What does deadzone mean?

[Tobberoinen]

I may sound noob but I don't know what deadzone means and how it affects gameplay.

[loki4321x3]

if you have a wheel or controller it is the zone where you cant steer or use the axis
for example.. my xbox360 controller has a bug that it steers left without me telling it to do so.. i incresed the deadzone and now it does not do it anymore because the part where it happens is "dead"
if u would put it at 90% the last 10% would be the working axis of the controller

[Augustus Shartfire]

it sets the point where the game starts registering a certain axis of control input, so say you had throttle bound to a pedal controller, and had the deadzone on 20%, the first 20% of the pedal's movement will do nothing, and not send any input to the game. deadzones can be useful if you have old, clapped out controllers that don't quite return to 0 any more. most of the time you'll want deadzones as low as they will go without your controllers sending signal without you touching anything.

[Reese]

https://imgur.com/x1RKem2

Visual depiction of a single analog range of deadzone.