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Comment by eluusive

15 hours ago

Who would want to play Gran Turismo without long CD loading screens?

A better question: who would want to play Gran Turismo 3 or 4 without pressure sensitive controllers?

Even using the original ps2 or ps3 controller with the right drivers on PCSX2 doesn't really reproduce the same smooth acceleration/brake curve of the PS2.

Playing them on a keyboard or fully digital inputs is just a miserable experience.

  • >Even using the original ps2 or ps3 controller with the right drivers on PCSX2 doesn't really reproduce the same smooth acceleration/brake curve of the PS2.

    why not? if we're at the point of byte perfect recomp of system firmware+games, surely we could find a patch that would fix that in both pcsx2 or this project

    • I think the game is simply hardcoded with a sensitivity curve and deadzone specific for the Dualshock 2 pressure buttons on a regular PS2. Some third-party controls aren't too great to use with PS2 GT games, too.

      Patching that is possible I guess, but it would also require setting up some sort of calibration in the game.

      1 reply →

    • Generic PS2-to-USB adapters ignore that part of the spec, so the PC doesn't receive these inputs at all. You'd need to build your own adapter out of Arduino or something.

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  • I wonder if it would be possible to build in support for keyboards with hall effect switches like the ones Wooting make. Those keyswitches are analog.

  • Right analog should be accelerate and brake.

    Analog buttons were always a bad idea and should never be used.

    These days you can map analog triggers to the sticks for a modern experience if you want that.

    • > These days you can map analog triggers to the sticks for a modern experience if you want that.

      It gets wonky if you press both analog triggers at the same time though. I've also tried mapping them to X and O to simulate the pressure, but the range is also somewhat off, with a way steeper curve (half pressing a trigger gives nearly 100% intensity of the OG buttons).

      An alternate solution I've seen around is using a GMIX or similar devices and mapping the g29 wheel controls from the game to a modern Xbox/PS controller, but I've never tried it myself.

    • I think the ergonomics of right stick for that is horrendous, but aside from that, for a racing sim game, you're gonna need to be able to hit the brake and the gas at the same time.

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wow, how awesome it would be to play those games with Trackmania-like reload-times (if you restart the race in Trackmania, you're immediately at the starting line again).

I assume it would require some additional patching in those GT / NFS games though...

Or without the very-much-needed hold-your-breath moment at startup, where you listen to the sounds to see if the DVD actually loaded correctly. You get a ~1 second moment in there where life itself suddenly stops, before you hear the "viump" that tells you everything is OK in the world.

  • PS1 was more fun. You could tell it's failing to load before it failed to load. Then you give it a good smack and it tries harder before giving up. You could get almost any game disc to play reliably in 3 hits or less.

That's easy enough to simulate, too, isn't it? Just pause the game manually at the right spots to make time to get up, make a sandwich, eat the sandwich, take the dog out, walk the dog around the block, and then use the bathroom before resuming. No worries.

ITYM "Who would want to play Gran Turismo" [Preparing...] <fwsssssssssss rrrmp fssswsss grmp fsswsss grmp fssswsss grmp> <ejects disc, polishes on T-shirt> <fwsssssssssssssssssssssss> "without long CD" [Preparing...] <aw no not again...> "loading screens?"

And you lose the acoustic error handling too: one seek noise meant resolve(), another meant reject().