Steam Deck could finally make gyro targeting a thing of the masses

While Valve’s Steam Deck comes with all the controls you’ve ever seen (buttons, directional pads, gamepads, touchpads, back buttons, and touchscreen), there’s one you can’t see: the gyroscope. The John Cena of Controls allows the Deck to shift your perspective in the game by physically moving the machine. Valve showed a bit of how it works and it looks pretty accurate.

Via IGN, Valve’s Scott Dalton shows how the Deck’s ability to track the physical position of the console means it can easily sweep the screen. Left 4 Dead looks particularly good like this, precisely following the movement and tilt of the Steam Deck. Dalton himself uses it while playing Witcher 3, to look around while traveling in the game.

I think tying the gyroscope to a device with a screen might be the best way to get people to accept it more on the PC. When using a gyro controller, like Playstation’s DualShock devices or the Steam controller, there is always a disconnect. You need to think about your body position in a way that you don’t have to do with a normal mouse or gamepad.

I managed to use the gyro sighting successfully this year, but it took a whole new kind of control method to get into it: Flick Stick. The way Flick Stick works is that the joystick only moves your character along the horizontal axis, but has been changed to quickly snap in that direction, rather than spinning. Aiming exclusively uses the gyroscope. I tried it in Doom Eternal with my Steam controller (for no other reason I wanted to see if the gyros were still viable), and while it’s an acquired taste, it definitely gave me more control over the settings. usual joypad when I settled into this. I’m not sure I would appreciate it if someone did it on the train next to me, however. I appreciate my elbow room.

A random thought hit me as I finished this piece: The Deck, with its screen, touchpads, and gyro controls, is essentially the Steam Controller 2, and that’s what I’m here for.