Touchpad sensitivity seems backwards

[fluffy bunny]

This is the right pad.

It seems the faster I move my finger on the touchpad, the less movement I get from my character.

When in game (any first person game). When I move my finger across the pad slowly, the character turns about 1/4th of a turn (or more). When I move my finger quickly, the character barely turns ((maybe 1/16th of a turn). I get LESS movement from moving my finger faster on the pad.

Is this normal? Or did I maybe mess up some setting somewhere?

[shadowboy813]

This is because the game applies a low-pass filter to analog input (in other words, it smooths input).

The way mouse-like joystick works is as you drag your finger across the touchpad, it sends a stick deflection based on how fast you move your finger--not how far you move it. The faster you move your finger, the further deflected the analog signal is. This type of input is *especially* sensitive to the consistency of your finger's velocity. It's not going to move at a steady speed, it will speed up and slow down by a lot because your finger will not glide perfectly smoothly across the surface, so the analog input will speed up and slow down rapidly over time. The game will average several samples of this input, leaving a smaller value than Steam Input is trying to send.

When you move your finger slower, the gaps in these small sample-to-sample changes are smaller, so the mouse-joystick input will more closely reflect the actual speed of your finger.

The best way to see this is to play a game that can completely turn off controller input smoothing and see the difference with it on and off.

Doom 2016 is a good example. Doom 2016 has a negative acceleration when you turn on controller input smoothing, but it behaves as expected when you turn it off.

Most games don't allow you to change input smoothing, and Unreal Engine, in particular is aggressive with controller input smoothing (I haven't played a single unreal engine game that feels good with mouse joystick for the exact reason you observe).

If a game allows mixed input methods, it's better to just set the right trackpad to mouse input. Mouse-joystick mode is intended for games that can't mix kb/m and controller input (example: Skyrim or Fallout 4).

[fluffy bunny]

That was it. The "mouse-joystick" mode. Set it to "mouse" mode and now it works much better. Thank you!