You know how there have been experiments over the years where various companies have tried alternatives to the traditional steering wheel/pedals model of driving a car? Sure you have. There’s been odd wheel variants and an awful lot of joystick-type controllers, and that got me thinking: what would driving with some of the common computer/video game controllers we use every day be like?
When I say “got me thinking” I should admit that’s all I did, really. I didn’t reconfigure one of my cars to actually use any of these controllers (which, for a number of modern cars, should be possible?), I just undertook what Albert Einstein termed Gedankenexperiments, meaning I just, you know, thought about it. Hard.
So, with that in mind, here are the results of my Gedankenexperiments about what it’d be like driving a car with mainstream computer/video game controllers, and not driving-type controllers, because why?
Joystick (analog)
In some ways a joystick, especially the analog one I was imagining, is the most proven example of this sort of thing, having been experimented with for car control at least since the 1950s. I mean, just look at all these concepts/attempts various carmakers have made over the years to drive with a joystick:
That’s a lot. So how did the joystick fare in my thought experiment?
Usability: Not too bad, really! Allowed for one-hand control, with the X-axis handling steering, and the Y-axis acceleration and braking. The biggest issue is the inherent combination of all functions from the one stick, which isn’t always desired.
Feel: Minimal, no road feel or anything like that. Stick motions don’t equate to physicality of motion, really.
Results: Not terrible. Drove around imagined neighborhood, eventually ran up a curb and knocked over a vending machine when I knocked my elbow on the stick.
Paddles (pair)
Paddles are some of the oldest, O-est G-est of controllers, and each one is a one-dimensional type of control, a rotating knob. So how could they work?
Usability: One paddle handles steering, one handles acceleration/brake. Dividing these crucial control certainly helps, but the acceleration/brake on one knob is not really ideal for rapid switching between braking and throttle.
Feel: None. I think this is going to be a trend.
Results: I was able to drive the car around somewhat successfully, though it tended to be sort of wandering and meandering, with pretty jerky applications of throttle and brake. I ended up overcorrecting a turn and then accidentally turned the throttle/brake paddle the wrong way and ended up driving the car through a wall-sized aquarium in a pedestrian mall, causing a massive spill of jellyfish and washing a pack of boy scouts into a ditch.
Track-Ball
The first track-balls were introduced by Atari for some ’70s-era video games, and proved to be effective controllers, especially for high-speed action-type games. Later, they were used as pointing devices on late ’80s and ’90s-era laptops.
Usability: Like most X-Y-type controllers, the X-axis is used for steering, Y for throttle/brake. Speed of rolling controls throttle speed or brake intensity. It’s fun, but extremely difficult to have any sort of nuanced control.
Feel: No real road feel, but the act of rolling the ball is pretty fun.
Results: Disaster. I got the ball spinning too quickly, too fast, which sent the car smashing through a glass door, through the kitchen, and out the other side where it plummeted off an embankment and nosed into the middle of a chili cook-off, sending people scattering and massive, hot wads of chili flying everywhere.
Mouse
Everyone is extremely familiar with the mouse, the pointing device invented by Douglas Engelbart in the late 1960s and first publicly shown at the incredible “Mother of All Demos” in 1968. Apple made mice mainstream, and they’re still the standard for desktop computers today.
They’re no one’s choice to drive a car with, though.
Usability: Really terrible. Mice are great for two-dimensional work on a screen, but very ill-suited to driving, partially because they operate in a sort of restricted space? It’s hard to say. Here, general X-axis movements in a virtual square area translate to steering, and I tried handling throttle and brake by position of the pointer on the Y-axis (higher faster, lower slower, past midpoint is brake) but soon abandoned that and used the left button for throttle, the right for brake.
Feel: Just a mouse on a desk. No road feel. It wasn’t a haptic mouse.
Results: Awful. Car darted around wildly, smacking into multiple other cars, whipping around wildly side-to-side and eventually flipping over when it impacted a concrete fountain with the right front wheel, causing the car to flop into the fountain, knocking over a statue of Poseidon, whose trident punctured a nearby bouncy house, sending it skittering off into the air like a balloon with a hole in it, dropping children out william-nilliam. I was taken into custody by gendarmes.
Trackpoint (that little eraser thing IBM/Lenovo likes)
You know these, right? Tiny rubber fingertip pointing device that uses strain gauges to adjust speed and intensity. Highly space-efficient.
Usability: Pretty terrible. Sure, it’s basically a little joystick, but the tiny scale of it and fingertip-level control means it’s extremely difficult to control with any nuance in a driving situation. Uses the standard X-steer/Y-throttle/brake control scheme. Strain gauges adjust intensity based on finger pressire.
