The Steam Controller has a pretty niche feature called Grip Sense, which is a pair of capacitive touch sensors inside the handles that can sense when you are touching them. Though you may not use it, Valve thinks you should “Because it’s, like, cool” and even recommends a couple of sweet shortcuts to use with it.
Valve notes that you could turn gyro controls off and on, depending on how your fingers sit on the controller, and it points out that the activation threshold is adjustable. That means you could activate a shortcut with only a slight lift of the fingers, or by taking the whole hand off the controller.
Activating and deactivating gyro controls to recenter your hand is reportedly called “ratcheting”. Valve likens it to picking up your mouse when it hits the end of your mousepad. Effectively, if your body or hands are at an uncomfortable angle, you can take your hand off the controller to turn off gyro controls, recenter your body and turn them back on again. It’s a neat function, and one I wish I had while playing Splatoon Raiders on the Nintendo Switch 2 recently (that has a recenter, but it’s less natural with a dedicated button).
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Valve says, “While the original intent was for ratcheting (and it does work for that!) we have found a few other cool use cases, like using it to bring up a weapon wheel, map, or menu.”
In the weapon wheel example, lifting your fingers from the rear of the controller brings up the wheel, allowing you to select your weapon or whatever, and then place your fingers back down to lock in your choice.
If you have your hands on a Steam Controller, and you’re wondering how to assign your Grip Sense to Gyro:
- Go to the layout editor in Steam
- Turn on the “Gyro To Mouse” option
- Click the button selector
- Select Grip Sense
The same process works for assigning other functions. You just need to set your keybind to “Press and Hold”, so that, when you take your fingers off the controller, it holds the menu button or whatever else.
You could set Grip Sense without a hold, for jumping or shooting, for example, but that seems quite inefficient to me. You can even adjust Grip Sense sensitivity if you find the controls a little hard to hit. Personally, if I were lucky enough to have got my hands on the Steam Controller, I’d be using this feature straightaway. And with a little practice, it could make gyro adjusting feel more natural.
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