This is why some of us older gamers used to rotate the sticks around a few times when we were playing and things felt wrong, and then all would be as it should be
Yeah I remember when Cj just randomly starts moving when I boot up the game for the first time and after Rotating the Stick, The drift always goes away.
It's what Halo players refer to as "the Ogre twitch" because a pro player called Ogre2 did it frequently during gameplay im pretty sure this is why he did it all the time cause I have always done a similar thing always but a lot of ppl assumed it was like a small habit he had midgame to keep active similar to CS players flicking the knife constantly
it's interesting to note that this is technically a documented feature, as in the instructions it mentions rotating the joysticks once after plugging them into the console.
@@GabeLogan4658 ...You do realize that patent expired in 2015. Wanna know why its not used anymore? Its because loading times for games is too short to implement them
@@alteonaska1735 No he's referring to the loading screen mini like moving the flying nimbus to collect capsules or making vageta do push ups it varies between the games as I can't recall which belongs to which game.
For those wondering why they stopped making quality controllers, it’s because they want controllers to be a $70 a year subscription instead of a one time purchase
WOOOAH GUYS HE SAID "SUBSCRIPTION" IN A FUNNY AND DEPRESSING WAY THAT MEANS WE LIVE IN A LITERALLY WORST DYSTOPIA TIMELINE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE JUST SAID AND THE MORE PEOPLE REPEAT IT MEANS THE MORE TRUE IT IS WHICH MEANS WERE FUCKING DOOMED WOAAAAH!!!! WOOAAAH AND HES TOTALLY DOING IT FOR LIKES AND TO TOALLY NOT HURT PEOPLE WHO HAVE MENTAL ISSUES, TOTALLY NOT, WOAHHH!!!
This was also one of the reasons for some of those loading screen minigames. Not only was it a way to entertain people as they waited but many were used to get the player to move around the joysticks in case of drift
And it only went away because Namco patented it. Thanks for nothing, Namco. Also the US patent office for granting such a ridiculous patent in the first place.
@@DisturbedNeo well Namco's patent was ridiculous but other games could still have interactive loading screens. It was stupid but essentially if you wanted an interactive loading screen then what ever it was had to be part of the game itself instead of being something separate. There were other ways to also get around the patent but most of them wouldn't be worth it to implement or directly harm the game
I remember having a controller with drift issues and it always seemed odd to me that such a problem was so easily fixed by just fully rotating the stick a few times.
I just repaired my cousin's PS5 Dual Sense 5 controller. The drifting issue was onto the right analog stick where he's experiencing a horizontal drift. Upon checking his potentiometer, there were tiny hairline scratches onto the graphite sensor, and there were exposed traces causing the drift towards to the left. So it could be that the quality of the powdered graphite sensor inside the potentiometer wears off and gets scratched when dust gets inside. I was able to replace it and it worked like it's brand new but the sheer hassle was the contact film for the buttons, I gotta clean it multiple times before every front facing buttons could work again. Alot of companies design our products through timed obsolescence, they don't really want our things to last so that we could end up buying another replacement for it. I just hope guilikit could come up with a conversion kit for the DS5 analog stick so it's magnetized rather than the traditional graphite potentiometers where in it wears off and causes the drift again after 1-2 years.
Yeah if there's specific spots that go bad in the pot there's nothing you can do to fix that in software. But the other sort of wear seems more common, which is a general loss of conductivity over the whole range, which certainly is fixable by recalibrating the maximum voltage expected.
Hall effect sticks only solve part of the problem. This demonstration shows that contact pad sticks can work and last long and I've seen that magnet sticks can still be bad when not made well. As long as we can find better controller for our systems and be able to repair or upgrade controllers if that isn't possible then the world has gotten better. A lot of things get in the way of that though such as anti-competitive patents and encrypted controller communications preventing it from being possible to use haptic triggers in 3rd party controllers without hacking the games that use that technology. I tell you, way to many companies are too insecure to provide good products because they think that they should be the only ones to make something. I wish we can just copy other peoples technologies. At least anyone could make the best controller instead of the companies playing keep away from the masses.
@@ghostderazgriz That's true. I just wish that being rich can still be obtained while still making the world a better place. Though to be fair I'm not sure is being rich has ever been obtainable without taking someone elses treasures. Might be possible, but with how our world is now and what we have made out of banknotes, it might take us a while.
It has always been so weird to me that I've never even conceived the idea of stick drift throughout the thousands of hours of ps2 games I used to play when I was younger. But could happen after only dozens of hours playing Nintendo switch, it is a sad regression.
Nintendo's hardware has never been good. They bank on their brand name and game exclusivity to get people to buy their products. Incredibly anti-consumer, which is why all the nintendo loyalty has always been hard to understand for me. Basically the Apple of video games.
@@TheGielnik The thing is, their games are top notch gameplay bombs. Old like new games are allways good and very much playable. Old Zelda? Fuck was it nice. New Zelda? Holy shit. Old Mario? Spend DAYS on this on the toilet, new Mario games? You call it, its still fun. You can make the list longer and longer, the only thing that sucks more and more is Pokemon.
@TheGielnik to say that Nintendo's hardware has never been good is kind of a lie. Up until the Gamecube their machines were the most powerful main systems on the market. The Wii, while low power is one of the most reliable systems ever made. The Switch is long in the tooth but even that was a decent handheld GPU at launch.
@@CrizzyD91 Really? It's a widely known fact that the PS1 was stronger than N64, it wasn't even a contest. N64 couldn't even play FMVs or have high quality music because carts had 10x less storage space than CDs. I'll give you consoles like SNES because they basically had no competition at all back then.
This kind of automatic calibration has been standard on controllers/joysticks for decades (since before the PS2) and is also present on various other controllers such as Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Potentiometers always have some manufacturing variability so you need a calibration mechanism no matter what; very early controllers for 8/16 bit consoles and PCs might have had no mechanism or a manual one (same with early PC gameport type joysticks with DOS and early Windows), but anywhere you have a controller interpreting the signals it will do this kind of calibration. Actual noticeable stick drift happens because the resistance of the potentiometer can wear out in a _nonlinear_ way, so that the centerpoint is no longer exactly halfway between the two positive and negative extremes of the stick's possible positions (it will, electrically, be slightly to one side and thus won't match the physical position when centered). No amount of automatic endpoint calibration can resolve this, although a more comprehensive manual calibration step where you explicitly set the center position can help a bit more. Some systems do in fact set the center-point on boot up or controller connect (by assuming the sticks are at the center point when the controller is first powered on), but I'm not sure offhand which consoles and devices do this. The nonlinearity and bias at the center for a worn stick can be mitigated to a degree by having a "dead-zone" around the zero position; your experience of the PS2 "not" having drift likely more relates to how the control curves and deadzones are tuned on either the controller, console, or the games you're playing and nothing to do with the analog sticks themselves (which basically all operate on the same wear-prone principle) and more to do with the particulars of the software environment and stack you're running and testing with. In other words, some part of the PS2 controller, console, or games you're playing are using very large deadzones to mask any potential drift which eats up some of your stick range and is especially noticeable in games where you need to make small, slow adjustments to the stick's position near its center. Some joysticks (such as the Nintendo Switch Joycons) are even more prone to this problem owing to the geometry and small size of their potentiometer wiper surfaces, but all potentiometer-based joysticks are affected to one degree or another and all get worse as the controller gets worn. The only controllers that are actually immune to this are those using non-contact sensors such as hall effects (magnetic) to measure stick position, which do not have any electrical surfaces that wear over time at all. The sticks can still get mechanically loose, but center should always be center no matter how old the controller is. Unfortunately, such hall effect sticks are quite rate. They were (as far as I recall), used on the Dreamcast controllers as well as some versions of the early PS3 Sixaxis (not Dualshock) controllers, but are not otherwise used in any mainstream first-party console controllers. There are now a couple third-party manufacturers making hall effect gamepads (GuliKit's Kingkong 2 and 8BitDo's new Ultimate Bluetooth controllers) so if they're compatible with your preferred console, you do now have at least some options for drift-free controller gaming.
I think it's the quality of sticks which is extremely bad this gen , Xbox one and ps4 controllers had it worse then Xbox 360 and ps3 but ps5 and series have pushed it way to far
The point still stands that older remote controllers, despite using potentiometers too, rarely had any stick drift issues, which means the potentiometers used in new controllers are of much lower quality because the companies want to maximize profits or capitalize on repairs/spare parts
the joycon sticks worst flaw isn't just the small wipers. It's the layout and design of the wipers. Other controllers use circular plates with wipers on them. The joycons only have thin wipers on linear pads, which can bend and wear off more.
@@ferez1985 have you read his comment? back then deadzones were massive around the centerpoint. another reason is joysticks getting smaller lowering margin of error and being more prone to malfunction
Im new to this kind of information, but i could vividly tell that the only problems i often had more than i can remember with PS2 joysticks is not stick drift but how fast it is the rubber worn out and become sticky
I never had the chance for the rubber to wear out, my son would get ahold of the controlers and eat the rubber. Found out later he's autistic and has a thing for rubber.
I never had stick drift up until the 360. I bought a Razer controller, and it started drifting after a few months, so I went back to the stock controller. I switched to PC after that. But it is crazy to see they don’t use the most basic self zeroing tech anymore. Something basic every stock controller up until now had.
they realize they could get people to buy brand new controllers for $50 or more. I know some pro twitch players literally buying dozens every year just because how fast they wear out. Literally planned obsolescence at its finest
@Android Phone haha, the answer is really obvious if you think about it for a second.. they want more money from you. Why cure cancer when you can make so much money from it? Why fix stick drift when you can make money from it? It's all greed. I'm not a religious person, but never forget the 7 sins because they are derived from observing human nature.
PS2 controllers also had a button combination you could press which would reset the analogue stick calibration. I don't recall the exact combination, but it was possible to do it whilst holding the sticks off centre to automate games. EG. hit the reset combination whilst holding the left stick a little bit to the right, and the right stick fully down... then let the sticks return to centres... made GT3 think I was slightly turning left and applying full throttle constantly. I completed some of the oval endurance races using this trick with an overpowered car riding the walls 😁
That’s actually a great solution that Xbox could effortlessly implement to save people headache. When the resting position has drifted, just let us set the new resting positions. It’d be similar to calibrating the wii motion plus so it knows it’s orientation. I always thought it should just remember, but it makes sense all the motion would also effect it.
@@DlcEnergy Thats how it worked for some flight sticks, it was bad, it could turn your joystick to have 100% movement on one side and 30% on the other. Since windows XP there is a full calibration procedure so the only problem is not the drift but rather noise/stutter/shake.
@@DlcEnergy While this would fix the center position being off, stick drift on a One/DualSense style stick typically has different forms and the most common form I see (Especially in the Dualsense, less common in the Xbox) is the stick centers fine, but when you press a direction the stick shoots left instead of the intended direction. For some reason the stick drift I described has never happened on any DS4 controller I've seen, only Xbox and DualSense.
@@johncarteriii2039 Also one thing that's weird is Xbox lets you configure the controller, but only lets you create deadzones for the triggers. Who's gonna need it for the triggers? That feature would only come in handy to ignore stick drift. They could easily do the same thing for the analog sticks. But i guess they're just living in opposite land and like to subvert expectations!
It basically auto calibrates itself to correct for bad readings. It most likely has a tolerance level at the edges where there is the max input but it has a range, so that it can be adjusted.
no it does not autocalibrates and all of those bullshit said in the video, it's just the zeroing Mechanism that is mess up in 1 Direction only, if he had pulled up after the drift would have occurred again
Many of the PS2 OGs either were told or found out for themselves that this would often be a direct result of rage quitting and tossing the controller. So every time you did and then noticed the joysticks were a bit off, you knew exactly why and spun them around a few times to recalibrate it.
mine just broke into pieces ..only did rage quit 3 times in my life...only had 4 controllers and was poor..had to buy my own games and controllers to.got down to 1 controller and said never again cause i wont be able to play madden 03 and gran turismo 2. took 20+years for this to stick drift tho.....new consoles use the same stick modules ..xbox ps switcth you name it....china bro. we need japan back..
This is a classic example of when things were built to last. Nowadays electronics are made to last a few years, so when it breaks of you go to but the new model. The greed of capitalism.
Maybe, but we as consumers are to blame too. We always choose the absolutely cheapest option. Or at least enough of us do that there's a race to the bottom to get those sales. At some point it's very hard to sell a premium product because the competition is half the price.
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@@xeostube Except official controllers are "premium" options, yet even they abuse planned obsolescence. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo could've use better sticks, it doesn't add that much to the cost.
A few years? My controllers always get drift after a few months, I started to just buy extended warranties instead of a new controller every 6-12 months
@@crypt_kicker007 im Pissed i ran thru 2 brand new controllers in less than 12 months and lost my receipts. Horrible. Weird how my controller that came with the ps5 in november 2020 still works perfectly after all these years. Weird.
