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A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

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Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#91
post #39

One thing they didn't make quite clear here is that the Xbox controller is considerably less advanced than the PS5 controller. The PS5 controller has "linear resonant actuators" (previously introduced in the Switch, and in the iPhone before that) which provide a much more fine-grained rumble feature than the older method which is still used in the XBox. The newer feature lets you feel e.g. that the character walks ov…

A fun thing about the Dual sense rumble is that it's just sound data. One time u changed my PC to output to the controller, thinking it would use the speaker, but it just played the audio via vibrations. (I'm not sure if that's just how all "linear resonant actuators" work, just found it neat)

It is, you can find the rumble WAV's (well, AIFF's) if you dig enough through iPhone OS dump

Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#92
post #39

One thing they didn't make quite clear here is that the Xbox controller is considerably less advanced than the PS5 controller. The PS5 controller has "linear resonant actuators" (previously introduced in the Switch, and in the iPhone before that) which provide a much more fine-grained rumble feature than the older method which is still used in the XBox. The newer feature lets you feel e.g. that the character walks ov…

A fun thing about the Dual sense rumble is that it's just sound data. One time u changed my PC to output to the controller, thinking it would use the speaker, but it just played the audio via vibrations. (I'm not sure if that's just how all "linear resonant actuators" work, just found it neat)

That’s how the one in the iPhone works as well. I remember people’s surprise (myself included) when it was discovered. Teardowns revealed a second audio amp that wasn’t attached to the speaker and that’s how it was discovered to work.

Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#93
post #8

You can do this yourself. Just bring a USB drive to the airport and ask the TSA officer for a copy of the images.

That sounds like a major security liability

You can see what the agents are looking at just going through a security line.

Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#94

Does anyone know how accurate these are to the raw data a CT scan produces, it looks really clean, has it been touched up any significant amount or is this actually the quality of the machines?

I’m a radiographer, but haven’t done CT in a long time.

These look cleaned up, as the metal artifact from dense things is minimal.

I’ve scanned things then converted the Dicom file into a format suitable for printing (I’d broken a part of a coffee grinder). These images look like the item when moves to a 3D print in format.

Side story: finding out what’s inside things is what CT is for. We used to scan the chip packets before loading them into the vending machine. We sort out the ones with prizes inside.

Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#95
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PS5 controller is pretty cool, however, I'd probably trade in most of that functionality for the battery life of Switch Pro controller.

Unless you constantly play more than 6 hours straight without rest, the mediocre battery of PS5 controller is not really a problem. Much less so if you have the official charging dock.

I know, it's not a huge deal, but buying a separate dock, or dealing with yet another thing to charge all the time is annoying. So personally I prefer longer battery life over a bunch of fancy features that are likely only going to be used in Playstation exclusives.

Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#96
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes this situation even more frustrating is that analog sticks have been around for a long time now. I still have controllers from the PS2/GC/Xbox era that work just fine after all these years and countless hours of play, and have no drift whatsoever. Even the earliest analog sticks like the N64 (Which used LEDs for tracking) didn't suffer from drift — although it did wear out considerably mechanically! I just…

Even more frustrating, its not even that difficult to fix. All they need to do is implement a renormalization routine. If you find your controller is drifting, then the console just needs some menu where you put the stick to a bunch of reference locations, and then the stick maps outs its own response and renormalizes. "This is neutral." "This is upper-left as far as it goes." "This is..." ect... Maybe even with fine…

In my experience this would not solve the issue.

Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#97
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have both an XBOX Series X and a PlayStation 5. Maybe I am too old, but I hardly feel any differene. I am not saying it is not there, I am saying I cannot feel it. The only difference is in the triggers, where you have to press more or less on the PS5.

If you start playing shooting games with gyro aim, you'll definitely feel the difference - because it's not even an option on Xbox. As far as the haptics go, the degree to which cross-platform games use them really varies. Cold War had cool haptic triggers so you felt the recoil kick, but I don't think that was included in MW2. Some exclusives like Returnal leverage the advanced haptics in a really impressive way, to…

What do you mean by giro aim? Moving the controller in the air to aim?

Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#98
post #39

One thing they didn't make quite clear here is that the Xbox controller is considerably less advanced than the PS5 controller. The PS5 controller has "linear resonant actuators" (previously introduced in the Switch, and in the iPhone before that) which provide a much more fine-grained rumble feature than the older method which is still used in the XBox. The newer feature lets you feel e.g. that the character walks ov…

The ps5 controller, just like the PS4 controller, are succumbed to the dreaded stick drifting issue. I play Call of Duty and this stick drifting issue has made me own more than 4-5 controllers for each generation. At this point I have a conspiracy theory that Sony intentionally not fixing this. My friends in the Xbox camp say they never experienced this issue.

I'm pretty sure all the manufacturers have this problem pretty much equally, at least on their "normal" controllers. Nintendo worse probably just due to the very constrained available size.

You see users of all the consoles anecdotally reporting drift problems. I haven't experienced personally any drift on my PS4 or PS5 controllers, nor an Xbox controller used for a PC. I did have it happen pretty significantly on a Switch Lite.

I also think there's probably an aspect of personal usage patterns: maybe if you're just going through sticks constantly, you apply more pressure, or just use them more, or have something like a dusty environment wearing them out faster.

Re: A look inside the SNES, PS5, and Xbox controllers with CT scans

#99
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes this situation even more frustrating is that analog sticks have been around for a long time now. I still have controllers from the PS2/GC/Xbox era that work just fine after all these years and countless hours of play, and have no drift whatsoever. Even the earliest analog sticks like the N64 (Which used LEDs for tracking) didn't suffer from drift — although it did wear out considerably mechanically! I just…

Even more frustrating, its not even that difficult to fix. All they need to do is implement a renormalization routine. If you find your controller is drifting, then the console just needs some menu where you put the stick to a bunch of reference locations, and then the stick maps outs its own response and renormalizes. "This is neutral." "This is upper-left as far as it goes." "This is..." ect... Maybe even with fine…

The Switch has this but when the sticks get bad it's often not fixable with that kind of calibration.
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