Valve releases Steam Controller CAD geometry so you can mod it

http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-releases-steam-controller-cad-geometry-so-you-can-mod-it/?utm_content=bufferb2303&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer-pcgamer

by Ivoah • 10 years ago

215 45 10 years ago

pcgamer.com

santaclaus• 10 years ago

It would be pretty rad if you could get controller cases custom printed to fit your hands.

samstave• 10 years ago

Youve identified a garage 3D printing startup

wallmani• 10 years ago

Yeah, that reminds me of this company https://formygrips.com/

criley2• 10 years ago

Sounds like my dream industry where a fully automated tailoring machine was combined with body scanning. So you could, once a year or whenever, get a scan and have your body in the system, and from there, be able to a) shop online seeing clothes rendered on your body type b) with enough maturity for the system, have the ability to have your favorite styles created in your favorite fabrics on-demand, ready to pick up at a local store which keeps the tailor machine and spools of material handy (with more a delivery away).

jessaustin• 10 years ago

I guess there's a race on, between this vision of clothing tech and that of the film of coordinated nanobots that can instantly reconfigure to form any desired clothing. Gain a little weight? Just pour on a teaspoon more nanobots.

the8472• 10 years ago

If you really want to dream, throw 3d-weaving into that process to make things actually fit your form instead of flat, sewn-together patches stretching over you.

sixers2329• 10 years ago

This is actually really awesome- one of my biggest complaints with the steam controller was how the build quality of it felt a little "cheap" (i.e. light & plastic-y when compared to an xbox controller). The technology inside the controller is superb, and I think they had to sacrifice a little on build quality to bring it down to that ~50$ price range.

Very interested to see what kind of crazy improvements the community develops.

paulgerhardt• 10 years ago

Same designer made the Xbox controller as the Steam one.

Lightness was a design goal not a shortfall for the team.

Reasoning was that VR is the future, the less fatigue the better.

spb• 10 years ago

The Steam Controller isn't for VR. You're thinking of the Vive controllers.

timdeneau• 10 years ago

When I tried the 30min demo, it felt about right, meaning that I didn’t notice any fatigue holding the controllers. Which is valuable when you’re moving around much more actively, compared to a traditional controller cradled between your knees.

seanp2k23• 10 years ago

I'd love to see something like the Xbox Elite controller, where it's a almost-no-expense-spared version for $100-200 with much higher build quality and materials.

shmerl• 10 years ago

Interesting. What about firmware and the protocol? Will they open source / document it too?

mlkmt• 10 years ago

The valve controller seriously needs this, the driver/steam integration is badly broken. I'm pretty sure the open source community can do better.

mc42• 10 years ago

This is actually, a pretty big step forward in my opinion. It makes it feel, for the first time (to me at least), that the company is replying to the feedback of the customers. They know that people want to mod it, and rather than force them to use arcane methods to hack the current controller into their desired one, they can simply alter it digitally.

As an aside, I'd love to see a full-metal case for it, only using plastic when needed (the buttons and touchpads?)

ekianjo• 10 years ago

Valve actually said they would open the design right when they disclosed the controller project so it was kind of expected.

kefka• 10 years ago

$Companies have a tendency to say what will get them the sale, or even include features initially... and then fail to come through with their promises.

So it is a breath of fresh air to see this happen.

jamessteininger• 10 years ago

They did the same for the Steam VR motion controllers. We call them the doughnut sticks for fun at the office, but they are really incredible to use. It was a huge blessing for us that Valve included the exact model for us to modify and reskin, because having 1-1 mapping of what you're seeing in the simulation and what you're actually feeling is huge. We did the same with the PlaystationVR Move controllers, which you can see in an image here: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TNDizq2W4eY/VvMWu0mcx_I/AAAAAAAAL... This is just a simple material change for now, but we plan on doing design modifications to the mesh data eventually. Likely we would only change the geometry of areas the hands don't touch, like the tracking sphere, so as to keep the player visual/haptic continuity.