I think part of it is also that older games used bigger deadzones for there games (the amount of distance you had to move your joystick in any direction before the game would recognize an input). With games advancing more and more and especially in FPS games where deadzones have decreased so much to allow for more precise aiming, it’s only natural that the minimal stick drift that was probably present in old controls but never noticed due to the big deadzones games used to have, is now being noticed because of the way games are being developed currently
Could also have to do with planned obsolescense. Companies want you to keep buying controllers, thus they give them a shorter lifetime to make you come back and get another sooner rather than later. They've been doing it since the lightbulb's been around, and it just gets worse with todays capitalistic mindset.
@@serendipish_364It only works because people are kinda forced into a consumerist mindset due to weak money and some other things, you don't need a controller to play games, if it's bad, don't buy it. I don't know what you mean by "capitalistic mindset" but I would personally categorize this behaviour as corporativistic, in a true capitalist system it probably wouldn't be hard to find alternatives, but here, with all kinds of regulations and IP in the way they basically are free to exploit everyone with little to no punishment and the only thing you can do about it is whine until government decides to use violence against someone that you dislike for a problem that they created in the first place.
Some older nintendo consoles used relative positioning for the joystick instead of absolute, which is why it would say in the manual not to touch it while connecting it or switching on the console, so it could calibrate where the centre is.
The only time i had it was because the joystick was physically broken, replaced the potentiometers and as brand new. Neat feature we had then, this just proves that newer tech isn't always better.
yes and that is literally what causes stick drift, when the potentiometers go tits up. that is literally what can happen to any analog stick. i had a n64 controller that had terrible stick drift. i don't see what newer tech has anything to do with it, it's called out sourcing inferior parts. like the switch, that's called cutting corners and being cheap.
it's not newer tech, it's the same tech made as cheaply as possible and without consideration for what that cost cutting would do. why waste money letting the joystick autocalibrate/recenter itself? they'll last long enough and after they break we'll get to sell them a new one!
This is actually cool af. Grew up on ps2. Went to 360, the Xbox one and now series 2. But I always wondered how my childhood controllers hold up better than a new one
@@silver1407 the fact that you don't even understand that simple terminology just goes to show how far off we are of even considering doing anything like this. Look up the kardashev scale
That's actually pretty sick! I also really like how the buttons on a Dualshock 2 or high quality 3rd party PS2 controller are pressure sensitive. Big shame that we've got some really feature rich controllers nowadays yet they can't do the same things that controllers that are way older already did
The old ps1 analog also had pressure sensitive buttons. I can only recall this feature being used in metal gear solid 1: holding the square button had you aim your gun, and releasing it would fire it. To put it down you could SLOWLY release the square button. But a safer way to it would be unequip the gun tapping R2 or change the item holding r2 and selecting other weapon.
PS2 controllers are the best. i love mine. I know this is about stick drift, but theres something else i wanna mention about them i love. when i first got my PS2 and heard they had pressure sensitive buttons it blew my mind. but just being able to squeeze the button, and then ease off it so snake doesn't fire his gun after drawing it, or so you can stay a consistent speed in a driving game, is such a great thing to have. how controllers that are supposedly generations ahead, can be worse than the ones behind, i just dont understand. i mean i do when it comes to things like thumb stick covers wearing out (money money money, gotta get you buying new ones somehow) but just overall functionality being worse than a previous gen when it should be an improvement is nuts.
Technology in the past 20~ years seems to have gone the way of unnecessary vanity and stupid additions rather than functionality or user experience. You're supposed to buy a product because its the "new, cutting edge" thing, when in reality it's just the same old garbage with things you enjoyed removed.
Pressure sensitive buttons suck ass who likes to jam a button hard as fuck just to go as fast as you can? That's what triggers are for and why it's no longer a thing... it was a terrible idea
@@dougr8646 the triggers are pressure sensitive aswell. and its not like you have to push them any harder than just regular buttons, it just means that pushing them lightly is different to pushing them regularly. if you were having to squeeze the buttons really hard, then either your controller was scuff, or your game was.
Gamecube is the same, but the calibration is done by software on boot. The manual tells you to keep the sticks centered on boot, otherwise you end up with a wrong center point and you have to unplug and replug the controller to recenter it correctly.
i dunno if it's the same problem but playing smash ultimate with gc controllers through an adapter sometimes the sticks will be held towards some direction until you unplug them and plug them back in
which like 5 games used and it made the buttons feel mushy as hell, and both the duke and the s og xbox controllers were also pressure sensitive and their buttons were tactile and crisp
@@Chester200100 just because devs didn't have the time/knowledge/need to implement the pressure sensitive tech, doesn't mean it wasn't fantastic when it was implemented. Have you never played a racing game or MGS2 on og PS2 hardware? It was amazing.
@@Chester200100 your confusing your experience playing on older hardware now after experiencing modern tech and controls, versus how someone playing MGS2-3 when it first came out would have experienced it. Trust me, it was groundbreaking. Yes, using a PS2 or PS1 controller now your like "blech, feels old". IMO I HATE the clicky Xbox buttons, they've always been clicky. Feels like I'm using a toy. Even today I have both a Series X and Ps5, hate going to the Xbox controller after. I like the slight mushiness. Don't even get me started on the Dpad 🤮
@@adaMAntiumBounce as i wrote xbox had analog buttons too and those sweet analog triggers which were way better for racing games, tactile buttons are superior because you probably wanna know if you pressed the button or not, the dpad was shit on that point i agree
Ps2 buttons also had pressure sensitivity, modern controllers (xbox and playstation) only feature 2 which are the trigger buttons so you can have variable throttle in racing games. PS2 controllers however featured it on the 4 buttons as well, prime example, the crouch/prone button in the Socom games required a variable input button. Things really were built better back then, its not just nostalgia.
You know why they removed those? Virtually nothing used them after the PS2/Xbox era because by that point, most games were made with PC in mind and then ported to consoles. And it's true to this day, the touch pad, light bar and integrated speaker on PS4 and PS5 controllers are properly used by virtually no games, except those made with consoles in mind. The last huge cross platform game made with consoles in mind that I can think of is GTA V. And it uses all the controller features very well. P.S. I think the Dualshock 2 had the analog function on all buttons except the start, select and mode buttons. I remember trying analog control with L2 and R2 buttons on Gran Turismo and it kinda worked.
never knew this, but it's really cool, they made the gampad's firmware self calibrating! fun fact: the analog sticks of the sega saturn analog pad, and the dreampad were hall effect based (magnetically tracked), and completely impervious to wear, be it stick drift or center wiggle. they only needed s little lubrication every few hundred hours. you could have a pad with half the buttons dead, and the plastic worn down over thousand of hours, and the sticks still center and track perfectly.
Wait so this self zeroing tech is software based and not hard ware, I'm guessing the potentiometers are also bigger with a much bigger spring and of course better quality
@@MGrey-qb5xz it only works with linear drift. with alinear drift it gets really hard to compensate. Also a lot of older games have bigger deadzones. But joycons for example are also designed bad.
@@dankrigby5621idk that would mean bad ps2 responsiveness which never happened especially with games like dbz bt3 and dmc 3, this dead zone argument seems to be made up
@@MGrey-qb5xz depends on the game. I never encountered drift in newer playstation controllers either. Only in switch controllers and they have a different architecture and some games have no deadzone entirely.
I remember from several years ago some websites would suggest rotating both sticks on the DS2 at the same time a couple of times at least every time you boot up a game because it'd help with precision, and I could see it for myself on any controller tester I used (they'd be off-center at first then they'd be right on or closer to the center). They never explained why it worked like that and I never understood why this wasn't a thing with other controllers, only official DS2 controllers apparently, now I can see it's genius design. Worth noting most other controllers I was using at the time were third-party which would have huge deadzones and that made me unaware of drifting for several years; ironically I only became aware of and experienced driting when I started using more first-party controllers besides the DS2. As a complete electronic noob I wonder if this effect is built into the potentiometers or the PCB, because if it's the former I could try "transplanting" DS2 potentiometers into more modern controllers like the DS4, although stuff like voltage differences could be an issue. I also wonder if it's a circuitry thing or a software thing, because if it's the later they could easily fix this issue with a firmware update on the controller itself. Even if it's a circuitry thing at least someone could come up with a mod to re-create the effect/feature on newer controllers, I mean, they've already made these screws to manually adjust the center of each individual potentiometer, which is not a solution I personally like too much but it shows the community is getting their hands on it.
I'm sure it's built into the PCB if it lives in the controller at all - the potentiometers are extremely simple and entirely mechanical, no circuits at all.
@@xeostube Now that I think about it, long ago I remember once transplanting the analog modules of a broken DS2 into an X360 controller (because I didn't have any replacements at hand at the time) and yeah, the sticks were still drifting and the rotating trick didn't work, so I guess that's my confirmation the potentiometers themselves had nothing to do with it.
Crazy to think that as a kid I did this just as a game but it actually ended up being something to help the longevity of my controllers. I still use the original PS2 controllers I got launch day and still to this day have had zero issues with the controllers. No button stick, no drift. Perfect as the day I picked them up. Makes you long for the days when planned obsolescence wasn't a buzzword for big companies
Cool video! I remember vividly the original Playstation DualShock (PS1) controller came with an instruction manual that talked at length about how the pots in the analog sticks worked. It talked about how important it was for the sticks to be in the neutral position when the console was booted up, and it suggested rotating the sticks a time or two if the input produced unexpected on-screen results. The modern problem that we see in XBox, Switch, and Playstation controllers is, sadly, an effect of cost cutting on the manufacturers' parts. Plus, they figured out they can sell more controllers if the sticks drift like crazy.
We've seen constant cost cutting on controllers. PS3 battery lasted like twice as long as PS4 battery yet they still put a stupid LED light on it to drain it even more.
There's also a massive software deadzone on all games of that era and on 360, it was recommended to be 25% of the value range. On newer systems, there has been a mandate from platform owners to reduce the software deadzone. Newer sticks are also smaller (the box that goes on the PCB) and the reduced size of centring spring causes it to lose tension faster. Of course there's also potentiometer trouble but i don't think there has been a major change there over generations save for some particular design mishaps like the Switch and some occasional variance in quality. In my experience the potentiometers hold up better than the rest of the assembly.
During the Covid days, I got stuck at home for a year and a half with my PS3. Instead of actual DS3 controller, I used one of my friends' original DS2 controller with a USB adapter plugged into the PS3 and I used it for 2 years straight. Some of the games are real damn hard and I played COD World at War on it on Veteran. It was so hard, I always punched the controller until I get the Platinum. Until to this day, I still haven't encounter a stick drift and that's a continuous use within 2 years. Superb quality controller.
The only old school controllers free from stick drift were the Dreamcast controllers, as they had hall effect sensor technology. I now use an 8bitdo controller with PC which also has hall effect sticks, it's amazing.
The Dreamcast was an amazing piece of technology, if they had of done a version of the "Nintendo quality" seal to help Devs learn their platform and help get around the inherent complexity, it could have dominated.
I didn't know that either and I'm a mega DC fan. I mean even in store demos for it the thumbstick wouldn't have ANY bumps and would be completely glazed over smooth and it would still work just fine. Never had a single issue with my DC pads.
yeah but that 8bitdo with hall effect sticks is going to eventually have its battery dead un a couple of years and you wont be able to change it. Is that controller capable of being used in wired mode?
I find that the metal used for the small wheels inside for the potentiometers are made ever so slightly thicker so that they maintain their shape. Whereas I've fixed 100's of analog drift now where the remedy is mostly to remove the little wheels and bend back the metal rings slightly to separate them and clean them with contact cleaner and the drift will be sorted. Over time these metal rings inside, they stop pressing onto the contact point properly, or get gunked up, or whatever, whereas with the older ps2 ones they are firmer and so always have a good contact and maintain their shape/position. Xbox one/ps4 analogs are slightly smaller now and overall made cheaper, using a slightly thinner metal and things like that so they do not last. And then if you add peoples play styles to that ontop you get the perfect storm for stick drift. Back then people werent hammering the analogs and pressing the analog button in to run and things like that in online matches, at most you would use them to accelerate in gran turismo or look around in tomb raider 3 for the ps1, or for the ps2 people often used the d pad to control or choose analog if they wished, or if a game like metal gear solid 3 for example used the analogs extensively - its the sort of stop/start gameplay that gives the analogs a break. Games like call of duty and fortnight are not good for analogs at all. You will find that the option to use analog or d pad can give analog sticks a better life because most n64 analogs are all loose and wobbly now because they almost were exclusively used in every game for moving and looking etc in a game like goldeneye you would precision aim and move with the analog
The PS2 had this to fix mild drift, and the Saturn and Dreamcast have Hall Effect sticks to circumvent it entirely. Yet now, thumbsticks drift straight from the box. It's wild.