Feel: Zero. Like, zero zero.
Results: Nightmarish. A few jerky back-and-forth lurches before I used too much finger pressure and smacked full-speed into the side wall of a Schlotzsky’s Deli, which sent me flying through the windshield of the MGA I was driving in this thought-experiment, and I got tangled up in the canvas roof before I peed myself.
Trackpad
If you’re on a laptop, this is likely what you’re using as an input device. You drag your finger across the little pad, and things move on your screen. Like magic! But no one has ever wanted to drive a car this way.
Usability: Abysmal. Trackpads were never meant for driving. I even tried a control scheme where X-axis is steering, Y is only throttle, and the button/tapping is brake. A mess.
Feel: Just a finger on a pad.
Results: Catacalysmic. I really need to do these thought experiments in less populated spaces, because I completely lost control of the car and it spiraled through an entire outdoor concert where a J.Giles cover band was playing. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the car crashed into the stage and set a huge stack of Marshall amplifiers on fire, burning in a massive pyre.
OVERALL TAKEAWAY: Stick with steering wheels and pedals.
I want to see how one of those ’80s NES ROB Robots does mounted to the dash,
Gas: blue gyro.
Brakes: red gyro.
This modern nonsence has to stop. What on earth is wrong with a tiller, a quadrant and a brake lever. The pedals are for moving the gearbox, left pedal back and foward, right pedal side to side. Plungers for lubrication and an advance retard device. Robert is your fathers brother.
Think of how open and airy the car’s cockpit would feel with just a slender tiller! It spearing you in a crash could be spun as a benefit somehow.
What would the side-to-side moving of the gearbox do? Change gear in a multi-belt drive arrangement? That’s a new one on me (and I know how to drive a Ford Model T and few other wierdo century plus old things).
Yes, it is a multi belt drive, rather a specfic car, although I know of three varients. An 1899 Wolesly
Yes the same company that make socks.
It is like driving the idea of a car, very very open and airy and rather fun. The foward and back movement is essentially the accelerator, it has no throttle as one would understand today, open shaker intake and trembler coil ignition.
In the year 1900 it completed the1000 mile challenge.
Nifty! I know the marque, if not the specifics. The oldest I have driven, and the only car with a tiller, is a ~1901 Curved Dash Oldsmobile. Also a lot of fun in a vaguely terrifying and exposed sort of way.
But there is a lot to be said for fun at little more than walking pace.
It would be fun to use the d-pad from the original Famicom version of the NES with the built-in microphone. Want to accelerate? Scream.
Imagine tooling around in a 1987 Plymouth Sundance with no steering wheel or pedals because you’re using your TI-83 to control it.
Of course you’re also rocking out to New Kids On The Block debut album on cassette while cruising the streets of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho on a sunny, summer afternoon.
Mouse implementation is all wrong. Obviously it has to control a cursor on a mapping program and you have to rapidly right click where you want the car to go like in an RTS game.
In a blink, the mind is unleashed. Nothing is impossible. Each wheel is independently steered and propelled. You have a commanding perch in the control bubble mounted above the single cargo box. Standard brake and accelerator, but to partition independently, you grasp the handles that are ergonomically placed on both sides of the captains chair. These longitudinal handles are a bridge connecting front and rear joysticks per side. Under 5mph, the lock-out button is active, allowing twist up to zero turn.
Or just go with a theremin interface.
Dual joysticks are the answer. Like a Bobcat™
Why two? Just one joystick ala myriad airplanes is just fine, and of course a car doesn’t need rudder pedals. Leaves a hand free for texting!
Putting the joystick in the middle of the car greatly simplifies offering it in left and right-hand-drive for the bonus win. Airbus pilots rarely have any issues flying “wrong-handed” once they get used to it.
For performance driving you ideally have separate control of the throttle and brakes. Maybe you have a third rotational control for that on your feet, like an ab-blaster or something.
I’m trying and failing to find a clip of Lord John Whorfin piloting the Red Lectroid spacecraft with his feet in Buckaroo Banzai.
There is joystick technology to allow for Force Feedback (it’s just being patient trolled atm), so theoretically you could even get actual or simulated road feel!
What about a tilting accelerometer? Weren’t those rolling ball puzzles everyone’s favorite part of Breath of the Wild?
Don’t dis the TrackPoint! It’s great for touch typists, not so much for those who hunt and peck.
I will only agree to flight sticks/controllers etc… in general consumer automotive products if the drivers also have to take the same lengthy training a pilot has to take and have type certification for each vehicle type. Gov issued ipads with per-authorized routes is also mandatory.
Drive with etch-a-sketch controls? Sure, why not?
