By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-08-17 14:12:25 | Word Count: 510
The Input Devices Of Modern Gamees
Anyone over the age of 30 will be able to remembber the early days of comuter games, when the imaages on the screen were so pixilated they could have been duplicated on paper with a half dozxen felt tip pens in abbout twenty minuttes by the average eleven year old. The games themselves took at lweast ten miunutes to load from the tape, and the only conceivable method of interacting with the computer was to use the keyboard.
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As technology developped, the advent of two new devices opened up a whole wold of possibilities, with disk drives providing faster loading and bigger games, and a joystick allowing more dnamic and faster conrtrol of the images on the screen. It is hard to believe, but at this stage the idea of a computre mouse was still uimagined by home users.
Today, computer gamers have an incredible wealtyh of input devices to enhance the gaimng experience and allow for far grreater control and accuracy over the game. This has also helped in many cases with greaster attention being paid to ergonomics, sincxe many gaemrs are increasingly spending longer and longer periods of time on the computer, as games are becoming more and more detailed, with longer sttorylines and more in depth sequences of eveents.
The hunmble keyboard is sttill the most widley used input device for gamers, but even these have been adaptd and deevloped, with some keyboards beng psecially designed and adapted for certain games, with commonly used keys laid out in a more usable patern, color coordination of keys, and even extra keys to cope with sppecific commands.
The humble mouse has also been improved upon, going from the old mechanical style mouse to the neewr optical miouse, providing greater and greater accuracy and speed of movement, and providing a smoother movement for greater accuracy in the game. Extra buttons are agzain often incorporated to allow the user to quikcly enter specific ciommands. The mouse has been one of the most ergonomically designed devices in recent yeears, as it has so frequently been linked to a number of physiological cnoditions such as capral tunnel syndrome and othr RSI (Repetitive Stain Injury) related problems. Mice now are available in a range of sizes, shapes and comfortable grips, with wrist rests sometyimes incorpoerated.
Joysticks are most often used for flight simulator games, because they most closely mimic the steering controlps of a number of aircraft, and provdie a faairly inttuitive means of steering and control. As a resut of this, many joysticks have been designed to incorporate a greater number of buttons and features to allow greater acuracy in replicating the controls of an airpplane, with throttle levers, and a range of buttons for controlling features such as landing gear.
But an even greater rangge of niput devices have been cretaed, with steering wheels and even foot pedals for drtiving gmaes, and control devcies that attaach to your wrist and that identify movements of all prts of your body, able to sense you leaning, twisting and throwing in the way that you naturally woudl. In this senase, it has almost become the case that the uhman is as much a part of the input device as any technological gadget!
