If you are new to using the steam controller (henceforth referred to as "SC") you may be having problems with getting a smooth and accurate gaming experience out of your SC. Sometimes you are just trying to hold steady and you can't seem to get the cursor to stop where you want it to. It jitters a bit while you are aiming and you are starting to think it's your controller, it might even be defective.

Your movements are jerky or stuttery. You try to move a small amount in one direction and you completely overshoot your target or can't seem to move far enough to even get to your target at all, it's so inconsistent you start thinking it HAS to be the controller itself. I mean, You are an amazing gamer, right? It should never be this hard to make accurate movements or to aim properly.

Don't fret! Anyone remember the first time they held an N64 or Dual Shock controller? Yeah, it took me over a month to stop hating on the N64 analog stick. All I wanted was the D-Pad to work like it did on my NES. It is literally the same thing here as the touch pads are so very very different. Here I hope to lessen some of your SC woes and take you through some of the things I have learned over the last few months.

VIDEO OF JITTERY AIMING

VIDEO OF JUMPY SWIPING

Make 100% absolutely positive you are using the latest firmware. I CAN NOT stress this enough. Depending on when you purchased your controller or how long it has been on the shelf or in warehousing you may be working with an older less refined firmware version.

FORCE UPDATE CHECK

1. Open steam in Bip Picture Mode.
   
2. Select settings, the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the main screen.
   
3. Select system in the upper right section of that menu.
   
4. Select "Check for updates" in that menu.
   
5. If there is a firmware update available it will install now. WAIT till it's finished. If you don't you may risk bricking your controller.

If you do brick your controller it's easy to fix.
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=572740074

Opt into steam client beta if you haven't done so already. This is important because Valve makes many changes and fixes many bugs that will be rolled out to the client beta long before they are merged into the stable client branch. Just be aware that this IS still a beta and as such there may also be more or unrelated bugs introduced here so if you are already in beta and experience any issues it may be helpful to opt out and test again.

1. Open steam in Bip Picture Mode.
   
2. Select on settings, the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the main screen.
   
3. Select system in the upper right section of that menu.
   
4. Select "Participate in client beta" checkbox in that menu.
   
5. WAIT for steam to install the beta update and restart. This may take up to a few minutes depending on your internet connection and PC speed.

Try and remember, we are playing video games here. We aren't deciding the fates of thousands of actual people here. Everything is about having fun so let's focus on that for a bit.

When I say relax, I mean it. Try to game in a position you are comfortable in. A position you can maintain for a minimum of two or more hours at a time without fatigue. Loosen up a bit, keep your shoulders and arms mostly relaxed when using your SC. This allows your movements to be more precise and your inputs themselves to be more accurate. If you are tense, how do you expect to be good at precise aiming?

I was watching my brother stream while playing Wolfenstein: New Order the other day and many times while getting into a fire fight he would click the right pad and use the knife. This is because he wasn't really relaxed at all and was tensing up with every surprise shot coming from those darn Nazis. This is not a controller with analog sticks so you require VERY little pressure to activate the pads so stop death gripping your SC, there is no need for it.

Love the section title? Yeah, I was a bit tongue and cheek there but it's really a big deal here.

You should be using the tip of your thumbs when using your SC. You see, the trackpads take an average of the surface footprint of your thumbs on the pads to decide where you are putting them. Ideally, your thumbs should have a footprint that is a perfect geometric circle. This is, of course, impossible as our thumbs aren't designed that way so minimizing the area of effect on the pad allows for the SCs trackpads to be more accurate. Later on, you can even leverage this in your favor by slightly adjusting the roll of your thumb on the pad to fine tune adjust your aim.

The SC does not require but the lightest of touches to register your thumbs are there so touch lightly and use a part of your thumbs closer to the tip. You don't have to use the VERY tip of your thumbs but you don't have to use your whole thumbprint either. Finding a happy medium is not hard after a couple minutes experimenting and once you do find the perfect spot you will find increased accuracy and less of that jitter when you are trying to aim.