Clearly the hall effect method is best, though it can't fix wear and tear to the springs and such that make the sticks loose (this can't either). Nothing lasts forever. The PS2 controllers failed from a poor button design instead (I have a box full of them with failing buttons and perfect sticks).
I owned several ps2 controllers and yes, aside from the spring literally wearing out and not keeping the stick in upright position, i never experienced drifting
The manuals told you about rotating the sticks and the N64 and GameCube mentioned how to reset their control sticks too. I remember just rotating the joysticks every time I would boot the PSX or PS2. I still do at times because it became habit, but it doesn't mean anything to modern controllers.
The N64 was a special case of not just using graphite, but also using a plastic rail on the stick to guide it. The shavings caused drift issues and the loss of mass caused looseness, but if you clean them, they remain accurate and the looseness isn't a problem
Hell, I remember on our old Win95 PC we had there were games that required us to calibrate the joystick any time we wanted to use it. It only took a few moments to hold the stick in the requested directions, followed by letting it return to center each time. Guess that was something newer tech got rid of because it was too clunky to be user friendly or something. I honestly wouldn’t mind 30 seconds of calibration on a controller where I hold the sticks in certain positions to work out the drift.
i think mechanics also has to do with it.if the springs of the stick wear out over time, you no longer have a sharp, defined "zero" position. the only way for software to correct this is with a larger "inner deadzone", but that makes the stick feel really unresponsive to smaller movements. So i think sony also did a good job creating a controller that just doesnt wear out as fast as competitors. Think of the N64 with its joystick that just becomes really loose after a few years of usage.
Yes. And there's nothing you can do about loose sticks. But you see drift in plenty of sticks that aren't loose, and this method does help (not necessarily 100% of the time) with that problem.
i agree. my "vintage" analog controllers all suffer from drift caused by worn in springs. but all my controllers suffer from it, ps3, 360, and xbox one. i do believe its common knowledge things are always more "sturdy" in the past. ps1/ps2 was the early days of analog sticks that weren't just digital arcade sticks. so they used more reliable materials, over time they cut corners and choose more specific parts. this same centering firmware is in all controllers. if i recall right its a part of the issue with switch controllers. the software in conjunction with cheap pots results in an analog stick that is prone to wear and becoming inaccurate. that kind of drift is not fixable without firmware updates and hardware recalls or at best, user repairs. mice are a great example, a good high force, for example 250g, mouse button will last a long time, but a cheap 50g one wont. and manufacturers use the cheapest and most specific ranged ones they can find. the button with a spring to resist 250g is much bulkier and less prone to wear than a 50g one. someone should just make an adapter, like an all in one solution. like reverse usb lol. lemme plug in any similar buttoned controller in to any similar retro console and just game without a spiderweb of ends on my cable. like what xbox did with the breakaway cable, use that connector and make different ends with some glob chip to convert the usb. its gotta be doable.
@@joemieszczur9735 Good point on the mouse buttons. I have mine in use for nearly 6 years now, still have the one I used for 5 years before it, and both click perfectly fine. But with the current edition of my mouse it isn't uncommon to get double clicks after just a couple months of heavy use.
I used my N64 controller to death and never had any problem. If anything the N64 stick spring is legendary for how tough and strong it is, causing blisters on hands and thumbs when rotated in games like Mario Party. Those with loose sticks simply abused the crap out of of it, most likely intentionally in rage.
@cattysplat This is a lie or you didn't use your N64 controller much. The mechanism is completely different from PS2 and the blisters were caused by the terrible analog stick, not from the spring in the controller 😂 if the controller was harming people there would have been recalls.
Wish the PS3 controllers still did this, most of mine have drift, had to start taking them apart to clean them out and fix it (and the random button press issue). User adjustable dead zones should really be standard, would help a lot.
A simple calibration system like that built into windows since at least Windows 98 would fix most joystick drift with nearly no loss in accuracy. It's *almost* criminal that this is not built into the newest consoles. A lot of game controllers are going into the landfills because of it.
The PS3 had drift-proof sticks that had hall effect sensors. The only 'drift' you get is the sticks themselves getting loose over time. The random button presses are fixable if you put more pressure on the contact with the PCB.
In my little experience with a ps2 controller, I had drift specifically playing Black, and in no other game else. I don't know what the drift was due to because it belonged to an acquaintance so I don't know how he treated it, but he also had it in storage for many years without being used. (I used a translator for this message so apologies if any part is misspelled)
There is a Homebrew app that allows you to see the raw position of the joysticks without any normalization. So it may be that by default there is a calibration system but it's possible to bypass and that game chose to bypass it for whatever misguided reason? Perhaps to eliminate dead zones?
@Carl Gunderson It depends on the game. In those days most games had really big deadzones, but maybe Black was one of the exceptions. Especially given how it is described as being ahead of it's time.
Potentiometer is actually a variable resistor, so it resists the current, and divides the magnitude of what actually gets to that node. So yes it allows more conductivity depending on how it a moved, or becomes more resistant depending on how it’s moved.
In the manual for the PS2 it mentions that you should rotate both sticks 360 degrees a few times when you first turn on the machine to calibrate the sticks
This video deserves more attention, seriously. I found it because I thought, "How come i have never heard of ps2 controller drift?". Keep is coming *subbed* 💯
I played a lot of dragon ball budokai 2 (I think that was the name) on the PS2 and you had to spin the stick a lot for the super moves. Years of spinning made it so the plastic arround the analog stick degraded and when I pushed it forward and let go it actually didnt go to the center again I got used to that and actually started liking it. I could make my caracter walk forward forever witough even touching the controler and such when I swapped to ps4 it felt so strange to have a working controler again.
I use my DualShock 2 since a long time with a Xbox 360 adapter, and it does suffer from a bit of drift. Whenever the option is available, I set the deadzone to something around 25% and it ceases to be an issue. The center area may lose its sensitivity, but the game is playable. I think most games have a narrower deadzone set as default, but it still helps. Running into games with no deadzone whatsoever is VERY annoying, though. Wish it was a more common option.
@@xeostubeReturn any controller that has a built-in 25% deadzone, don't buy it, don't support brands who do this. Went through a horrible experience recently with Razer controllers because they were doing exactly this on one of their models, to "avoid complaints of stick drift" they were shipping controllers with a built-in unchangable 25% to 30% deadzone. Absolutely despicable.
@@harrylane4 It's expensive ass plastic though. Controllers can cost upwards of $70 usd and they suck ultra-mega-ass compared to older and less expensive tech.
@Ozzymand I've thrown away at least 4 controllers because of it. The video is completely misleading, the drift on the PS2 comes and goes because of the potentiometers. If it's actually drifting the stick won't always drift the same amount and you'll also eventually end up with outer sensitivity being affected. I would be willing to bet if the poster moved the analog sticks 10x then at least one of those times the drift would have returned.
WIndows 7 has calibration for analog joysticks in the game devices/options. So when you use that adapter and plug in the dual shock you can calibrate it.
a potentiometer is not a sensor, is a component called variable resistor, its electrical resistance changes in base of where its being pointed at, it uses an internal graphite rod.
A better problem to have than drift, but equally unfortunate that as these potentiometers wore down, their effective range became worse. For small distances traveled it's not really too big of a deal, but when pushing the stick full tilt makes you run faster or changes your inputs, it becomes noticeable. It's a shame these much more reliable stick boxes weren't used in tandem with the N64's optical sensor - light isn't going to break down from use and the sticks themselves have nowhere near the level of friction issues the N64's had. Maybe it's just too big to be viable, but mice get smaller and smaller and the technology is effectively the same. Oh well!
I had never any issues with PSX/PS2/360 controlers, used them for years and they just worked, but these days it's a matter of time when something breaks, squeky analogs, drifting analogs. Controlers are much more expensive yet way more fragile.
My new DS4 has a catching, gritty feel in the sticks right out of the box. My first DS4 controller lasted for years, but then 2nd controller it's 3 months of use, and now 3rd right of the box defective. Not even disassembly, contact spray, and canned air fixes the grit feel. Extremely headache inducing
I have more problems with buttons than with the sticks...I use XBox One controllers and within a few months usually either at least one of the buttons will get semi stuck (when the rubber under the buttons just stays in place instead of plopping back up again) or one of the shoulder buttons breaks. First controller the RB just turned into stone and couldn't be pressed down and the 2nd one just last year after playing 100h of Elden Ring the RB completely broke out of it's fixture... Also it's annoying how controllers are such a pain to clean, especially when just after a few taxing sessions I find dried sweat on the shoulder buttons and they're easier to push into the controller than out...and you need a special tool to open up the thing because MS took inspiration from Apple apparantly. Whatever, now I have an off-brand Xbone controller and it has zero problems so far...and can easily be dismantled if I need to clean it or anything breaks
I used to always rotate my sticks when I first started playing; I noticed that it would have problems just when you start if the controller was laying on its face when you started the console so I always did this to get things working right. What I can't believe is that neither Microsoft nor Nintendo are using this feature to prevent drift.
Wow, amazing to know that! Do you know if any xbox controller has this feature aswell? And what about precision? Do you know if these controllers have any sort of in-built deadzone? And as far as I know the ds2 uses 8-bit stick resolution, which possibly affects its general precision.
I've not seen any Xbox One controllers that do this. And yes, the PS2 has a built in deadzone of around "10%-15%", although that's very hard to quantify. 8 bits won't matter much though, that would still be enough for more than 1% resolution both up and down, which is more than even the very best pro could benefit from. The sticks are just too small for that kind of precise movement to be repeatable.
@@xeostube Yeah, that sucks, this deadzone is way too high for my likings... Concerning xbox controllers, is there any possiblity that the older ones have this feature? I'm trying to find a good alternative to the current disposable controllers we have on this generation but it seems it's not that easy...
@@caslusotas9038 I have only messed with a few Xbox one controllers but none have (official, PDP and PowerA brands). Don't know about the older generation (360). Nobody ever complained about overlarge deadzones in the PS2 era. Although precision competitive shooters weren't the thing on the ps2 that they are now, one could argue that if a 10-15% dead zone was too big it would have been a bigger point of discussion back then. Most programmer docs I've looked at suggest at least 15% deadzone.
@@xeostube I was wondering if maybe someone could hack the firmware of ds4 controllers and implement on it something like that. I don't know if that's even possible but it would be amazing to see something like this happening.
I only started experiencing stick drift when I started playing pc games with an xbox controller. For 15 years, ps2 was my only gaming console, and now I'm appreciating it more than ever.
I have T300RS steering wheel and the pedals are work somewhat like that. When I start fully press at halfway at 100%, but when I fully pressed in it works normally
You know, I've often heard the phrase "They don't make them like they used to anymore", but I've never seen any live examples that affected me directly until now.
Thanks for the explanation. Is it possible to transplant the stick modules/potentiometers from a dualshock 2 to a dualshock 3? I'm on my last working DS3 and I would love to replace the sticks, but there's no quality replacements available. I know at least 1 of them is a 4-pin model. I have several perfectly functional DS2s.
IDK to be fully honest, however transplanting a stick is very hard as removing them without doing damage to the box they are in pretty much requires a desoldering station. So even if they are compatible it's going to be a very challenging task. Most people remove the analog stick by cutting the box and then desoldering each lag separately
@@xeostube I'm familiar with the stick module removal procedure and I have a soldering station and desoldering equipment. I'm just trying to find out if it's possible before I waste my time. Thanks anyway
@@xDD90x as long as the resistance is the same they should be compatible, but keep in mind the old stick may have drift that's fixed by the ps2 control logic. No such system in the PS3.
One reason we didn't notice it was because games were programmed to have huge dead zones, so they simply ignored the areas of movement where the potentiometers usually drift. Further, one of the reasons controllers don't auto-calibrate the range and center anymore is because if you turned on the system or controller with anything touching the stick, it could totally mess up the calibration until the next time the system or controller was turned on. This happened to me frequently and drove me nuts as my controllers would be wrapped in cables or left upside down in the couch or something, and it would mess up the controls for no obvious reason, until reset.
I remember moving the joysticks around not knowing why but I always saw my older cousins doing it so I did too. I'm glad I have an answer to this age old question.
