this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
80 points (95.5% liked)

Steam Deck

6012 readers
2 users here now

Universal community link
!steamdeck@lemmy.ml

Rules

Order

Models

64GB eMMC LCD
256GB NVMe LCD
512GB NVMe LCD
512GB NVMe OLED
1TB NVMe OLED

Allowed languages

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
mp3@lemmy.ml
mp3@lemmy.ca
ylai@lemmy.ml
80
Valve’s next mystery gadget may be imminent (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to c/steamdeck@lemmy.ml
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Catsrules@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Bluetooth I understand and makes perfect sense in a controller. Is a very common way to connect a human interface device wirelessly. It is a direct connection and can be very lower power and doesn't need to transfer alot of data. Not only did the Steam controller support Bluetooth like you mentioned but i believe the recent Xbox and PS5 controllers support Bluetooth as well. I think even the Nintendo Wii controllers were Bluetooth.

WiFi doesn't make much sense in a controller when Bluetooth already exists. Unless the controller has features that would benefit using WiFI over Bluetooth.

For example I could see maybe an advantage in a steam steaming/steam remote play situation. Instead of a controller going Bluetooth to local device and that local device passing the commands to the remote device, the controller could talk directly over the network to the remote device saving some latency for a more responsive experience. But I don't know why they would pick 5GHz that is more of a higher bandwidth application as far as i understand. You don't need that for sending basic controller commands 2.4GHz would be more than enough. Maybe it has something to do with Latency if your 2.4GHz network is congested you could to go with the less congested 5GHz frequency.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Proprietary wifi connections perform better significantly than Bluetooth. Bluetooth's performance blows.

[–] Catsrules@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can they still call it WiFi if it is a proprietary version of WiFi?

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh. I'm not sure the implementation details and how high or low level their alterations are. Do they establish connections similarly and just not expose the details and packet formats to end users, or is it completely redone?

But either way, Bluetooth is pretty mediocre for just about anything, and the only way to get good results is to own both sides of the connection, with a console or with a dongle.

[–] Privatepower42@fosstodon.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@conciselyverbose @ylai @Aurenkin @Catsrules @anon232 we need to support libre and open source things here.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Bluetooth isn't any more "open". And more importantly, it's a horseshit standard with all of bad stability, bad latency, and bad performance.