There is a reason why the SCs trackpads have a finely textured surface, friction. You might think that the texture is there to add to the friction, it's not. Think of it this way, each of those bumps on the surface touches the surface of your thumb only at the top of the bump. What this does is minimizes the surface area your thumb is actually contacting. If the surface were smooth your thumb would continually get stuck on the pad instead of gliding. There are still many reasons why your thumb could still "catch" and cause a jerky motion on the pad. We have covered several already, like pressing too hard.


One of the things that can and WILL impede your smooth tracking on the pads is something, anything, that fills in gaps between those texture bumps. As much as the console gamer eats Cheetos and drinks Mountain Dew or the PC gamer eats a fine Brie and a glass of Merlot, we should probably not do either of those things. Crumbs and other food particles will get into the grain of the pad, increase surface area and make smooth tracking harder. Not to mention our hands get all dirty and that's never good for gaming well. Nobody likes sticky buttons either.


The oils from your hands gather as you perform everyday tasks, this is normal. This keeps your skin from drying out and facilitates gripping objects. When we use our SCs we don't want this getting in the way. I wash my hands before every gaming session and have for many years. Keeps your interface devices cleaner so you don't have to clean them as often and you won't get that greasy feeling when you game. I can't stand that feeling. The problem with the SC is excessive skin oils will increase the friction of the pads making your thumb, once again, stick causing that jerky movement.


Clean your controller at least once a week. If you keep your hands clean once a week should be all the controller needs. If you find it feeling too grippy just clean it! Generally speaking, the single best thing you can use on plastics like controllers, keyboards, mice and the venerable SC is 90% rubbing alcohol. I have access to lots of denatured alcohol and that works fine as well. You should NEVER use 70% rubbing alcohol. As the name implies, it is only 70% alcohol, the rest is water. This means it will require manual drying of the surface and much time to wait for it to finish drying completely.


A quick wipe with a towel from the sink might be OK when you are just going about your day but NOT when you intend to game immediately. When you wash your hands dry them completely with a clean and DRY towel. If you use 70% alcohol to clean your SC use a similar clean dry cloth to dry it. If you use 90% you shouldn't have to but you will have to wait about 30 seconds or so for the surface to become 100% completely dry. Typically, for me, the time it takes to turn on my SC, start steam and pick a game is usually more than sufficient for both the controller and my hands to reach an optimal fully dry state. if they are even slightly not completely 100% dry then friction will be through the roof. Try it some time, you will see what I mean.

The grip is one of the biggest things that can affect your use of the SC. I will start off telling you guys that every person has a different grip on the SC that is comfortable for them. The biggest thing to remember here is the SC is NOT an XBOX or Dual Shock controller so you can't hold it like one. Comfort has BIG impacts on accuracy. Uncomfortable positions can even cause your arms or thumbs to start twitching on their own or cause RSI so do yourself a favor, use a good grip. What works for me will not necessarily help you but it is something you should experiment with. Here are a few options.

A buddy of mine described his grip on the SC. I thought he was Nutz (Shoutout to NeptNutz) but after some thinking and talking with others, it's not so crazy and many persons do use it.

The way this works is pretty self-explanatory. You use your index fingers for the triggers and bumpers and the other three fingers on each hand simply cradle the SC. When using this grip the natural axis your thumbs will travel along is close to vertical and your wrists are almost straight out to either side.

PICTURE HERE


I have big hands with big fingers so this grip is not for me. If you have medium to small hands, are a woman or a young person this may work well for you. Index and middle fingers are used for both triggers and both bumpers so you have access to them at any time. Especially useful for games where you are mapping many keyboard commands to many buttons. Since you are using only two fingers to support the whole controller you must use more of your palm along the sides of the controller. This grip is also better suited for those people who don't have huge bellies since your wrists are much closer and straighter to the body.

PICTURE HERE


This is the grip that I personally use. As I have said, I am a very large person. As such I am more relaxed and comfortable having my wrists farther apart so my arms are more beside me while holding the SC. I use my index fingers for both triggers and bumpers and my thumb horizon is a little closer to vertical than a 45-degree angle.