@@phillloyd6248 It’s because I never experienced drift on any of my controllers 😂 I just upgraded my controller over the years just because. First I used a PS3 controller, then PS4, then Xbox Series X (to play Forza 4) and finally I bought a PS5 controller. Except for the PS3 controllers, which had some issues with buttons and stopped charging, they all work fine 🙃
Why use potenciometer controller if you can just buy hall effect one which will never have stick drift and is even like 10-20% cheaper than original PS5/Xbox controllers? Just look for "GuliKit KingKong 2 Pro" best controller i have ever had and it costs $70
while i agree wholeheartedly that sometimes old tech is better, WHOLEHEARTEDLY! I however cannot get over how much of an advancement the ps5 gamepad is. those adaptive triggers are way more of a gamechanger than my very skeptical ass thought they would be going in. I thought I was going to miss my wolverine ultimate, and I for sure do miss all those extra buttons, everything else is just superb, at least until stick drift enters the chat, obviously, lmao. but I'm also willing to replace those sticks on the circuit board level so I can get more longevity out of the controller than your average non soldering gamer might as long as i can get the right parts
Opinions are wild. The PS5 controller, to me, is junk. None of the features matter. It has poor battery life without the triggers and vibration. Using those gimmicks makes it die faster, and all they do is distract you. I don't want to be talked to through the mic. I don't want to have to pull the trigger harder to shoot something, becuase it is resisting. I dont want tiny rumbles whenever my characters farts or slips on ice. It's all gimmicks. I would have preferred longer battery life, and at least two programmable back buttons/paddles.
Adaptive triggers aren't worth a fuck if even the "revised" controller lasts a third as long on one charge as every other controller I have, at best. Gimmicks shouldn't come at the cost of basic functionality, I think, but that's just my opinion. Switched to Xbox Elite. Haven't looked back yet.
@@phant0mdummy rumble greatly enhances games for me. The subtle rumble when you centre the wheel on your ship in SOT for instance is something i can't do without.
I'm curious as to whether this is a hardware feature, or a software feature. It seems easier to implement on the software side, but I would assume that software is built into the playstation so has that feature also been built into the software you are using to monitor the joysticks position on your pc?
my ps2 controller has a weird form of stick drift wheere it's not the internal capacitors that are failing, its that the thumbstick doesn't go back to the middle on its own because it has too much give from overuse so if i move it right it will just stay going right and i have to manually center it
Also I prefer the dome shaped sticks than the newer concave ones. I find it easier to maneuver my thumbs around the sticks. If it's concave I find myself pressing down into the stick rathe than just cradling it. It's been a while since I last used a ps2/3 controller but I always preferred them
Theh feel more comfortable but i have far less control. Concave sticks are much more precise and even though my fingers hurt after awhile its worth it for better performance in games
the problem with the way the wear is calibrated is that it causes the software deadzone to grow over time as well, i have an old ps2 controller that now requires about 1/3 of the way tilted to measure any input at all. not necessarily better than modern tech, but you still need to replace sticks after a few years, ask anybody who speedruns games on older consoles how many controllers they go through. it just shifts the problem from drifting into deadzone, it doesnt actually eliminate the problem like something such as a HAL effect sensor does.
Back when I was a kid and have been in a supermarket where there were consoles on display to play with, the N64 and PS2 controllers had sticks so worn out the were just noodling around but still no input when not being tilted. That's how well this system works, wonder why they ditched it
I remember the documentation for the PS2 stating to rotate the joysticks as the system was booting to calibrate the controller. Do newer Sony consoles not still have this feature?
It's kinda interesting because the Gamecube had a different approach to the same problem (one that you may have noticed if you've ever held a direction on a gamecube controller analog stick while you were plugging it in or booting up the console) rather than the controller re-calibrating itself based on the full range of values like the PS2 controller does, the Gamecube controller (or perhaps the Gamecube itself - I forget if the same thing happens on modern USB adapters and ngl I've been too lazy to check) does an initial calibration at startup, where whatever position the stick is at when it's initialized, that is treated as exact center. There's also a button combination you can press to re-initialize the controller at any time.
Same thing on the N64 as well. Recently me and my brother were playing Mario Party and he had some drift on his controller. Unplugging and plugging it back in let the controller recalibrate itself and it was fine after that.
If the stick was loose even if it's done self calibrating it would still have stick drift. Notice that stick drift mostly happens on the left stick, we didn't have a lot of games that made use of an "L3" stick button until the ps3. Games like cod and pressing on the sticks to sprint have done a number on those little potentiometers.
A factor many don't take into account is that the consumer expects an increase in controller responsiveness and more immersive connection with these newer ones. So you want ultra sensitive joysticks that know if you barely nudge it your intent was to barely move, this means lower to no dead zone and better sensors, which also will lead to worsened drift due to hightened senses on the parts of the sensor that don't get shot. It's impossible to make any electronic last forever, and controllers get more use than most of your other electronics. Easy fix is changing deadzone. Up, left, right, down inputs are usually 0 or 1, but the consumer wanted 0.0001-1.0. Many older controllers had a higher dead zone as the range wasn't necessarily needed or needed in that much depth.
That is a problem for people who care, but most don't. This is only a thing for elite controllers and on PC where you can change the deadzone. I mean though, look up Hall effect sensors. They are a completely viable replacement for sticks, and don't get stick drift because they don't use contact points that wear out, it uses magnetism. The way I see it is that simply, improving the controller will 100% lead to reduced profits because people won't need more, it's trivial to deduce that until consumers make enough of a fuss, and companies start selling hall effect controllers, they will continue to do what they are doing. There's no excuse other than, they make money.
I don't expect "an increase in controller responsiveness" since the responsiveness was fine even as far back as N64. What I expect is control pads that aren't basically guaranteed to drift within a few years of normal use. Shocking how much they charge for such shoddily built trash
It's a trade-off; if you have a larger dead zone you get less drift but less sensitivity. The ps2 seems to be doing more than just having a large deadzone, however, as it's actually detecting the full range of the controller and intelligently guessing where the middle should be based on the range. The larger deadzone probably makes this guess more robust. Of course all you need is a manual calibration mode like windows offers and you'd have the best of both worlds: accuracy and no more drift.
You can do that on never Controllers on the PC too. But it's cool that it calibrates automatically, even tho I wonder how it can tell that you're Joystick is on the max position. Does it just override the max position if it get's one bigger?
I had stick drift woth my ps3 controller but the weird thing was that it was controlled by the left bumper. If I hit the bumper I would move that direction a tiny bit. Was frustrating trying to build in minecraft as I kept falling off my builds
I had stick drift on PS2 all the time, I had more hours than anyone on the PS2, and obviously, one of the reasons to replace them, to be honest the only console that i never heard of it was the Dreamcast because it had hall effect joysticks, the tecnology was aways there but Sony deliberate makes the controller to break eventually, starting by the buttons symbols wearing very fast, joystick rubbers and cables with no stress relief, nowdays the technology on sticks still deliberated the same and Sony focus on more marketing features rather than durability but now with battery degradation too, nowdays i mod my controllers
Is it time to found the first department of Game Sciences? Like most "first departments" it will turn out that several will all claim to be first without ever bothering to check.
I really wish gaming companies put care into their work like how the PS2 era did with their consoles and the gaming companies that made the games, the new generation of gaming really became a subscription service for online, consoles, controllers, weapons in games, cosmetics, you name it, it’s going to be a subscription
would this reduce the accuracy of the stick over time? since the conductivity of the potmeter is getting lower, would the change in resistance from moving the stick be so small that it would be hard to detect?
it's less of an example of "old tech being better than new tech" and more of an example of a clever solution to a problem that was forgotten about across generations.
I never actually had stick drift on my PS4 controllers either. It was always the bumper or trigger that went on them for me, and one case of a Square button sticking. I had an Aim Controller for about 2 years, which was modded straight off the Dualshock 4, and that seemingly had this fix too. I'd have the habit of flicking my stick down and the camera would reset back into its true position. I may even recall this working on my Turtle Beach Recon too. These of course only lasted for a little while though and as with all other modded controllers it only got worse. Have an 8BitDo Xbox controller now and the deadzone is all over the place if I don't unplug and plug it back when starting my Xbox up. Is a digital deadzone a thing? The 8BitDo has software where you can "fix" the deadzone, but it's obviously not as good of a measure as something like you showed us here on the PS2 controller.
Would that mean then that a solution to modern stick drift could be fixed with a firmware update that detects the full range of motion and recalculates the center position?
While at a friend's house, I brought our PS2 to play, and noticed some drift. While I was hesitant to, he wanted to open the controller to realign it, and it worked.
I wonder if the original Xbox is similar been playing San Andreas and at first CJ will be walking backwards and if I push the stick forwards it won’t fix it but like you showed in the video if I pull it back towards me it makes it stop when I let go pretty interesting
This is why some of us older gamers used to rotate the sticks around a few times when we were playing and things felt wrong, and then all would be as it should be
So that's why it felt like it worked, becouse it worked.....
Yeah I remember when Cj just randomly starts moving when I boot up the game for the first time and after Rotating the Stick, The drift always goes away.
It's what Halo players refer to as "the Ogre twitch" because a pro player called Ogre2 did it frequently during gameplay im pretty sure this is why he did it all the time cause I have always done a similar thing always but a lot of ppl assumed it was like a small habit he had midgame to keep active similar to CS players flicking the knife constantly
AND now im gonna do that with all my controllers. Thanks!
I forgot i ever did this it brought back so many memories
it's interesting to note that this is technically a documented feature, as in the instructions it mentions rotating the joysticks once after plugging them into the console.
In dragon ball game there is a mini game to rotate the sticks
@@1jordy11 This is a patent that only that developer can use. It is specifically for load screen mini games.
@@GabeLogan4658 ...You do realize that patent expired in 2015.
Wanna know why its not used anymore? Its because loading times for games is too short to implement them
@@1jordy11 you are talking about the energy clashes in DBZ, Budokai Tenkaichi 3, right?
@@alteonaska1735 No he's referring to the loading screen mini like moving the flying nimbus to collect capsules or making vageta do push ups it varies between the games as I can't recall which belongs to which game.
For those wondering why they stopped making quality controllers, it’s because they want controllers to be a $70 a year subscription instead of a one time purchase
Life cycle for sticks is 3 months with constant use it's ridiculous
Same reason old phones on a 3g network works infinitely better than the bs we have now.
Planned obsolescence. It's a market standard now for all tech.
[citation needed]
WOOOAH GUYS HE SAID "SUBSCRIPTION" IN A FUNNY AND DEPRESSING WAY THAT MEANS WE LIVE IN A LITERALLY WORST DYSTOPIA TIMELINE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE JUST SAID AND THE MORE PEOPLE REPEAT IT MEANS THE MORE TRUE IT IS WHICH MEANS WERE FUCKING DOOMED WOAAAAH!!!!
WOOAAAH AND HES TOTALLY DOING IT FOR LIKES AND TO TOALLY NOT HURT PEOPLE WHO HAVE MENTAL ISSUES, TOTALLY NOT, WOAHHH!!!
This was also one of the reasons for some of those loading screen minigames. Not only was it a way to entertain people as they waited but many were used to get the player to move around the joysticks in case of drift
Wow, now that makes a lot of sense.
“The More You Know” moment
And it only went away because Namco patented it.
Thanks for nothing, Namco. Also the US patent office for granting such a ridiculous patent in the first place.
DBZ Budokai trilogy definately helped combat stick drift 🤣
@@DisturbedNeo well Namco's patent was ridiculous but other games could still have interactive loading screens. It was stupid but essentially if you wanted an interactive loading screen then what ever it was had to be part of the game itself instead of being something separate. There were other ways to also get around the patent but most of them wouldn't be worth it to implement or directly harm the game
I remember having a controller with drift issues and it always seemed odd to me that such a problem was so easily fixed by just fully rotating the stick a few times.
Dumbest reply
it will only fix itself if it has a self zeroing feature, not all controllers have those. Which is silly, it should be standard.
@@TheStrayInu self correction means fewer new sales on controllers.
I also remember not having this kind stupid issues, that should not even happen at this point anymore.
" We are evolving, just backwards "
@@get-in-2-get-out774we are evolving just toward capitalist greed saddly
I just repaired my cousin's PS5 Dual Sense 5 controller. The drifting issue was onto the right analog stick where he's experiencing a horizontal drift. Upon checking his potentiometer, there were tiny hairline scratches onto the graphite sensor, and there were exposed traces causing the drift towards to the left. So it could be that the quality of the powdered graphite sensor inside the potentiometer wears off and gets scratched when dust gets inside.
I was able to replace it and it worked like it's brand new but the sheer hassle was the contact film for the buttons, I gotta clean it multiple times before every front facing buttons could work again.
Alot of companies design our products through timed obsolescence, they don't really want our things to last so that we could end up buying another replacement for it. I just hope guilikit could come up with a conversion kit for the DS5 analog stick so it's magnetized rather than the traditional graphite potentiometers where in it wears off and causes the drift again after 1-2 years.
Yeah if there's specific spots that go bad in the pot there's nothing you can do to fix that in software. But the other sort of wear seems more common, which is a general loss of conductivity over the whole range, which certainly is fixable by recalibrating the maximum voltage expected.
