[Discussion] two handed split / VR controllers similar to joy-cons on nintendo switch, but for PC? - eviltoast

I honestly don’t care about VR headsets or full-body tracking right now, but I would love to have a controller that’s split into two pieces like the wiimote/nunchuck duo or the joy-cons. I know Steam can connect to actual joy-cons, but the bluetooth range on official joy-cons is pretty bad, and I haven’t had any luck getting third-party joy-cons to connect. Can anyone recommend me a controller? I’ve been looking at the HTC Vive controller, does that do what I want? My most played games are PlateUp, Stardew Valley, and Minecraft.

  • Willie@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, if you want to use Nintendo Switch JoyCons as your PC controller, your best bet is to just use the JoyCons. I’m not sure if later revisions corrected it, but the HTC Vive controllers had pretty poor build quality, I’m not confident they could stand up to any real heavy usage.

    The biggest issue with them though, is that they simply have too few buttons to do anything great with. On each one, you get two side buttons, a menu button, a power button, and (this is what kills it) a single trigger. This gives us 4 real buttons on each. We need ~16 to emulate a real controller, and we’re only half way there. You might be able to squeak out some extra buttons from the touch pads, but I’m kind of assuming you’d be using those as joysticks, since the controllers have none. Having buttons and joysticks both in there sounds like a bad time.

    So yeah, I’d probs go with the JoyCons and just live with the poor wireless range if possible. It kind of sucks, but they seem to be the right tool for the job.