Introduction
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| All four Tilt pads |
A few years ago most computer games weren’t intense enough or exciting enough to really require a good gamepad. I still remember my old Gravis pad with its 4 buttons and very basic gamepad shape. Gone now are those simple pads, and instead a generation of more ergo and advanced gamepads have taken their place. This new breed of pads, shaped like something out of Batman’s arsenal, introduce such features as force feedback and gyro sensitive tilt control. Can you imagine that? From plain Jane gamepad to gamepads with the ability to sense their tilt angle relative to the normal plane in a blink of the eye.
The very first tilt sensitive pads came from Microsoft and Logitech. These first generation pads were expensive and not very well received by the gaming community. Now, in 2000, more companies have jumped on the tilt pad bandwagon, and prices are now low enough to put these tilt pads on par with regular gaming pads of yesteryear. After we saw several product demos at E3 2000, we decided it was time to round up these pads and put them to the test… so here we are, with pads from four of the game peripheral industry’s heavy hitters, in a shootout to see who’s got the goods, and who’s got more R&D work to cover.
Tilt Background
Two of the gamepads in the roundup use G-Force Tilt technology, by Analog Devices, Inc (ADI), but all of the gamepads use a similar technology in order to sense motion and translate that into game input signals.
The sensors using G-Force and similar Tilt technologies use gravity as an input source. The mechanics behind this are based on microscopic mass spring systems to measure acceleration (gravity), known as Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems or iMEMS®. This is a very sensitive system of micro mechanical structures that can sense the force of acceleration and translate the changes in this force into electric signals interpreted as regular input from the gamepad.
The Logitech Wingman Extreme and Gravis Destroyer Tilt both use G-Force Tilt technology. G-Force Tilt is really based around ADI’s ADXL202 dual axis iMEMs accelerometer, a fourth generation accelerometer designed as a general purpose sensor for gravity, vibration, shock and motion. With a 5milli-g resolution and +-2g range, ADI considers the ADXL202 the most cost effective and sensitive accelerometer on the market, and our tests found that the G-Force Tilt gamepads did indeed have a very high sensitivity and response speed.
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