Most people these days just drive like button-mashers anyway.
Also, words cannot express how deeply I despise trackpads.
Several years ago I was close to an esports skill level in Forza. Give me access to a race car and an Xbox controller and I could go pro. Trust me. You trust me, right?
Torch… what about using something like a TV remote control? Must have line of sight to IR receiver, and better hope that the batteries don’t die during the drive.
Definitely no road feel in those little rubber buttons.
Assuming something like a DirecTV remote, you have to use the number buttons to set the speed. At least it should make navigating all those infotainment submenus easier.
Gotta love the 5200 non-centering joystick in the image. Those were one of the worst controllers ever designed and manufactured. It’s even worse than the Xbox “Duke” controller.
Duke slander will not be tolerated.
100% agree. Had a 5200 back in the day and the much maligned Intellivision disc controllers were better
I wasn’t even a teenager when I got the duke controller, and had no problems with it. people who hate the duke most have the wimpiest hands
Now do a toaster.
If After Dark on my childhood Macintosh SE-30 taught me anything, toasters are naturally aerodynamic and belong in the sky.
Smart and discerning parents. SE-30 was simply the best Mac. Loved mine in undergrad.
Alas it was black and white only, which didn’t stop 6yo Zeppelopod from playing an unhealthy amount of Civilization on it.
Thanks for making me feel old. 😉
It’s one of the few pleasures remaining to us millennials. 😉
LOL- you spoiled twerps had it too easy growing up. 😉
I’m not sure you’ve gone far enough here. People in the gaming community love to see if they can play games with wildly inappropriate controllers for the game. I’ve even seen people try things that are absolutely not game controllers, like microwaves.
I’d like to see the results of using a Guitar Hero controller or the drums from Rock Band. Wii motion controls (other than turning it like a wheel) or a gun controller. There are so many possibilities here.
The Dance Dance Revolution floor mat was right there!
Yes! That is the sort of creativity we need for this experiment! I also want to see full utilization of an Intellivision controller, complete with custom overlay for the number pad.
Yeah, it’d certainly be something if the controls are divided between the eight footpads so it takes two people to operate (unless you’re TAKASKE https://kottke.org/13/04/which-of-these-two-displays-of-athletic-quickness-is-more-incredible)
It would fit just fine in a van. Or a truck I suppose, if you wanted more visibility, but (even) less safety.
Your conclusion regarding the mouse is interesting, because the first two Midtown Madness games offered a mouse control scheme that allowed for much more precise steering over the standard cursor keys. X-axis controlled steering, and the two buttons controlled throttle and brake.
Granted, that precision would probably go right out the window in an actual moving car.
Literally out the window for sure.
Also, Midtown Madness! I miss the first game. I made a fake radio ad for it with my friend for a grade school project. Recorded it on a cassette recorder in my basement, both of us crowded next to the built-in microphone and the computer speakers. Good times.
We already have evidence how well they work from the oceangate experiment
“Experiment”? Ha, it was just a capitalist venture absolutely rife with the hubris and confidence of mediocre white men…
I was just coming here to say “Oceangate”, and I don’t disagree with your assessment of the “experiment”. However, I don’t see the difference between your assessment and video game controllers- which are a capitalist venture rife with the hubris and confidence of mediocre white men.
edit: was in bad taste
If we are going to use computer game controls do we also need to see the car we are driving in from third person, rear and high up as that has been the common view of driving games from the start?
For those of us old enough to remember, Atari included a special set of specific paddles with the Indy 500 game for the 2600. They were even labled “driving.”
I’m slightly disappointed you didn’t consider either a W/A/S/D or cursor key setup. You would have the benefit of less confusing controls, but with no fine control. Lock-to-lock steering and full throttle/brake all the time.
Up/down and W/S. Tank controls, baby!
I’d like to see someone do this with the Hummer EV.
I was thinking the same thing. It could actually be doable with a quad-motor vehicle and a set of those snow tread retrofits.
Games using binary controls like that tend to have the steering/throttle/brake operate progressively once the button is pressed. I think the Mythbuster’s full-scale RC car rig works that way as well.
All I know is, I’d love to strafe my way into a parking spot instead of parallel park
You didn’t try the very high end of computer/video game controllers, did you? Imagine it again, this time with a high-end driving sim setup. I think you’ll like the results.
Personally, I wonder what other types of vehicular controls would work best for controlling an automobile. The throttle levers of a passenger jet feels like it could be ideal
Yes. Imagine the F-16 FLCS HOTAS setup. Throttle for accelerator/brake, rudder pedals for steering, flight stick for, uh, for something.
I think I need to put some more gedanken into this gedankenexperiment.