Hall effect sticks only solve part of the problem. This demonstration shows that contact pad sticks can work and last long and I've seen that magnet sticks can still be bad when not made well. As long as we can find better controller for our systems and be able to repair or upgrade controllers if that isn't possible then the world has gotten better. A lot of things get in the way of that though such as anti-competitive patents and encrypted controller communications preventing it from being possible to use haptic triggers in 3rd party controllers without hacking the games that use that technology. I tell you, way to many companies are too insecure to provide good products because they think that they should be the only ones to make something. I wish we can just copy other peoples technologies. At least anyone could make the best controller instead of the companies playing keep away from the masses.
@@benji-menji Yes well, a world without copyright is a less rich world.
And people like being rich.
@@ghostderazgriz That's true. I just wish that being rich can still be obtained while still making the world a better place. Though to be fair I'm not sure is being rich has ever been obtainable without taking someone elses treasures. Might be possible, but with how our world is now and what we have made out of banknotes, it might take us a while.
Late stage capitalism ladies and gentlemen
It has always been so weird to me that I've never even conceived the idea of stick drift throughout the thousands of hours of ps2 games I used to play when I was younger. But could happen after only dozens of hours playing Nintendo switch, it is a sad regression.
Nintendo's hardware has never been good. They bank on their brand name and game exclusivity to get people to buy their products. Incredibly anti-consumer, which is why all the nintendo loyalty has always been hard to understand for me. Basically the Apple of video games.
@@TheGielnik The thing is, their games are top notch gameplay bombs. Old like new games are allways good and very much playable. Old Zelda? Fuck was it nice. New Zelda? Holy shit. Old Mario? Spend DAYS on this on the toilet, new Mario games? You call it, its still fun. You can make the list longer and longer, the only thing that sucks more and more is Pokemon.
Pure greed
@TheGielnik to say that Nintendo's hardware has never been good is kind of a lie. Up until the Gamecube their machines were the most powerful main systems on the market. The Wii, while low power is one of the most reliable systems ever made. The Switch is long in the tooth but even that was a decent handheld GPU at launch.
@@CrizzyD91 Really? It's a widely known fact that the PS1 was stronger than N64, it wasn't even a contest. N64 couldn't even play FMVs or have high quality music because carts had 10x less storage space than CDs. I'll give you consoles like SNES because they basically had no competition at all back then.
This kind of automatic calibration has been standard on controllers/joysticks for decades (since before the PS2) and is also present on various other controllers such as Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Potentiometers always have some manufacturing variability so you need a calibration mechanism no matter what; very early controllers for 8/16 bit consoles and PCs might have had no mechanism or a manual one (same with early PC gameport type joysticks with DOS and early Windows), but anywhere you have a controller interpreting the signals it will do this kind of calibration.
Actual noticeable stick drift happens because the resistance of the potentiometer can wear out in a _nonlinear_ way, so that the centerpoint is no longer exactly halfway between the two positive and negative extremes of the stick's possible positions (it will, electrically, be slightly to one side and thus won't match the physical position when centered). No amount of automatic endpoint calibration can resolve this, although a more comprehensive manual calibration step where you explicitly set the center position can help a bit more. Some systems do in fact set the center-point on boot up or controller connect (by assuming the sticks are at the center point when the controller is first powered on), but I'm not sure offhand which consoles and devices do this.
The nonlinearity and bias at the center for a worn stick can be mitigated to a degree by having a "dead-zone" around the zero position; your experience of the PS2 "not" having drift likely more relates to how the control curves and deadzones are tuned on either the controller, console, or the games you're playing and nothing to do with the analog sticks themselves (which basically all operate on the same wear-prone principle) and more to do with the particulars of the software environment and stack you're running and testing with. In other words, some part of the PS2 controller, console, or games you're playing are using very large deadzones to mask any potential drift which eats up some of your stick range and is especially noticeable in games where you need to make small, slow adjustments to the stick's position near its center.
Some joysticks (such as the Nintendo Switch Joycons) are even more prone to this problem owing to the geometry and small size of their potentiometer wiper surfaces, but all potentiometer-based joysticks are affected to one degree or another and all get worse as the controller gets worn. The only controllers that are actually immune to this are those using non-contact sensors such as hall effects (magnetic) to measure stick position, which do not have any electrical surfaces that wear over time at all. The sticks can still get mechanically loose, but center should always be center no matter how old the controller is.
Unfortunately, such hall effect sticks are quite rate. They were (as far as I recall), used on the Dreamcast controllers as well as some versions of the early PS3 Sixaxis (not Dualshock) controllers, but are not otherwise used in any mainstream first-party console controllers. There are now a couple third-party manufacturers making hall effect gamepads (GuliKit's Kingkong 2 and 8BitDo's new Ultimate Bluetooth controllers) so if they're compatible with your preferred console, you do now have at least some options for drift-free controller gaming.
I think it's the quality of sticks which is extremely bad this gen , Xbox one and ps4 controllers had it worse then Xbox 360 and ps3 but ps5 and series have pushed it way to far
The point still stands that older remote controllers, despite using potentiometers too, rarely had any stick drift issues, which means the potentiometers used in new controllers are of much lower quality because the companies want to maximize profits or capitalize on repairs/spare parts
@@ferez1985 potentiometers used now are smaller too, meaning the small spring gets lose quicker
the joycon sticks worst flaw isn't just the small wipers. It's the layout and design of the wipers. Other controllers use circular plates with wipers on them. The joycons only have thin wipers on linear pads, which can bend and wear off more.
@@ferez1985 have you read his comment? back then deadzones were massive around the centerpoint. another reason is joysticks getting smaller lowering margin of error and being more prone to malfunction
Im new to this kind of information, but i could vividly tell that the only problems i often had more than i can remember with PS2 joysticks is not stick drift but how fast it is the rubber worn out and become sticky
I never had the chance for the rubber to wear out, my son would get ahold of the controlers and eat the rubber. Found out later he's autistic and has a thing for rubber.
Agreed
eeeeewwwwww we all remember that>~
The sticky rubber can be fixed with starch. Just be careful and don't get it on everything lol
I ended up having a metal pair of sticks made bc of that issue 😂 about 40 minutes on a garage lathe and I had pretty much identical aluminum sticks
I never had stick drift up until the 360. I bought a Razer controller, and it started drifting after a few months, so I went back to the stock controller. I switched to PC after that. But it is crazy to see they don’t use the most basic self zeroing tech anymore. Something basic every stock controller up until now had.
It's crazy, I don't know why they would ever remove this most basic recalibration feature
@@androidphone1901 Then you'd never need to buy a new controller ;)
they realize they could get people to buy brand new controllers for $50 or more. I know some pro twitch players literally buying dozens every year just because how fast they wear out. Literally planned obsolescence at its finest
You must have never had an N64.
@Android Phone haha, the answer is really obvious if you think about it for a second.. they want more money from you. Why cure cancer when you can make so much money from it? Why fix stick drift when you can make money from it? It's all greed. I'm not a religious person, but never forget the 7 sins because they are derived from observing human nature.
PS2 controllers also had a button combination you could press which would reset the analogue stick calibration. I don't recall the exact combination, but it was possible to do it whilst holding the sticks off centre to automate games. EG. hit the reset combination whilst holding the left stick a little bit to the right, and the right stick fully down... then let the sticks return to centres... made GT3 think I was slightly turning left and applying full throttle constantly. I completed some of the oval endurance races using this trick with an overpowered car riding the walls 😁
That’s actually a great solution that Xbox could effortlessly implement to save people headache. When the resting position has drifted, just let us set the new resting positions.
It’d be similar to calibrating the wii motion plus so it knows it’s orientation. I always thought it should just remember, but it makes sense all the motion would also effect it.
@@DlcEnergy Thats how it worked for some flight sticks, it was bad, it could turn your joystick to have 100% movement on one side and 30% on the other. Since windows XP there is a full calibration procedure so the only problem is not the drift but rather noise/stutter/shake.
Lmfaaaaaaaaaaaaooooooo going to do try this
@@DlcEnergy While this would fix the center position being off, stick drift on a One/DualSense style stick typically has different forms and the most common form I see (Especially in the Dualsense, less common in the Xbox) is the stick centers fine, but when you press a direction the stick shoots left instead of the intended direction.
For some reason the stick drift I described has never happened on any DS4 controller I've seen, only Xbox and DualSense.
@@johncarteriii2039 Also one thing that's weird is Xbox lets you configure the controller, but only lets you create deadzones for the triggers. Who's gonna need it for the triggers? That feature would only come in handy to ignore stick drift. They could easily do the same thing for the analog sticks. But i guess they're just living in opposite land and like to subvert expectations!
It basically auto calibrates itself to correct for bad readings. It most likely has a tolerance level at the edges where there is the max input but it has a range, so that it can be adjusted.
Uhh so is it a hard ware thing or software?
no it does not autocalibrates and all of those bullshit said in the video, it's just the zeroing Mechanism that is mess up in 1 Direction only, if he had pulled up after the drift would have occurred again
Many of the PS2 OGs either were told or found out for themselves that this would often be a direct result of rage quitting and tossing the controller. So every time you did and then noticed the joysticks were a bit off, you knew exactly why and spun them around a few times to recalibrate it.
mine just broke into pieces ..only did rage quit 3 times in my life...only had 4 controllers and was poor..had to buy my own games and controllers to.got down to 1 controller and said never again cause i wont be able to play madden 03 and gran turismo 2. took 20+years for this to stick drift tho.....new consoles use the same stick modules ..xbox ps switcth you name it....china bro. we need japan back..
@@RoastCDuck There are a lot of recent games that are just as ragequit worthy. It's just that barely any of them are AAA titles.
for me it was how i was storing the controllers, never store them upside down lol id like to curbstomp my past self
@@RoastCDuck how about the first time you did learning to fly in San Andreas?
@@JustTooManyPuppies RC helicopter mission in liberty city.
This is a classic example of when things were built to last. Nowadays electronics are made to last a few years, so when it breaks of you go to but the new model. The greed of capitalism.
Maybe, but we as consumers are to blame too. We always choose the absolutely cheapest option. Or at least enough of us do that there's a race to the bottom to get those sales. At some point it's very hard to sell a premium product because the competition is half the price.
@@xeostube I have what might be a new technical limitation study on 🎮 optimisation findings to share on this subject, if you care to give your opinions / guidance / appraisal on what I think 🤔🧐 I've found out, all shared knowledge much appreciated.
ruclips.net/video/cG9tPIr3tdA/видео.html
@@xeostube Except official controllers are "premium" options, yet even they abuse planned obsolescence. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo could've use better sticks, it doesn't add that much to the cost.
A few years? My controllers always get drift after a few months, I started to just buy extended warranties instead of a new controller every 6-12 months
@@crypt_kicker007 im
Pissed i ran thru 2 brand new controllers in less than 12 months and lost my receipts. Horrible. Weird how my controller that came with the ps5 in november 2020 still works perfectly after all these years. Weird.
I think part of it is also that older games used bigger deadzones for there games (the amount of distance you had to move your joystick in any direction before the game would recognize an input). With games advancing more and more and especially in FPS games where deadzones have decreased so much to allow for more precise aiming, it’s only natural that the minimal stick drift that was probably present in old controls but never noticed due to the big deadzones games used to have, is now being noticed because of the way games are being developed currently
Exactly this
Mario 64 says hello.
@@UCgx7OseCrundqkE8oEVeobg No, wrong.
Could also have to do with planned obsolescense. Companies want you to keep buying controllers, thus they give them a shorter lifetime to make you come back and get another sooner rather than later. They've been doing it since the lightbulb's been around, and it just gets worse with todays capitalistic mindset.
@@serendipish_364It only works because people are kinda forced into a consumerist mindset due to weak money and some other things, you don't need a controller to play games, if it's bad, don't buy it.
I don't know what you mean by "capitalistic mindset" but I would personally categorize this behaviour as corporativistic, in a true capitalist system it probably wouldn't be hard to find alternatives, but here, with all kinds of regulations and IP in the way they basically are free to exploit everyone with little to no punishment and the only thing you can do about it is whine until government decides to use violence against someone that you dislike for a problem that they created in the first place.
Some older nintendo consoles used relative positioning for the joystick instead of absolute, which is why it would say in the manual not to touch it while connecting it or switching on the console, so it could calibrate where the centre is.
And now we have Joycon Drift
The only time i had it was because the joystick was physically broken, replaced the potentiometers and as brand new.
Neat feature we had then, this just proves that newer tech isn't always better.
yes and that is literally what causes stick drift, when the potentiometers go tits up. that is literally what can happen to any analog stick. i had a n64 controller that had terrible stick drift. i don't see what newer tech has anything to do with it, it's called out sourcing inferior parts. like the switch, that's called cutting corners and being cheap.
