After what feels like an eternity, we finally know what the PlayStation 5 looks like. Unveiled at Sony’s Future of Gaming event, we also got a look at a swath of games coming to the console. Titles that not only take advantage of the system’s massive leap in power but that have also been designed from the ground up for the PS5’s revelatory DualSense controller.
The DualSense is the Japanese giant’s most significant design departure in their series of controllers since the DualShock 4. A difference which pales in comparison. But the dual-tone controller’s space-age aesthetic is only the beginning of what sets it apart.
In April, Sony announced the DualSense would heighten players feeling of immersion with the use of haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Touting features so refined that they will allow players to feel the change in sensation as they shift gear and drop off the slick asphalt onto the rough, gritty, offroad track. With 2020 being the year it is, and no way to get hands-on time with the controller, it’s all feeling a little bit nebulous.
What is Haptic Feedback?
Feeling like an overused buzzword that loses its meaning with each passing day, it’s something we’re all abundantly familiar with: Technologies that create real-time feedback effects using touch instead of through visual or audio cues. Think controller vibration, 4D cinema or the vibration of your phone as you type using the on-screen keyboard. (If you keep that on, not judging you, but really?). It’s all about using technology to mimic the feeling of touch.
Apple are probably the first company you think of when it comes to haptics. Both the iPhone’s home button and the MacBook’s trackpad don’t actually move when you press down on them. Instead, by using minuscule motors, they create vibrations that trick your brain into feeling the sensation of clicking. Ever tried clicking the trackpad when it’s powered off?
Haptic History Done Hasty
Haptic feedback in gaming has been around in one form or another for a while. Force feedback in steering wheels and controller rumble has existed in arcades since the ’70s. However, up until now, console gaming has only really had one way of mimicking touch: With brute force.
Controller vibrations are used for everything from the pulse of a heartbeat when you’re low on health, to the rattle of a gun as you put lead down-range. But it’s all pretty one-note.
Nintendo are usually the ones we associate with controller innovations. They were first to introduce vibration to their controllers in 1997 with the Rumble Pak. A battery-powered N64 controller accessory that attached to the memory card slot, and more recently, with the introduction of HD Rumble for the Nintendo Switch.
Sony have never quite had Nintendo levels of success with controller innovation. Remember the PS3’s motion-sensing Sixaxis controller or the PlayStation Vita’s rear touchpad? Yet, that’s not to say that they haven’t had their fair share of the spoils over the years.
The DualShock, released in 1998 for the original PlayStation, is considered by many to be one of the most significant controllers ever made. It was the first controller with built-in rumble, and it allowed for subtlety and nuance in its force feedback that the N64 simply couldn’t match.
The DualShock’s rumble worked by placing small motors in each of the controller’s grips. Attached to each motor were weights of different sizes, that when activated, would spin at a right angle to the controller. This creates uneven forces causing the controller to shake. Because the motors could be spun independently and at different speeds, it allowed for a new level of immersion for players. It set the standard and was adopted by pretty much every hardware manufacturer.
(via PlayStation Universe)
DualShock to DualSense
The basics have pretty much remained the same for the last two decades. However, there have been some recent innovations in the form of HD Rumble in the Switch’s Joy-cons, the trackpads on the Steam Controller, and Microsoft’s Impulse Triggers for the Xbox. Haptics have even appeared in headphones, but we’ve yet to see them evolve to create more precise sensations and new gaming experiences, until now.
It’s expected that the DualSense will build on the rumble technology of its predecessors, rather than replace it whole cloth. Marrying the “bass” of the two large perpendicular motors in the controller’s grips with the “mid” of two similar, more compact motors in the triggers; ala the Xbox’s Impulse Triggers. Several much smaller, linear motors comparable to those found in the Joy-con that will act as the controller’s “treble”.
(via idownload blog)
Because linear resonance actuators create vibrations by moving a small weight back and forth in a straight, line instead of in a circle, they are significantly smaller, so can be placed throughout the controller. Something that could not be done with the rotating motors of previous iterations in Sony’s lineup.
Imagine you’re pushing a shopping trolly through a store in-game. The heavy sensation of the trolly’s wobbly wheel would be mimicked with the rumble we know and love. The shake of your shopping gently resonating in your fingers pressed against the triggers. The rattling of the child’s seat produced by these much smaller, faster, more precise actuators against your palms or thumbs.
But why go to all this trouble? How will this impact the games we play on the DualSense? How are developers planning on taking advantage of these new features?
Where we go from here…
Speaking with Geoff Keighley after Sony’s PS5 event, Keith Lee, CEO of Counterplay Games, talked about how they have been making the DualSense a core part of PS5 launch title Godfall.
Lee talked about how the vibrations in the controller act like stereo audio which allows them to drop the player right in the middle of the action. He described how they can let players’ instincts kick in, not relying solely on visual or audio cues saying, “The one functional area that we’ve been exploring is enemy hit spatial awareness. Because now for the first time, you can feel if an enemy off-screen hit you on the left side, on the right side of you.” Lee continues saying they, “can even do a warning ping, so that if an enemy is not in front of you that you can actually hear them about to hit you by using the vibration.”
Over the years, we’ve had a plethora of attempts at showing Peter Parker’s spidey sense. From on-screen prompts to time dilation, nothing has ever quite captured the web head’s “sixth sense”. But with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales swinging onto the PS5 this Christmas will the DualSense finally help our instincts kick in?
Lee goes on to describe how haptic feedback is programmed into the game. “Our developers have a full understanding of how to even design each of these vibrations, so you can imagine they’re almost like audio waveform files that get inputted and ingested based off of the sound that you hear. And then now, we can simulate the gravel, we can simulate all the different types of metals that you hit and shape and sculpt that to feel right for you tactilely.”
Functionally, it sounds incredible, but how will haptics change how stories are told? Also speaking with Geoff Keighley, CO-OP studio director, Saleem Dabbous detailed their plans for what he calls “haptic storytelling”, in their narrative adventure game Goodbye Volcano High.
“If you’re trying to make a decision that Fang isn’t really ready to make, and you’re pushing them towards it, the triggers start to resist your choice”. Dabbous says describing how the DualSense will push storytelling forward in gaming. “And you have to kind of press harder or do other actions that the haptics are kind of fighting with you, and so it’s kind of an extension of the storytelling that’s happening on the screen, in your hands to make you feel like you are embodying Feng in that moment.”
Both developers agree that while the next-gen’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers are hugely exciting, balancing when to use them will be key.
Lee stressed the importance of the “balance of what you want to elevate and accentuate in the game to reinforce the sensation of being in combat.” Fearing that forcing the player to repeatedly draw a bow against a strongly resistant trigger would become a chore.
“When they’re done really well you shouldn’t even notice it.” Dabbous continues, “It should be something that’s just heightening your emotional experience in the game, and if it’s actually drawing too much attention to it, it’s actually failing as a storytelling mechanic.”
In an interview with WIRED, Toshi Aoki, a product manager at Sony revealed that haptic feedback could have been added when the PlayStation 4 Pro was released. The decision was made to hold off until the PS5 so to avoid creating a “split experience” for players, adding weight to Sony’s focus on generational break.
The doors being opened by the DualSense are going to be some of the most fun to go through, and while we’re still some number of months away from the PlayStation 5’s release, we can only imagine what’s to come.