Impossible• 10 years ago

Do you have a link to the location of the CAD files for the Vive controllers, or are you talking about OpenVR render models that are obj format and, afaik, not suitable for 3D printing custom, real world, hardware.

kibwen2• 10 years ago

For those who haven't gotten their hands on a Steam controller yet, I was very impressed. The software is still quite immature (par for Valve), but the haptic feedback in the hardware is immensely cool and the potential configurability is insane. It really is a great middle-ground between mouse+keyboard and traditional gamepads.

douche• 10 years ago

It is a pretty excellent controller. It's kind of amazing how many keyboard/mouse only games you can comfortably with a little tweaking of the keybindings.

I haven't tried using it directly with my computer, just for couch gaming with my TV and Steam Link. The Steam Link is also pretty cool, but has some serious issues with crashing Steam on my PC - not sure whether it is the Link itself, or Big Picture mode, but it is super irritating to have to get up and go restart Steam in the other room when it craps out in the middle of a game. The Wake-On-LAN feature has never worked for me...

Joof4• 10 years ago

Its hard to convince people of the utility though. It also has a pretty large ramp-up time.

A friend of mine keeps trying mine out on stuff like cities skylines and determining it's no good. Its somewhat unsurprising, skylines is a very work-table feeling game; replacing a mouse would feel really weird (and take a while to really feel decent).

For me it clicked demoing DOOM mods; it felt great on the controller and I could throw it up on my TV.

Stardew Valley feels pretty good too and while you can play RTS games with it (control groups on the left pad), it won't compare with a mouse anytime soon.

taurath• 10 years ago

I pre-ordered it months before release but have been rather frustrated with being able to use it for anything replacing a right analog stick. It's been barely okay for turn based games like civilization but for something like bioshock infinite it feels woefully inaccurate and difficult to get the feel, even after 2 weeks of solid use (including scores of steam link crashes)

Zpalmtree• 10 years ago

If you're using GNU/Linux, it could be a problem with the nvidia drivers. Mine constantly crashed due to a bug with nvidia-358, updating to 361 fixed it and now I don't think its crashed since.

slantyyz2• 10 years ago

I bought mine on a lark to play with Street Fighter V, and it's surprisingly good for that use case.

None of my fight pads were XInput and I was a little lazy about setting up an XInput wrapper to get them to work.

The left touch d-pad is quite good for quarter and half circle motions, and dragon punches are pretty easy to pull off.

I also experimented with the right pad as buttons. It was pretty good, but where it fell short is that the right pad, unlike the left pad, doesn't offer any tactile cues as to where your fingers are.

kibwen2• 10 years ago

Indeed, I don't think it's going to be a replacement for serious competitive gaming e.g. dedicated arcade sticks for Street Fighter (though I'm very intrigued at the people trying to use a combination of the touchpad and the accelerometer for rapid accurate aiming in FPS games), but for casual gaming it could comfortably work with 95% of the games out there, even in command-heavy games like Civ and XCOM.

rpgmaker2• 10 years ago

Can you use it with non-Steam games?

Artemis22• 10 years ago

Yes, but Steam may need to be running

Artemis22• 10 years ago

The sounds that play when starting and turning off the controller are emitted by the haptic engines in the pads! It's pretty crazy they have so much control over feedback they can reproduce music.

dkhenry• 10 years ago

So now someone can make a back panel that has a slot for the USB dongle ?

michaelbuddy• 10 years ago

YES thank you. Or at least some kind of magnetic connection that's reliable, even if a partial indentation and that would support a fairly strong magnet.

tetrep• 10 years ago

direct source: http://steamcommunity.com/games/353370/announcements

article doesn't really add anything

listic• 10 years ago

Is this a first when consumer product company releases CAD geometry for their parts?

Suppose I would like to produce a modified replacement plastic part for my phone; how much would that cost? For starters, a different color interchangeable panel for a phone with interchangeable panel, such as Lumia 435 or Xperia U http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_u-4437.php but, eventually, an extended size battery and a cover for it.

fudged71• 10 years ago

A handful of companies have done this, including Dyson.

Everyone is pretty concerns about the IP of their physical designs... it's their main asset.

unixhero• 10 years ago

Half-Life 3 confirmed

... No wait

Valve releases Steam Controller CAD geometry so you can mod it

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