@@demonpride1975 n64 used what was effectively a ball mouse for its stick and was completely different from pot sticks
it's not newer tech, it's the same tech made as cheaply as possible and without consideration for what that cost cutting would do. why waste money letting the joystick autocalibrate/recenter itself? they'll last long enough and after they break we'll get to sell them a new one!
@@demonpride1975 no, not to magnetic ones, wich can be bought for a slight up in cost compared to original Xbox One controllers.
They make this on purpouse to buy a new one
This is actually cool af. Grew up on ps2. Went to 360, the Xbox one and now series 2. But I always wondered how my childhood controllers hold up better than a new one
NOOOW YOU KNOOOW! :)
What's series 2?
@@BoleDaPole He meant Series S probably
tf is a series 2??
@@silver1407 the fact that you don't even understand that simple terminology just goes to show how far off we are of even considering doing anything like this.
Look up the kardashev scale
That's actually pretty sick! I also really like how the buttons on a Dualshock 2 or high quality 3rd party PS2 controller are pressure sensitive. Big shame that we've got some really feature rich controllers nowadays yet they can't do the same things that controllers that are way older already did
The old ps1 analog also had pressure sensitive buttons. I can only recall this feature being used in metal gear solid 1: holding the square button had you aim your gun, and releasing it would fire it. To put it down you could SLOWLY release the square button. But a safer way to it would be unequip the gun tapping R2 or change the item holding r2 and selecting other weapon.
pressure sensitive buttons and d-pad were so immersive, I'd trade vibration in a second to get those back.
@@951258tike22 we still have a d-pad tho
@@cav89- whaat?!?!?that's so high tech i never knew a 20 year old console had that
@@cav89- gran turismo utilized it as well until the ps4 controller dropped the feature
PS2 controllers are the best. i love mine. I know this is about stick drift, but theres something else i wanna mention about them i love. when i first got my PS2 and heard they had pressure sensitive buttons it blew my mind. but just being able to squeeze the button, and then ease off it so snake doesn't fire his gun after drawing it, or so you can stay a consistent speed in a driving game, is such a great thing to have. how controllers that are supposedly generations ahead, can be worse than the ones behind, i just dont understand. i mean i do when it comes to things like thumb stick covers wearing out (money money money, gotta get you buying new ones somehow) but just overall functionality being worse than a previous gen when it should be an improvement is nuts.
Technology in the past 20~ years seems to have gone the way of unnecessary vanity and stupid additions rather than functionality or user experience. You're supposed to buy a product because its the "new, cutting edge" thing, when in reality it's just the same old garbage with things you enjoyed removed.
Pressure sensitive buttons suck ass who likes to jam a button hard as fuck just to go as fast as you can? That's what triggers are for and why it's no longer a thing... it was a terrible idea
I guess pressure sensitive buttons weren't profitable enough. How many games other than MGS3 used it in obligatory manner?
@@dougr8646 the triggers are pressure sensitive aswell. and its not like you have to push them any harder than just regular buttons, it just means that pushing them lightly is different to pushing them regularly. if you were having to squeeze the buttons really hard, then either your controller was scuff, or your game was.
@@wontonschannel like gaming laptops becoming slim when they should focus on ports and better cooling
Gamecube is the same, but the calibration is done by software on boot. The manual tells you to keep the sticks centered on boot, otherwise you end up with a wrong center point and you have to unplug and replug the controller to recenter it correctly.
i never knew this and i grew up with the gamecube!
I think n64 did the same thing
i dunno if it's the same problem but playing smash ultimate with gc controllers through an adapter sometimes the sticks will be held towards some direction until you unplug them and plug them back in
@@buddyguy4723 N64 let you recenter just by hitting L+R+Start at any time.
@@scythelord Nice. I vaguely remember taking advantage of this by pulling back the stick so I didn't have to push forward so hard.
amazing. ps2 controllers also had those futuristic pressure sensitive buttons. what an amazing controller. what an amazing console
which like 5 games used and it made the buttons feel mushy as hell, and both the duke and the s og xbox controllers were also pressure sensitive and their buttons were tactile and crisp
@@Chester200100 just because devs didn't have the time/knowledge/need to implement the pressure sensitive tech, doesn't mean it wasn't fantastic when it was implemented. Have you never played a racing game or MGS2 on og PS2 hardware? It was amazing.
@@adaMAntiumBounce im playing mgs3 right now and every time i have to use the pressure sensitivitiy i have gag reflex because of how shit it feels
@@Chester200100 your confusing your experience playing on older hardware now after experiencing modern tech and controls, versus how someone playing MGS2-3 when it first came out would have experienced it. Trust me, it was groundbreaking. Yes, using a PS2 or PS1 controller now your like "blech, feels old". IMO I HATE the clicky Xbox buttons, they've always been clicky. Feels like I'm using a toy. Even today I have both a Series X and Ps5, hate going to the Xbox controller after. I like the slight mushiness. Don't even get me started on the Dpad 🤮
@@adaMAntiumBounce as i wrote xbox had analog buttons too and those sweet analog triggers which were way better for racing games, tactile buttons are superior because you probably wanna know if you pressed the button or not, the dpad was shit on that point i agree
Ps2 buttons also had pressure sensitivity, modern controllers (xbox and playstation) only feature 2 which are the trigger buttons so you can have variable throttle in racing games. PS2 controllers however featured it on the 4 buttons as well, prime example, the crouch/prone button in the Socom games required a variable input button. Things really were built better back then, its not just nostalgia.
You know why they removed those? Virtually nothing used them after the PS2/Xbox era because by that point, most games were made with PC in mind and then ported to consoles. And it's true to this day, the touch pad, light bar and integrated speaker on PS4 and PS5 controllers are properly used by virtually no games, except those made with consoles in mind. The last huge cross platform game made with consoles in mind that I can think of is GTA V. And it uses all the controller features very well.
P.S. I think the Dualshock 2 had the analog function on all buttons except the start, select and mode buttons. I remember trying analog control with L2 and R2 buttons on Gran Turismo and it kinda worked.
never knew this, but it's really cool, they made the gampad's firmware self calibrating!
fun fact: the analog sticks of the sega saturn analog pad, and the dreampad were hall effect based (magnetically tracked), and completely impervious to wear, be it stick drift or center wiggle. they only needed s little lubrication every few hundred hours. you could have a pad with half the buttons dead, and the plastic worn down over thousand of hours, and the sticks still center and track perfectly.
Wait so this self zeroing tech is software based and not hard ware, I'm guessing the potentiometers are also bigger with a much bigger spring and of course better quality
@@MGrey-qb5xz it only works with linear drift. with alinear drift it gets really hard to compensate. Also a lot of older games have bigger deadzones. But joycons for example are also designed bad.
@@dankrigby5621idk that would mean bad ps2 responsiveness which never happened especially with games like dbz bt3 and dmc 3, this dead zone argument seems to be made up
@@MGrey-qb5xz depends on the game. I never encountered drift in newer playstation controllers either. Only in switch controllers and they have a different architecture and some games have no deadzone entirely.
I remember from several years ago some websites would suggest rotating both sticks on the DS2 at the same time a couple of times at least every time you boot up a game because it'd help with precision, and I could see it for myself on any controller tester I used (they'd be off-center at first then they'd be right on or closer to the center).
They never explained why it worked like that and I never understood why this wasn't a thing with other controllers, only official DS2 controllers apparently, now I can see it's genius design. Worth noting most other controllers I was using at the time were third-party which would have huge deadzones and that made me unaware of drifting for several years; ironically I only became aware of and experienced driting when I started using more first-party controllers besides the DS2.
As a complete electronic noob I wonder if this effect is built into the potentiometers or the PCB, because if it's the former I could try "transplanting" DS2 potentiometers into more modern controllers like the DS4, although stuff like voltage differences could be an issue. I also wonder if it's a circuitry thing or a software thing, because if it's the later they could easily fix this issue with a firmware update on the controller itself. Even if it's a circuitry thing at least someone could come up with a mod to re-create the effect/feature on newer controllers, I mean, they've already made these screws to manually adjust the center of each individual potentiometer, which is not a solution I personally like too much but it shows the community is getting their hands on it.
I'm sure it's built into the PCB if it lives in the controller at all - the potentiometers are extremely simple and entirely mechanical, no circuits at all.
@@xeostube Now that I think about it, long ago I remember once transplanting the analog modules of a broken DS2 into an X360 controller (because I didn't have any replacements at hand at the time) and yeah, the sticks were still drifting and the rotating trick didn't work, so I guess that's my confirmation the potentiometers themselves had nothing to do with it.
Crazy to think that as a kid I did this just as a game but it actually ended up being something to help the longevity of my controllers. I still use the original PS2 controllers I got launch day and still to this day have had zero issues with the controllers. No button stick, no drift. Perfect as the day I picked them up. Makes you long for the days when planned obsolescence wasn't a buzzword for big companies
Daystation 2
@@inendlesspain4724 but if that's true why the SW cause the stick to drift in the first place?
Cool video! I remember vividly the original Playstation DualShock (PS1) controller came with an instruction manual that talked at length about how the pots in the analog sticks worked. It talked about how important it was for the sticks to be in the neutral position when the console was booted up, and it suggested rotating the sticks a time or two if the input produced unexpected on-screen results. The modern problem that we see in XBox, Switch, and Playstation controllers is, sadly, an effect of cost cutting on the manufacturers' parts. Plus, they figured out they can sell more controllers if the sticks drift like crazy.
We've seen constant cost cutting on controllers. PS3 battery lasted like twice as long as PS4 battery yet they still put a stupid LED light on it to drain it even more.
Ps1 controller dosent have joysticks
@@HXmetty It does the original ps1 controller doesnt
@@GK-cv1nf ahh. I only have the og then. My bad
@@cattysplat Truth.
There's also a massive software deadzone on all games of that era and on 360, it was recommended to be 25% of the value range. On newer systems, there has been a mandate from platform owners to reduce the software deadzone.
Newer sticks are also smaller (the box that goes on the PCB) and the reduced size of centring spring causes it to lose tension faster.
Of course there's also potentiometer trouble but i don't think there has been a major change there over generations save for some particular design mishaps like the Switch and some occasional variance in quality. In my experience the potentiometers hold up better than the rest of the assembly.
Omg so when Microsoft made series controllers smaller, they probably made the springs tighter too
No the potentiometers from Xbox one era were of much better quality before 2018 rolled around
During the Covid days, I got stuck at home for a year and a half with my PS3. Instead of actual DS3 controller, I used one of my friends' original DS2 controller with a USB adapter plugged into the PS3 and I used it for 2 years straight. Some of the games are real damn hard and I played COD World at War on it on Veteran. It was so hard, I always punched the controller until I get the Platinum. Until to this day, I still haven't encounter a stick drift and that's a continuous use within 2 years. Superb quality controller.
I've had an elite controller for like 5 years and never had stick drift.
@@dougr8646its a mixed bag with the Xbox controllers and elite series controllers along with the ps5 and ps4 controllers you
The only old school controllers free from stick drift were the Dreamcast controllers, as they had hall effect sensor technology. I now use an 8bitdo controller with PC which also has hall effect sticks, it's amazing.
Nice! I had a Dreamcast and didn't even know that! The sticks were GREAT on those controllers.
The Dreamcast was an amazing piece of technology, if they had of done a version of the "Nintendo quality" seal to help Devs learn their platform and help get around the inherent complexity, it could have dominated.
I didn't know that either and I'm a mega DC fan. I mean even in store demos for it the thumbstick wouldn't have ANY bumps and would be completely glazed over smooth and it would still work just fine. Never had a single issue with my DC pads.
yeah but that 8bitdo with hall effect sticks is going to eventually have its battery dead un a couple of years and you wont be able to change it. Is that controller capable of being used in wired mode?
I actually have a dreamcast controller with really bad stick drift though.
I find that the metal used for the small wheels inside for the potentiometers are made ever so slightly thicker so that they maintain their shape. Whereas I've fixed 100's of analog drift now where the remedy is mostly to remove the little wheels and bend back the metal rings slightly to separate them and clean them with contact cleaner and the drift will be sorted.
Over time these metal rings inside, they stop pressing onto the contact point properly, or get gunked up, or whatever, whereas with the older ps2 ones they are firmer and so always have a good contact and maintain their shape/position.
Xbox one/ps4 analogs are slightly smaller now and overall made cheaper, using a slightly thinner metal and things like that so they do not last.
And then if you add peoples play styles to that ontop you get the perfect storm for stick drift. Back then people werent hammering the analogs and pressing the analog button in to run and things like that in online matches, at most you would use them to accelerate in gran turismo or look around in tomb raider 3 for the ps1, or for the ps2 people often used the d pad to control or choose analog if they wished, or if a game like metal gear solid 3 for example used the analogs extensively - its the sort of stop/start gameplay that gives the analogs a break.
