Microsoft SideWinder
[2] The company since re-entered the gaming hardware market, attempting to design a standardized gamepad for Windows Vista with both the wired Xbox 360 controller and the Wireless Gaming Receiver that allows the use of the wireless Xbox 360 controller on a PC.
[5] ^5 A user-made adapter exists, incorporating Force-feedback support for modern Windows versions (XP and later), Mac OS X and Linux.
The Microsoft SideWinder's button layout is very similar to that of the Sega Saturn controller, which was released over the same time period.
By going with a geometric design however, it meant the 3D Pro lacked an effective adherence to ergonomic principles, making it unsuitable for long gaming sessions for some users.
Electronically, the 3D Pro used a digital/analog hybrid design that was intended to correct the outstanding flaws in traditional analog joysticks, such as drift and CPU overhead, by using a digital/optical tracking mechanism to keep perfect track of the joystick, and a digital communication method over the analog gameport.
Additionally, some soundcard gameports, and so-called accelerated game-ports - which attempted to resolve CPU overhead issues presented by polling the gameport directly themselves - such as those produced by Gravis, would not always be able to handle the stick in digital mode.
The stick was especially popular with MechWarrior and Descent players as it was one of the few multi-button joysticks supported by the games natively.
However, due to a flaw in the design of the Precision Pro, in rare cases the stick would build up a static charge in its electronics and require either a complex process to discharge that was not always successful, or simply needed to stay unpowered for a number of hours to slowly discharge on its own.
[10] This is also one of the first joysticks to use light sensors instead of potentiometers so it required no calibration, and thus had no electronical moving parts.
Due to the inclusion of the motors, the Force Feedback Pro was significantly larger and heavier than the Precision Pro, making it easy to differentiate between the two.As the PC joystick port is input-only, the only way for data to be sent to the joystick (to trigger force feedback events) is to use the MIDI capabilities of the port.
This means that force feedback would be unavailable on the earliest of PCs, where the gameports lack MIDI functionality.
The Precision 2 also dropped all gameport compatibility by only shipping in a USB version, and was slightly smaller and lighter than the Pro.
This joystick came in two varieties: one version with a silver trigger and textured hard plastic grip, and an updated version with translucent red parts (trigger, buttons 3 & 4, rounded part at the bottom) that switched to a rubberized coating on the grip.
On eBay Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joysticks regularly sell for more than the original MSRP of $109.
[14] The USB version of the wheel is compatible with one PlayStation 2 game, Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero.
The Strategic Commander is designed to complement a standard mouse/keyboard setup for Real Time Strategy games.
The Strategic Commander is a highly ergonomic device, and resembles a large mouse in shape, contoured for the left hand.
On the upper section, the programmable buttons mentioned above are located near the tips of the index, middle and ring fingers for quick access.
A feature of the device is that the upper section is also a 2-axis motion controller with additional support for rotation.
For example, one application developed at Carnegie Mellon used the device as a peripheral for navigating massive social network maps.
It was shaped like a hockey puck, with four channel buttons that allowed the user to speak to individual teammates.
The driver software also allowed it to function as a voice command device using programmable macros.
To provide power for the puck LEDs and drive the voice command and channel functions, a USB connection was also required.
By then, the market for voice chat had seen intense competition from downloadable and free-to-use software like Ventrilo and TeamSpeak, among others.
Despite this, Linux based operating systems can use this device using various third party applets (i.e. Kamevoice) The Freestyle Pro, released in 1998, was a unique gamepad, as the up-down-left-right directions in analogue mode were controlled by the physical movement of the controller, more precisely by the absolute pitch and roll position of the pad.
Games such as Motocross Madness (which was bundled with and designed for the controller) profited from this physical interaction.
The Dual Strike, which debuted in 1999, was Microsoft's second notable venture into strange gamepad designs, following the Freestyle Pro.
The Dual Strike attempted to blend both mouse and gamepad functions into a single unit.
The design incorporated a number of advanced features including adjustable weights, programmable macro mode, on- the- fly DPI change, and a built-in LCD display, the first ever found in a mouse.
It also comes with a complete black design with red "LED Jets" on the back to make it stand out from the original and better fit the X6 keyboard.