PICTURE HERE

If you have any unique grips, please let me know! I will update this with anything you guys can come up with!

This guide mostly covers the right pad as aim. The Gyros, though, have their own idiosyncrasies that can really hamper some people's enjoyment of them. So here are a few tips with regards to Gyros, things I have learned since I got my SC.


Gyros rely on the horizon of your controller to properly map a mouse cursor or to aim. They CAN be used at other angles but then it can become hard to quickly judge exactly where you need to go with the controller to aim where you want. Sitting straight and upright always allows for more refined, fine aiming.


Having a well-chosen rest position for the controller is especially necessary when using an "Always On" gyro setting. When sitting upright, try resting one arm on a leg or if you are at a desk have a clear place to rest the weight of the controller while you are not actively aiming with it. This will GREATLY reduce the shaky motion a cursor will have when using Gyros. Remember that you can't keep your arm perfectly stable at all times.


You can force a re-calibration from within BPM but what many new users don't realize is that the SC can re-calibrate the Gyros in games and on the fly. This is most useful when you notice that the Gyros are moving predictably in one straight line in a given direction. Note that this is NOT Gyro drift as that is a different thing altogether but this is something that the SC may need from time to time. To perform this re-calibration all you need to do is pause the game and set the controller down on a flat immovable surface for about five to ten seconds. You will notice the cursor will stop moving and at that point this re-calibration will be complete.


In more expensive devices drift can be canceled out with other sensors. With the SC it is a relatively inexpensive device and as such has no anti-drift hardware. Gyro drift is where you use the gyros for an extended period of time and returning to the same rest position you will no longer be pointing the same direction or your cursor won't be in the same place. This is normal and completely unavoidable. One way to mitigate this is to use the Gyros on a button activation such as the left trigger when aiming down iron sights. Another use is when you are using Gyros with an "always on" setting you will easily be able to correct them by adjusting your aim with the right pad. In always on mode, it is recommended to not bind the right pad to something else to use Gyros exclusively because of this. You may be able to shift the pad into a mouse cursor for correcting the Gyro drift but that is beyond the scope of this guide.


All other jitter reduction settings will apply to the Gyros as much as they do to the right pad. They may even be more necessary or have higher smoothing for example. The key is finding something YOU can play with for long periods. You need to find something where you could play longer than you normally would and that is when you can call it a success.

One of the best and most straightforward ways to mitigate some of the jitters is by adjusting the settings of the controller itself. When in mouse mode the SC has amazingly in depth and powerful options for the end user to fine tune the experience. Since this guide focuses more on jittery and jumpy aiming I won't get too in-depth here but suffice to say there is a lot there and your problem might just be related to how you use the pads or gyros and not necessarily anything wrong. These are a few tips on some ways you can leverage these settings to smooth out the experience.

The quickest way to get a more accurate aim is by adjusting the sensitivity to something you are comfortable with or that works well in the game you are playing. If you aren't comfortable with this setting then you will never be accurate in a game.
In some older games like GTA3 aiming with the mouse on default settings works but you will notice that every tick of the mouse the cursor jumps many pixels in that direction making aim really difficult. The way to fix this is to lower the sensitivity of the game itself, in the games own menus as LOW as it will possibly go. From there you can open the steam overlay and increase the sensitivity slider much higher till the motion you get is to your liking. What this actually does is make the SC send more ticks at quicker intervals and with the games set so low this counteracts a crazy fast cursor. This has the effect of increasing the effective DPI of the steam controllers mouse device. This also works quite well on many newer games too but is not necessary for all games. Wolfenstein: New Order is one where this technique works quite well.

Using Gyros, on the other hand, it is usually best to not have the sensitivity so high. Even with button activated Gyros it's not a quick or easy as the pad is to just lift your thumb to stop movement so lower sensitivity here will aid in reducing the overall jumpy nature of the Gyros. Besides, you just can't hold the whole controller as steady as you might like when Gyro aiming.