Games like call of duty and fortnight are not good for analogs at all.
You will find that the option to use analog or d pad can give analog sticks a better life because most n64 analogs are all loose and wobbly now because they almost were exclusively used in every game for moving and looking etc in a game like goldeneye you would precision aim and move with the analog
The amount of people with destroyed palms from mario party want a word
I did not know that, having fixed some various controllers myself. Very interesting, cool of you to demonstrate. And again, Old is Gold.
The PS2 had this to fix mild drift, and the Saturn and Dreamcast have Hall Effect sticks to circumvent it entirely.
Yet now, thumbsticks drift straight from the box.
It's wild.
Clearly the hall effect method is best, though it can't fix wear and tear to the springs and such that make the sticks loose (this can't either). Nothing lasts forever. The PS2 controllers failed from a poor button design instead (I have a box full of them with failing buttons and perfect sticks).
I owned several ps2 controllers and yes, aside from the spring literally wearing out and not keeping the stick in upright position, i never experienced drifting
Man these things were built to last a lifetime
The manuals told you about rotating the sticks and the N64 and GameCube mentioned how to reset their control sticks too. I remember just rotating the joysticks every time I would boot the PSX or PS2. I still do at times because it became habit, but it doesn't mean anything to modern controllers.
The N64 was a special case of not just using graphite, but also using a plastic rail on the stick to guide it. The shavings caused drift issues and the loss of mass caused looseness, but if you clean them, they remain accurate and the looseness isn't a problem
Hell, I remember on our old Win95 PC we had there were games that required us to calibrate the joystick any time we wanted to use it. It only took a few moments to hold the stick in the requested directions, followed by letting it return to center each time. Guess that was something newer tech got rid of because it was too clunky to be user friendly or something. I honestly wouldn’t mind 30 seconds of calibration on a controller where I hold the sticks in certain positions to work out the drift.
I have no idea how that would work
@Stefano Pavone digital joysticks? That's new
What an excellent short, informative video. Thanks!
We're my friends right as a kid? Was their ps2 better than my Xbox o.0
i think mechanics also has to do with it.if the springs of the stick wear out over time, you no longer have a sharp, defined "zero" position. the only way for software to correct this is with a larger "inner deadzone", but that makes the stick feel really unresponsive to smaller movements.
So i think sony also did a good job creating a controller that just doesnt wear out as fast as competitors. Think of the N64 with its joystick that just becomes really loose after a few years of usage.
Yes. And there's nothing you can do about loose sticks. But you see drift in plenty of sticks that aren't loose, and this method does help (not necessarily 100% of the time) with that problem.
i agree. my "vintage" analog controllers all suffer from drift caused by worn in springs. but all my controllers suffer from it, ps3, 360, and xbox one. i do believe its common knowledge things are always more "sturdy" in the past. ps1/ps2 was the early days of analog sticks that weren't just digital arcade sticks. so they used more reliable materials, over time they cut corners and choose more specific parts.
this same centering firmware is in all controllers. if i recall right its a part of the issue with switch controllers. the software in conjunction with cheap pots results in an analog stick that is prone to wear and becoming inaccurate. that kind of drift is not fixable without firmware updates and hardware recalls or at best, user repairs.
mice are a great example, a good high force, for example 250g, mouse button will last a long time, but a cheap 50g one wont. and manufacturers use the cheapest and most specific ranged ones they can find. the button with a spring to resist 250g is much bulkier and less prone to wear than a 50g one.
someone should just make an adapter, like an all in one solution. like reverse usb lol. lemme plug in any similar buttoned controller in to any similar retro console and just game without a spiderweb of ends on my cable. like what xbox did with the breakaway cable, use that connector and make different ends with some glob chip to convert the usb. its gotta be doable.
@@joemieszczur9735 Good point on the mouse buttons. I have mine in use for nearly 6 years now, still have the one I used for 5 years before it, and both click perfectly fine. But with the current edition of my mouse it isn't uncommon to get double clicks after just a couple months of heavy use.
I used my N64 controller to death and never had any problem. If anything the N64 stick spring is legendary for how tough and strong it is, causing blisters on hands and thumbs when rotated in games like Mario Party. Those with loose sticks simply abused the crap out of of it, most likely intentionally in rage.
@cattysplat
This is a lie or you didn't use your N64 controller much. The mechanism is completely different from PS2 and the blisters were caused by the terrible analog stick, not from the spring in the controller 😂 if the controller was harming people there would have been recalls.
I actually had stick drift on my ps2 controller... after several years of heavy use. So yeah, definitely a solid piece of machinery.
I just figured it set the current position of the inputs to the "center" when it was plugged in or powered on, never knew it was this smart!
Now this is the content I appreciate being recommended. Nice breakdown man
Wish the PS3 controllers still did this, most of mine have drift, had to start taking them apart to clean them out and fix it (and the random button press issue). User adjustable dead zones should really be standard, would help a lot.
A simple calibration system like that built into windows since at least Windows 98 would fix most joystick drift with nearly no loss in accuracy. It's *almost* criminal that this is not built into the newest consoles. A lot of game controllers are going into the landfills because of it.
It’s actually an easy fix but Ps2 should have just keep this technology
The PS3 had drift-proof sticks that had hall effect sensors. The only 'drift' you get is the sticks themselves getting loose over time. The random button presses are fixable if you put more pressure on the contact with the PCB.
@@SomeAngryGuy1997 Then why does cleaning the sensors solve the drift I was getting?
@@scottthewaterwarrior Which model?
In my little experience with a ps2 controller, I had drift specifically playing Black, and in no other game else. I don't know what the drift was due to because it belonged to an acquaintance so I don't know how he treated it, but he also had it in storage for many years without being used. (I used a translator for this message so apologies if any part is misspelled)
There is a Homebrew app that allows you to see the raw position of the joysticks without any normalization. So it may be that by default there is a calibration system but it's possible to bypass and that game chose to bypass it for whatever misguided reason? Perhaps to eliminate dead zones?
Maybe your drift was because of a loose stick, not bad calibration, and maybe Black has very small deadzones because it is an FPS.
@Carl Gunderson It depends on the game. In those days most games had really big deadzones, but maybe Black was one of the exceptions. Especially given how it is described as being ahead of it's time.
Potentiometer is actually a variable resistor, so it resists the current, and divides the magnitude of what actually gets to that node. So yes it allows more conductivity depending on how it a moved, or becomes more resistant depending on how it’s moved.
It was really comforting to have The Joker explain PS2 controller technology to me
In the manual for the PS2 it mentions that you should rotate both sticks 360 degrees a few times when you first turn on the machine to calibrate the sticks
This video deserves more attention, seriously. I found it because I thought, "How come i have never heard of ps2 controller drift?". Keep is coming *subbed* 💯
I played a lot of dragon ball budokai 2 (I think that was the name) on the PS2 and you had to spin the stick a lot for the super moves. Years of spinning made it so the plastic arround the analog stick degraded and when I pushed it forward and let go it actually didnt go to the center again I got used to that and actually started liking it. I could make my caracter walk forward forever witough even touching the controler and such when I swapped to ps4 it felt so strange to have a working controler again.
My first ds2 came from the factory with a bit of drifting. But I could only notice it in one game where it would actually register the menu inputs
I use my DualShock 2 since a long time with a Xbox 360 adapter, and it does suffer from a bit of drift. Whenever the option is available, I set the deadzone to something around 25% and it ceases to be an issue. The center area may lose its sensitivity, but the game is playable.
I think most games have a narrower deadzone set as default, but it still helps. Running into games with no deadzone whatsoever is VERY annoying, though. Wish it was a more common option.
25% is unplayable. Too large of a deadzone makes aiming with the right stick impossible.
yeah, it's not perfect, but it does reduce the occurrence of drift significantly.
@@xeostubeReturn any controller that has a built-in 25% deadzone, don't buy it, don't support brands who do this. Went through a horrible experience recently with Razer controllers because they were doing exactly this on one of their models, to "avoid complaints of stick drift" they were shipping controllers with a built-in unchangable 25% to 30% deadzone. Absolutely despicable.
@@aweigh1010 calm down man it’s plastic lmao
@@harrylane4 It's expensive ass plastic though. Controllers can cost upwards of $70 usd and they suck ultra-mega-ass compared to older and less expensive tech.
Stick dirft was very prevalent in the first generation of PS2 controllers, I had at least 2 broke on the left thunmbstick.
Dunno how you managed that. I never had stick drift, but the rubber would wear out
I bought a new console and had stick drift out of the box
I think I remember stick drift happening but only right at the end of the lifecycle of the PS2.
@Ozzymand
I've thrown away at least 4 controllers because of it. The video is completely misleading, the drift on the PS2 comes and goes because of the potentiometers. If it's actually drifting the stick won't always drift the same amount and you'll also eventually end up with outer sensitivity being affected. I would be willing to bet if the poster moved the analog sticks 10x then at least one of those times the drift would have returned.
To this day I’ve still got a PS2 Slim and one of the OG controllers and I’ve never had stick drift. “Prevalent” seems like a strong word
WIndows 7 has calibration for analog joysticks in the game devices/options. So when you use that adapter and plug in the dual shock you can calibrate it.
a potentiometer is not a sensor, is a component called variable resistor, its electrical resistance changes in base of where its being pointed at, it uses an internal graphite rod.
A better problem to have than drift, but equally unfortunate that as these potentiometers wore down, their effective range became worse. For small distances traveled it's not really too big of a deal, but when pushing the stick full tilt makes you run faster or changes your inputs, it becomes noticeable.
It's a shame these much more reliable stick boxes weren't used in tandem with the N64's optical sensor - light isn't going to break down from use and the sticks themselves have nowhere near the level of friction issues the N64's had. Maybe it's just too big to be viable, but mice get smaller and smaller and the technology is effectively the same. Oh well!
I had never any issues with PSX/PS2/360 controlers, used them for years and they just worked, but these days it's a matter of time when something breaks, squeky analogs, drifting analogs. Controlers are much more expensive yet way more fragile.
My new DS4 has a catching, gritty feel in the sticks right out of the box. My first DS4 controller lasted for years, but then 2nd controller it's 3 months of use, and now 3rd right of the box defective. Not even disassembly, contact spray, and canned air fixes the grit feel. Extremely headache inducing
I have more problems with buttons than with the sticks...I use XBox One controllers and within a few months usually either at least one of the buttons will get semi stuck (when the rubber under the buttons just stays in place instead of plopping back up again) or one of the shoulder buttons breaks. First controller the RB just turned into stone and couldn't be pressed down and the 2nd one just last year after playing 100h of Elden Ring the RB completely broke out of it's fixture...
Also it's annoying how controllers are such a pain to clean, especially when just after a few taxing sessions I find dried sweat on the shoulder buttons and they're easier to push into the controller than out...and you need a special tool to open up the thing because MS took inspiration from Apple apparantly.
Whatever, now I have an off-brand Xbone controller and it has zero problems so far...and can easily be dismantled if I need to clean it or anything breaks
My older XBOX-360 rarely had these stick & drift issues this is nostalgic.
I used to always rotate my sticks when I first started playing; I noticed that it would have problems just when you start if the controller was laying on its face when you started the console so I always did this to get things working right.
What I can't believe is that neither Microsoft nor Nintendo are using this feature to prevent drift.
>prevent drift
I believe you meant to say "prevent sales."
So, the sticks automatically recalibrate themselves. That explains so much about why this was *never* a problem before the past several years.
Wow, amazing to know that! Do you know if any xbox controller has this feature aswell?
And what about precision? Do you know if these controllers have any sort of in-built deadzone? And as far as I know the ds2 uses 8-bit stick resolution, which possibly affects its general precision.
I've not seen any Xbox One controllers that do this. And yes, the PS2 has a built in deadzone of around "10%-15%", although that's very hard to quantify. 8 bits won't matter much though, that would still be enough for more than 1% resolution both up and down, which is more than even the very best pro could benefit from. The sticks are just too small for that kind of precise movement to be repeatable.
@@xeostube Yeah, that sucks, this deadzone is way too high for my likings... Concerning xbox controllers, is there any possiblity that the older ones have this feature?
I'm trying to find a good alternative to the current disposable controllers we have on this generation but it seems it's not that easy...
@@caslusotas9038 I have only messed with a few Xbox one controllers but none have (official, PDP and PowerA brands). Don't know about the older generation (360). Nobody ever complained about overlarge deadzones in the PS2 era. Although precision competitive shooters weren't the thing on the ps2 that they are now, one could argue that if a 10-15% dead zone was too big it would have been a bigger point of discussion back then. Most programmer docs I've looked at suggest at least 15% deadzone.
