I’ve seen many people in the sub posting about how hall effect joysticks are better at everything, they last longer, they feel better and smoother, they are much more precise than potentiometer controller, and all controllers should be hall effect in the future.

Hall effect joysticks do last much much longer than potentiometer joysticks from Alps or Favor, and they do feel much smoother for lacking that layer of carbon film for the joystick to rub on.

However, this creates other issues such as worse centering performance, and battery consumption, in turn, worse polling rate.

For FPS gamers, precision is the key, there are five major parts of what makes a controller precise, in the following post, I’ll be explaining these five points using an example controller– the Rainbow 2 Pro from Bigbigwon (stupid name Ik), this is an e-sport controller designed for professional FPS players.
https://i.imgur.com/M1EFx0K.png

Centering Performance
Centering performance is about how precise a joystick can return to 0(the center)

In a perfect world, the centering performance should be 0,0. However we do not live in a perfect world and no controllers can do this (at least for now), the ones that can, use center deadzone. Which is absolutely not something you want on a professional level controller for FPS games.

Instead, all FPS focused controller should have a zero center deadzone, this would appear as slight drifting when the controller returns to the center. Aka something that looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/k2MRb57.png
(Rainbow 2 Pro)

This is almost a perfect centering performance, the centering error is around 0.08, compared that to the hall effect joysticks
https://i.imgur.com/zKOtlQG.png
(Gamesir T4K)
Note this is currently the best hall effect module we have on the market, the JH16 and the error is almost 0,03, comparing 0.03 to 0.008, that’s almost 3 times of the difference.Thus, for FPS gamers, hall effect joysticks have worse centering performance.

Sampling Rate
First of all, Sampling rate is different from polling rate, this along with joystick resolution are the two most major parts that decide how precise a joystick is.

What is sampling rate?In short, it’s how many how many sampling points are there, when the joystick is pushed from the center to the max value.

For example the rainbow 2 pro has 2192 sampling rate on both side (Xbox Series X controller stock has around 1000, other controller usually has around 500.)

So does it mean the higher the sampling rate, the more precise a joystick is?In general yes, but there’s another important part to consider“Stepping”Rainbow 2 Pro controller has 32767 max value on one side (The X value shown in the image)
https://i.imgur.com/9HxSJ1z.png
This is the max value that this controller can ever hope to achieve, but we don’t have 32767 sampling points here? So how does this work?

That’s what a step is
https://i.imgur.com/BK8tstx.png
The rainbow 2 pro has a step of 29.89 (30), which means each sampling point covers about 30 values. This much much better than any regular controllers.

Resolution
What is controller resolution?Basically is the smoothness of how sampling points are placed near and far of each otherit’s easier to explain this in image
In a perfect world, a sampling resolution would look like this
https://i.imgur.com/5Hj54uU.png
They are placed perfectly at the same distance with each other from the center to the end.

However, we don’t live in a perfect world, so most our controller resolution would look like this https://i.imgur.com/i6MkgYA.png
Most sampling points are placed at the end, and there are a large lack of sampling points in the middle.
(obviously this an extreme example of what it would look like, there are also issues of inconsistency)

So a great way to see how precise a controller is, is through the resolution map
This is what the rainbow 2 pro resolution looks like
https://i.imgur.com/PgUlDbd.png
The line is smooth aka no not much inconsistency

Compared that to Thrustmaster eSwap Pro
https://i.imgur.com/5xiVKeY.png
The line is much more jagged aka much less precise

So overall, the smoother the line is the better the resolution is.

Polling Rate
Self-explanatory, I won’t be wasting too much time here, a good polling rate for professional FPS player is 1000hz, many high level controller allow for this under wired mode 1000hz, like T4K, Rainbow 2 Pro etc.

Wirelessly, the best polling rate is 500 hz for now with the proprietary flysync by flydigi.

But, professional players don’t play wirelessly… So just plug your controller in and get 1000hz polling rate.

Damping
There isn’t any scientific proof about how damping would affect precision, it’s mostly about how the joystick feels in your hand.

Basically, a controller with more damping = the joysticks are harder to pushThe best way to get a feel how different level of damping feels like, is to grab an Xbox controller, then grab a PS5 controller, you should clearly feel that, the PS5 joysticks requires slightly more strength to push, that’s what more damping is like.

But there is one factor of damping that affects precision, and that’s middle damping.

This is also why some people say hall effect joysticks feel smoother than potentiometer joysticks, because there’s no carbon film to rub on in the center. So, in the center, the joystick feels lighter.But that’s not what you want when playing competitive shooters, in fact you want to the center to have more damping, aka harder to push, to be easier at micro adjustment for the camera.

Rainbow 2 Pro has a very creative solution to this… It may sound pretty dumb, but they added a rubber tack to the center to make the center have more damping, some people absolutely hate this, in fact, it makes the center feels kinda rough and contradictory to what a smoother joystick feels like, but it helps with micro adjusting the camera in FPS games.

So overall

Should I buy the Rainbow 2 Pro, if I play FPS games? No, not all, Rainbow 2 Pro is a tournament controller, there’s no consideration given to the longevity of thing, it only needs to work well in the tournament to give the players some advantage. Controller with Alps joysticks have a lifespan of around 3 months under very heavy use, that’s especially the case for Rainbow 2 Pro, as the fact that it is designed for short tournament use.

Anyways, these are the 5 major points of what makes a controller precise and fit for FPS games.

What do you think is a better way to measure pedal travel and why? (load sensor excluded)

I read a lot about hall sensors being better because of no moving parts. But potentiometers still seems good enough for cars. Also supercars.