One of the best thing many experienced users of the SC use is to combine inputs from the Gyros and the pad. Keeping the pad for wide swipes and turns and using Gyros for zeroing in on the target. This is VERY effective in twitch shooters like CS: GO or online competitive multiplayer shooters. This is rather advanced and will be discussed a little bit more in the section regarding Friction scaling as that is almost necessary for this method to be used effectively.


Smoothing is just that. A software algorithm that rejects what it sees as erroneous inputs. You will inevitably lose some accuracy and depending on the speed of your PC you can actually see a noticeable increase in input latency. Generally, though, this is VERY effective in combating jitters but it is recommended to use as little SC smoothing as possible to attain the desired effect. Smoothing is also housed under the advanced button in the SC config menu.






Acceleration can be used to great effect when using pads alone. What this setting does is it scales sensitivity speed of the cursor proportionally to the physical speed of your input. This means the small adjustments to the aim on a pad will be very slow for fine tuning and wide quick swipes will throw your view quicker. This has the effect of dampening your inputs most when you are more or less holding your thumb steady. This is another option that can introduce input latency and most PC gamers spend much time reducing or disabling forced acceleration introduced by a game. As with smoothing, it is recommended to use as little SC acceleration as possible to attain the desired effect.

Trackball mode adds virtual momentum to mouse inputs. Imagine you are trying to swipe to the left to point at a new target. With trackball mode OFF the moment you release your thumb from the surface your aim stops right there. This means you would need to have your thumb always on the pad nearly 100% of the time and can cause some jerky movements in your aim as you lift your thumb and reposition. With trackball mode ON, on the other hand, you gain this virtual momentum. Imagine the same scenario as above only this time when you release your thumb your aim continues until the "Friction" of the "trackball" catches up.


There are three settings for trackball friction and these are Low, Medium and high. Medium with trackball mode on is the default. One possible way to combat jerky aim or jitters is to simply not have your thumb on the pad as often. If you aren't adjusting aim then don't have it there. This is especially useful for beginners. A good swipe is all you need and your view may spin around more than once depending on sensitivity settings. This allows you to have pad contact less often and is great when combined with vertical sensitivity scale and Gyros in FPS games.


This setting allows for the scaling of the vertical movement of the pad or Gyros relative to the slider. In other words, low on the slider means less up and down movement. This is great when combining with gyros since all you want is turning with the pad and actual fine-tuned aiming for the gyros. This will also help people who are having issues with the inconsistent horizontal movement who need to get more used to the controller. This works hand in hand with trackball friction and the gyros but may reduce jerky motions as you won't have to correct vertical aiming errors as often.

The JMouse is a mode that can be used to more closely approximate the feel of a mouse mode when outputting to a game as a joystick. This is the default gamepad template for the SC now so most users have or are using it. Many games do not allow the use gamepad and mouse input simultaneously. As such they require the use of the JMouse mode for aiming. All newer Bethesda FPS RPGS like Skyrim and all the Fallout games are like this. Because this mode can be problematic in some ways I feel it deserves a section dedicated to it. You might be doing everything else right but the way this mode works may still give you undesirable effects. JMouse can and does have a side effect of seeming to jump slightly when you are starting to move your aim.

As you can see, the defaults can be managed but in a firefight or while trying to aim a lightning bolt overshooting the target or not being able to move far enough are both common. This can affect your aim greatly and can become quite frustrating.
https://youtu.be/yccT4OsQu70

There are many options available for JMouse mode but I think the most useful would be "Minimum joystick X/Y output value" under the advanced settings. Increasing this will have the effect of making slow movements slightly larger inputs to the virtual joystick and hopefully counteracting the games built in velocity multiplier or sensitivity curve. Start your game, get to a safe place where you can alter settings without dying constantly and adjust it slowly, by 1 or 2 ticks and test. Eventually, you should be able to find a value that will not lose any of your slower, finer aim corrections.

