My Review of the Falcon

Artinz said:
Ok, I know a few people have been asking me to review this peice of gaming gear, and I finally decided to do it. I got the White Limited Edition Bundle (Model 4904 of 5000 if anyone cares) with the pistol grip. Here is my honest opinion of the thing:


2. Use in Competitive Gaming
Now, Novint is convinced that the Falcon is just as good, or better than a mouse for competitive gaming. I do not agree. My testing in competitive gaming was in TF2, just on our servers. I played with no forces except the shot directions forces, as said by Novint is the reason why it is superior to a mouse. Now, that was very useful in itself, but it does not compensate for the other inferiorities of the Falcon. For example, when you are running in Dustbowl from your spawn to the "forward base" before the second point, there are times where you can take your hand off the mouse because you only need WASD to run. With the Falcon, if you do that, you look straight down and become very vulnerable.

The Falcon takes a lot of time to get used to, especially because of the strange turning and aiming methods that I mentioned earlier, but after a while (around 5 hours), I began to get better with it, but still not to the point where I would use it in a competitive leauge. Strangely, Scout was the easiest to play with it, I expect because the faster running went well with the faster aiming of the Falcon. I do not recommend using the Falcon with classes that use secondary fire a lot (namely Demos and Heavies) because the alternate buttons are kind of awkward to reach. If you hotkey the secondary fire to another key on your keyboard, then using it should be fine.

This is a category that I'm very mixed about. It's a new experience, and it definitely brings something to the competitive table, but not much.
Use in Competitive Gaming Rating - 6

Well, thanks for reading my review (if you read the whole thing, that is, lol), and I am open to any feedback you have on it.
Click to expand...

Hey Artinz, thanks for taking the time to write a detailed review like this. I just have a comment on the multiplayer point of view (to put in my two cents, based on experiences I've seen from people). I do indeed argue that the Falcon is as good as the mouse - I've heard from most of our users who have put enough time into it (that's the key), that they equal their mouse skills, and many surpass their mouse skills. I for one, cannot imagine using the mouse again. I hate playing with the mouse (I'm the opposite of most people - I've used the Falcon more than the mouse in gaming by this point).

One thing we are about to add to our drivers is gravity comp. That will make the Falcon stay in place when you let go of it (the motors will know how much to turn on - it helps with aiming too).

It's interesting that you like scout best. I've heard from many that they liked that least to start. I've also heard some people say they like sniper the best to start, and some said the least to start. Personal preference and game style, I think.

I've seen two common times when people have reviewed online play similar to how you did. One is where they have not put enough time into learning. It generally is about 20 hours of play before you really start to get into your groove. Maybe 30-40 for some people (the more skilled you are with the mouse, the longer it can take). Non-gamers play as well immediately, generally. The second place I've seen people say they don't think the Falcon is as good, is when they adjust the settings too much too early. I highly recommend leaving the Falcon at the default settings for about 10 hours to start, to learn the control, then tweak from there. From your description, I think this might be part of the problem (the way you described the turning didn't seem quite right to me, so maybe it was tweaked into a non-ideal state).

that's my two cents ;)

thanks, tomnovint
 
no offense taken ;) - I couldn't expect to hit 100%. However, I have had several people who said that they had almost given up on the Falcon because they were frustrated with it and how it controlled in online games, but then took the advice of leaving the default settings on, and tried it again. Now they say they love the Falcon (in a competitive sense). As another indication, when I play on our Falcon only nights, I find that the competition is pretty tough - there are some very good Falcon players.

If there's anything I can do, or tips I can provide, I'm happy to do what I can to help make the Falcon a better experience. If online games aren't for you too, there are a ton of other games that people can play that give other single player experiences too.

thx, tomnovint
 
I had MkiZzLe, very much appreciated the posts - they were awesome to read. thx for your support ;) You should join us tomorrow night at our Falcon community event (if you weren't already planning to)
tomnovint
 
Destroy said:
What do you mean by "Amateur"?
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatuer

An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without formal training or pay. An amateur receives little or irregular income from their activities, and differs from a professional who makes a living from the pursuit and typically has some formal training or certifications in the domain.

:)
 
The F-Gen drivers emulate a mouse, and are customizeable, making the Falcon work with any PC game. You can adjust the movement scales for the Falcon's control, and save settings for various games. There will be settings where you can map buttons to different controls in games, and we also will have a system for gesture recognition in which you can easily access 36 simple to remember gestures to activate any key press or macro. A movement such as moving right then moving forward, could turn on your flashlight (along with haptic cues to make the movements easy to control), while down-down could make you crouch. We can even use it in other apps, such as forward-up is cut while forward-down is paste.


There will be 4 levels of game support. F-Gen Bronze, F-Gen Silver, F-Gen Gold, and Falcon HD. F-Gen Bronze will just be basic mouse support with customized inputs. F-Gen Silver will have basic forces. F-Gen Gold will have strong force feedback support. With Falcon HD titles (all of our current titles are Falcon HD), we have source access to the game and we can get full Falcon support implemented. Call of Duty 4 will be our first F-Gen game for example, and hopefully it will be F-Gen Gold. F-Gen will implement a pixel reader to get game information and a scripting system so that the community can adjust forces and add game support. We're also looking into DirectX support.

thx, tomnovint
 
I've taken the time to play 15 hours of multiplayer with the default settings, and I'm still looking at it the same way. It's still much more difficult for me, and it doesn't let me get that sense of realism, since I have my fun in multiplayer by winning, and not by dying with fancy technology. I still love it for solo, but I don't think I'll ever be fully comfortable using it in multiplayer.
 
Hey Artinz, thanks for taking the time to play before posting. I've found the better the player (i.e. better players have really honed their mouse skills) the more time it takes to get used to relearning your skill with the Falcon. Some people, it will be 20-50 hours. Some people admittedly might not want to put in that amount of time too, though. Eventually you'll get there if you put in the time. One other thing to check is that you didn't change any of the input control settings. I had one fellow who actually had 50 hours of play time, all of it frustrating. I told him to leave the control settings at their defaults for at least 10 hours before tweaking them. He wrote back that within hours he was up to speed with the mouse in his case, after taking that advice. Those are my thoughts. Glad you like it for singleplayer too. thx, tomnovint
 
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