[w3c/gamepad] On-screen gamepads (Issue #210)

It is common for mobile games to implement on-screen touch controls instead of or in addition to gamepad support. When mobile games use on-screen controls they can vibrate the device using [Vibration API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Vibration_API). However, Vibration API is not consistently supported across browsers (it's only fully implemented and working in Chromium browsers) and has a high potential for abuse.

In https://github.com/w3c/vibration/issues/33 Gamepad API is proposed as a potential avenue for supporting vibration effects for on-screen gamepads. Requiring apps to use Gamepad API to vibrate the device would bypass some of the limitations of Vibration API and would make it simpler for mobile games to support both "real" gamepads and on-screen gamepads through the same code path.

On some operating systems there's system-level support for on-screen gamepads, for instance on iOS [GCVirtualController](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/gamecontroller/gcvirtualcontroller) can be used to configure the layout of on-screen gamepad touch inputs. The operating system creates a virtual gamepad that applications can enumerate as if it were a real (hardware) gamepad. Android does not have any system-level support for on-screen gamepads but there are apps that provide similar functionality.

-- 
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3c/gamepad/issues/210
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.

Message ID: <w3c/gamepad/issues/210@github.com>

Received on Thursday, 13 June 2024 01:06:33 UTC