Many users also have reported success with using low trackball friction. You will be playing more with flicks and swipes than smooth movements but this is one of the limitations of the way Valve is mapping a relative output to a velocity input.

Another thing to try is just switching to a KB/M only config and disabling gamepad altogether. This will return that buttery smooth mouse movement you want but you will lose analog movement for walking as it would have to be bound to WASD instead of an analog stick or the left pad. It really is a toss up and some users prefer one or the other. Some games will respond better or have a better interface when using a KB/M config and others with a gamepad config so experimentation here is key.

Aiming with quick or wide swipes will sometimes not register properly. This is because you are literally overshooting what the maximum joystick output can be. This is a limitation of the maximum speed a game will accept from a joystick device and in JMouse, the SC is outputting as a joystick to the game. Don't be afraid to try fiddling with the in-game joystick sensitivity setting if it has one. Especially increasing the joystick sensitivity in-game. This may help to restore some of your quicker swipes being lost or not moving as far as you feel they should.

Edge spin is a great way to mitigate the Jmouse modes tendency to not allow you to do wide sweeps or spins. What edge spin does is allows you to make a ring at the edge of the pad that will have the effect of continuing to roll the virtual trackball while in that zone. Imagine you are playing third person action game and you have a more or less comfortable setting for the right pad for fine aiming but you just can't seem to spin around well for changing directions since the virtual trackball doesn't seem to go that far. You can likely see why having an edge spin can be helpful. You can swipe like normal for aiming or fine adjusting of your view but in the times you need to spin around or go farther than the pad would normally allow, it will simply continue moving your aim as you approach the edge of the pad.

Edge spin is easy to set up, all you have to do is set the maximum speed of the spin above zero and it will simply work. Finding the perfect edge spin radius will certainly take some experimenting. Since the SC has some issues with sensing inputs too close to the edge of the pad, especially the bottom half, it may be a good idea to start at half way and adjust the radius slider to the right slightly until you find a comfortable setting.

https://youtu.be/5gvOKN5VS9E
Here is a short video of edge spin in action in JMouse mode. This video contains swipes, fine adjustments and wide pans.


One of the most useful features steam has that can aid in understanding and setting up JMouse mode is the controller HUD. When you enable the HUD it will show you the right joystick as it is output to the game. This is where you can get an idea as to what the controller is actually doing and where you can actually see how a change you make affects the virtual joystick. Just be aware that on modern games the HUD can have a drastic effect on FPS so it should only be used for short periods while actually configuring your controls.


All these tips are also different on a game by game basis so no one set of settings will work for all games. Most of the other tips that have been covered here in this guide will apply to JMouse seeing as the SCs software treats them similarly as a general rule. Below is a video of a successful Skyrim config using entirely gamepad settings with JMouse.

https://youtu.be/gKctONzyJg0

No joke, anytime you get frustrated with the SC or anything at all just take a few seconds and pull in a deep breath, hold it till the count of two and release it nice and slow. There is no reason to get your blood pressure up over a controller, or anything for that matter.


When you inevitably do get frustrated with the SC for any reason just take a 5-minute break. Go have a smoke, get a cup of coffee or tea, make a sandwich anything you can do to get away for a few minutes. Sometimes you will miss even the simplest things and tackling it with a fresh eye can really help out.


Just remember the SC CAN be used far more effectively than most might think you just need to take it slow to really get into it.

Lastly, if you just plain can't get anything to work the way you want it to and you have gone through this guide and any others you can find. You just can't stop the jitters, jumpys or anything else, ask. Really, just ask. The steam community is one of the best I have ever been a part of. I like to prowl the steam controller forum all the time and help as often as I think I can. There are some amazing people here and I have made some new friends just because we were talking about the SC and a few I friended to try and help with a problem. We all here try to be as helpful as we can be. Chances are someone else has had the same issue or may have some insight on something you might have missed. We also, LOVE videos of problems so if you can make one detailing your issue we can actually see what's happening. This allows us to better help you and others.

STEAM CONTROLLER DISCUSSIONS