@@xeostube I was wondering if maybe someone could hack the firmware of ds4 controllers and implement on it something like that.
I don't know if that's even possible but it would be amazing to see something like this happening.
@@caslusotas9038 it's a great idea, but a long shot I'm afraid.
I only started experiencing stick drift when I started playing pc games with an xbox controller. For 15 years, ps2 was my only gaming console, and now I'm appreciating it more than ever.
The closest thing I had to joystick issues with my PS2 was the rubber eventually coming off. This is why it's my favorite console.
Interesting stuff ! It's true that I'd never experienced stick drift despite absolutely destroying my PS2 controllers
This should still be a feature. Can't believe we can live without it in our controllers!!
It should, but its more profitable to sell you a new controller each time
I have T300RS steering wheel and the pedals are work somewhat like that. When I start fully press at halfway at 100%, but when I fully pressed in it works normally
You know, I've often heard the phrase "They don't make them like they used to anymore", but I've never seen any live examples that affected me directly until now.
Thanks for the explanation. Is it possible to transplant the stick modules/potentiometers from a dualshock 2 to a dualshock 3? I'm on my last working DS3 and I would love to replace the sticks, but there's no quality replacements available. I know at least 1 of them is a 4-pin model. I have several perfectly functional DS2s.
IDK to be fully honest, however transplanting a stick is very hard as removing them without doing damage to the box they are in pretty much requires a desoldering station. So even if they are compatible it's going to be a very challenging task. Most people remove the analog stick by cutting the box and then desoldering each lag separately
@@xeostube I'm familiar with the stick module removal procedure and I have a soldering station and desoldering equipment. I'm just trying to find out if it's possible before I waste my time. Thanks anyway
@@xDD90x have you successfully removed an analog stick with your set-up?
@@xeostube Not yet; I don't want to do it unless I have replacements ready to install.
@@xDD90x as long as the resistance is the same they should be compatible, but keep in mind the old stick may have drift that's fixed by the ps2 control logic. No such system in the PS3.
One reason we didn't notice it was because games were programmed to have huge dead zones, so they simply ignored the areas of movement where the potentiometers usually drift. Further, one of the reasons controllers don't auto-calibrate the range and center anymore is because if you turned on the system or controller with anything touching the stick, it could totally mess up the calibration until the next time the system or controller was turned on. This happened to me frequently and drove me nuts as my controllers would be wrapped in cables or left upside down in the couch or something, and it would mess up the controls for no obvious reason, until reset.
These are good points and do place things into context
I remember moving the joysticks around not knowing why but I always saw my older cousins doing it so I did too. I'm glad I have an answer to this age old question.
I thought someone took a bite out of the controller from the thumbnail💀💀
But then companies discovered that: Why sell a controller once when you can do it every couple of years 😯
Why is everybody saying they break every couple years. They’re breaking in like six months.
@@phillloyd6248 My Dualsense started drifting after like 300 hours and I didn't even play any shooters.
@@phillloyd6248 It’s because I never experienced drift on any of my controllers 😂
I just upgraded my controller over the years just because.
First I used a PS3 controller, then PS4, then Xbox Series X (to play Forza 4) and finally I bought a PS5 controller.
Except for the PS3 controllers, which had some issues with buttons and stopped charging, they all work fine 🙃
Why use potenciometer controller if you can just buy hall effect one which will never have stick drift and is even like 10-20% cheaper than original PS5/Xbox controllers? Just look for "GuliKit KingKong 2 Pro" best controller i have ever had and it costs $70
while i agree wholeheartedly that sometimes old tech is better, WHOLEHEARTEDLY! I however cannot get over how much of an advancement the ps5 gamepad is. those adaptive triggers are way more of a gamechanger than my very skeptical ass thought they would be going in. I thought I was going to miss my wolverine ultimate, and I for sure do miss all those extra buttons, everything else is just superb, at least until stick drift enters the chat, obviously, lmao. but I'm also willing to replace those sticks on the circuit board level so I can get more longevity out of the controller than your average non soldering gamer might as long as i can get the right parts
Opinions are wild.
The PS5 controller, to me, is junk.
None of the features matter. It has poor battery life without the triggers and vibration.
Using those gimmicks makes it die faster, and all they do is distract you. I don't want to be talked to through the mic. I don't want to have to pull the trigger harder to shoot something, becuase it is resisting.
I dont want tiny rumbles whenever my characters farts or slips on ice. It's all gimmicks. I would have preferred longer battery life, and at least two programmable back buttons/paddles.
Adaptive triggers aren't worth a fuck if even the "revised" controller lasts a third as long on one charge as every other controller I have, at best. Gimmicks shouldn't come at the cost of basic functionality, I think, but that's just my opinion.
Switched to Xbox Elite. Haven't looked back yet.
@@phant0mdummy rumble greatly enhances games for me. The subtle rumble when you centre the wheel on your ship in SOT for instance is something i can't do without.
@@phant0mdummy i agree. never understood the praise for adaptive triggers. the first time i experienced it i immediately turned it off.
I'm curious as to whether this is a hardware feature, or a software feature.
It seems easier to implement on the software side, but I would assume that software is built into the playstation so has that feature also been built into the software you are using to monitor the joysticks position on your pc?
my ps2 controller has a weird form of stick drift wheere it's not the internal capacitors that are failing, its that the thumbstick doesn't go back to the middle on its own because it has too much give from overuse so if i move it right it will just stay going right and i have to manually center it
Also I prefer the dome shaped sticks than the newer concave ones. I find it easier to maneuver my thumbs around the sticks. If it's concave I find myself pressing down into the stick rathe than just cradling it.
It's been a while since I last used a ps2/3 controller but I always preferred them
Theh feel more comfortable but i have far less control. Concave sticks are much more precise and even though my fingers hurt after awhile its worth it for better performance in games
I do fine with both
the problem with the way the wear is calibrated is that it causes the software deadzone to grow over time as well, i have an old ps2 controller that now requires about 1/3 of the way tilted to measure any input at all. not necessarily better than modern tech, but you still need to replace sticks after a few years, ask anybody who speedruns games on older consoles how many controllers they go through. it just shifts the problem from drifting into deadzone, it doesnt actually eliminate the problem like something such as a HAL effect sensor does.
Back when I was a kid and have been in a supermarket where there were consoles on display to play with, the N64 and PS2 controllers had sticks so worn out the were just noodling around but still no input when not being tilted. That's how well this system works, wonder why they ditched it
I remember the documentation for the PS2 stating to rotate the joysticks as the system was booting to calibrate the controller. Do newer Sony consoles not still have this feature?
It's kinda interesting because the Gamecube had a different approach to the same problem (one that you may have noticed if you've ever held a direction on a gamecube controller analog stick while you were plugging it in or booting up the console)
rather than the controller re-calibrating itself based on the full range of values like the PS2 controller does, the Gamecube controller (or perhaps the Gamecube itself - I forget if the same thing happens on modern USB adapters and ngl I've been too lazy to check) does an initial calibration at startup, where whatever position the stick is at when it's initialized, that is treated as exact center. There's also a button combination you can press to re-initialize the controller at any time.
Same thing on the N64 as well. Recently me and my brother were playing Mario Party and he had some drift on his controller. Unplugging and plugging it back in let the controller recalibrate itself and it was fine after that.
If the stick was loose even if it's done self calibrating it would still have stick drift. Notice that stick drift mostly happens on the left stick, we didn't have a lot of games that made use of an "L3" stick button until the ps3. Games like cod and pressing on the sticks to sprint have done a number on those little potentiometers.
how does it know the full range though? like if the values keep changing over time?
Im interested to see how fast the new Dualsense Edge will get it now that they know we can replace just the stick, likely worse?
A factor many don't take into account is that the consumer expects an increase in controller responsiveness and more immersive connection with these newer ones. So you want ultra sensitive joysticks that know if you barely nudge it your intent was to barely move, this means lower to no dead zone and better sensors, which also will lead to worsened drift due to hightened senses on the parts of the sensor that don't get shot. It's impossible to make any electronic last forever, and controllers get more use than most of your other electronics. Easy fix is changing deadzone. Up, left, right, down inputs are usually 0 or 1, but the consumer wanted 0.0001-1.0. Many older controllers had a higher dead zone as the range wasn't necessarily needed or needed in that much depth.
That is a problem for people who care, but most don't. This is only a thing for elite controllers and on PC where you can change the deadzone.
I mean though, look up Hall effect sensors. They are a completely viable replacement for sticks, and don't get stick drift because they don't use contact points that wear out, it uses magnetism. The way I see it is that simply, improving the controller will 100% lead to reduced profits because people won't need more, it's trivial to deduce that until consumers make enough of a fuss, and companies start selling hall effect controllers, they will continue to do what they are doing. There's no excuse other than, they make money.
I don't expect "an increase in controller responsiveness" since the responsiveness was fine even as far back as N64. What I expect is control pads that aren't basically guaranteed to drift within a few years of normal use. Shocking how much they charge for such shoddily built trash
@@Adam_U
Older games used much larger deadzones. Those complaining about drift nowadays are in games using
why on earth do the new controllers drift and not the old -_-
It's a trade-off; if you have a larger dead zone you get less drift but less sensitivity. The ps2 seems to be doing more than just having a large deadzone, however, as it's actually detecting the full range of the controller and intelligently guessing where the middle should be based on the range. The larger deadzone probably makes this guess more robust. Of course all you need is a manual calibration mode like windows offers and you'd have the best of both worlds: accuracy and no more drift.
It's cheaper probably lol
You can do that on never Controllers on the PC too. But it's cool that it calibrates automatically, even tho I wonder how it can tell that you're Joystick is on the max position. Does it just override the max position if it get's one bigger?
I had stick drift woth my ps3 controller but the weird thing was that it was controlled by the left bumper. If I hit the bumper I would move that direction a tiny bit. Was frustrating trying to build in minecraft as I kept falling off my builds
I had stick drift on PS2 all the time, I had more hours than anyone on the PS2, and obviously, one of the reasons to replace them, to be honest the only console that i never heard of it was the Dreamcast because it had hall effect joysticks, the tecnology was aways there but Sony deliberate makes the controller to break eventually, starting by the buttons symbols wearing very fast, joystick rubbers and cables with no stress relief, nowdays the technology on sticks still deliberated the same and Sony focus on more marketing features rather than durability but now with battery degradation too, nowdays i mod my controllers
Nice lecture! It's as though you are a professor or something. 🤓
Is it time to found the first department of Game Sciences? Like most "first departments" it will turn out that several will all claim to be first without ever bothering to check.
I think the worst control defect I've had was my DualShock 3 having deadangles, which made it very difficult to play a good chunk of games
This was really dope to hear about
I remember doing little circles on the analogue sticks when booting up a game and I could never remember why
I guess now I remember why 👀
I really wish gaming companies put care into their work like how the PS2 era did with their consoles and the gaming companies that made the games, the new generation of gaming really became a subscription service for online, consoles, controllers, weapons in games, cosmetics, you name it, it’s going to be a subscription
would this reduce the accuracy of the stick over time?
since the conductivity of the potmeter is getting lower, would the change in resistance from moving the stick be so small that it would be hard to detect?
it's less of an example of "old tech being better than new tech" and more of an example of a clever solution to a problem that was forgotten about across generations.
I can't believe this incredibly simple method of automatically correcting for stick drift isn't commonplace
I never actually had stick drift on my PS4 controllers either. It was always the bumper or trigger that went on them for me, and one case of a Square button sticking.
I had an Aim Controller for about 2 years, which was modded straight off the Dualshock 4, and that seemingly had this fix too. I'd have the habit of flicking my stick down and the camera would reset back into its true position. I may even recall this working on my Turtle Beach Recon too. These of course only lasted for a little while though and as with all other modded controllers it only got worse.
Have an 8BitDo Xbox controller now and the deadzone is all over the place if I don't unplug and plug it back when starting my Xbox up. Is a digital deadzone a thing? The 8BitDo has software where you can "fix" the deadzone, but it's obviously not as good of a measure as something like you showed us here on the PS2 controller.
i saw the thumbnail and i thought it was a bitten controller
Would that mean then that a solution to modern stick drift could be fixed with a firmware update that detects the full range of motion and recalculates the center position?
Why they remove a self zeroing tech or basic recalibration feature in later consoles, also are these not hall effect sticks?
Does the Sega Saturn 3D control pad ever experience any sort of drift?
While at a friend's house, I brought our PS2 to play, and noticed some drift. While I was hesitant to, he wanted to open the controller to realign it, and it worked.
I wonder if the original Xbox is similar been playing San Andreas and at first CJ will be walking backwards and if I push the stick forwards it won’t fix it but like you showed in the video if I pull it back towards me it makes it stop when I let go pretty interesting