brain is apparently infinitely faster than any computer chip, yet here we are at the max of our potential pressing 10 buttons to move a guy around and shoot.

 

[$kelet0r]

try and get a computer to press buttons on a keyboard and humans will pwn it everytime

 

[TheSomeone]

Too bad everytime someone comes up with something new people call it gay and whine that they're going to use the regular controls anyways.

 

[giant384]

Too bad everytime someone comes up with something new people call it gay and whine that they're going to use the regular controls anyways.

wtf are u talking about???

 

[Pesmerga]

I guess he's talking about the Revolution controller.

It's not all that ground breaking, though, as far as I can tell.