I have no idea who kowal is. I’m just interested in new design and materials, as well as a big fan of arcade games since the early 80’s!
what is alt.acct ? I’m not an expert in web terms, I’ll have to admit that.
*thanks for the info for the gate, usually sanwa uses lexan for the gates, it is typical of mechanical grade polycarbonate and will take shocks and repeated loading better than pmma which chips and may crack with strong players who “ride the gates” loudly. hori seems to opt for the same solution then.
people seem a bit too incline to applaud everything Hori sells or claims. I’m not against them nor Sanwa nor Seimitsu, I’m trying to give an honest read.
A diagram is a cut view or a projection in 2D : therefore you have to be careful not to reduce a surface to a line or a line to a point when explaining the said diagrams. Hori says it’s point contact which is wrong. It is not semantics at all since they make this intentinal mistake/word game with THEIR product but when speaking of the “other companies” pivoting system they don’t play any games and give out the flat out truth: large area contact.
Hori is wrong with their point contact, it’s line contact end of discussion, you can’t just say “yeah it’s just semantics”. try and say that at the university or an engineering school saying everything “is just semantics” to excuse your mistakes during an exam. You’ll end up kicked out with ground scraping results. Just pick up any engineering bearing book, there are some free to download if you look around to have an idea (try out any handbook specialized in bearings ) and see for yourself the TREMENDOUS difference between point, line and surface contact and how each lead to different type of wear. I can guarantee you it’s not “just semantics”.
** Hori is playing with words hoping young gamers wil never check, nothing else, ending up with a commercial pitch which is simply a lie, their pivot has line contact , not point.*
**Less friction is effectively the result of less areas in contact, I’ve never claimed the opposite, but it leads to excessive wear in the form of grooving (hayabusa pivot) which leads to sticking issues… as opposed to bearings with higher area contact that would have high wear but distributed wear retaining a housing and pivot shape not very different from the initial one(example JLF pivot and housing, both remain more or less spherical) **, in the context of polymer pivot bearings in joysticks using very low coeff of friction materials one against the other : look at what is made in the industry for professional joysticks (for remote controls, building industry, specialized vehicles, aerospace, etc) , spherical pivots are NEVER housed in conical housings.
I’m guessing Hori is crashtesting the product on the gaming comunity and I think these novel housing will permit very rapid sliding at first but with time it is highly possible it ends up more difficult to tilt than “traditional” japanese spherical housings+spherical pivots.
you have to take in account the speed at which the pivot is sliding, the range of possible loads (some players are real hulks and wobble the whole arcade like a christmas tree) and the fact that some directions will always be used much more than others, leading to a preferential wear: people more often play as 1st player and perform dashes, quarter circles and dragon puches in fighting games. who performs every day a “left , left/up, up” motion for example in a fighting game? this means the pivot will be used more on some sides than the others.
With a conical housing, in a gaming situation, it could deteriorate easily but to be sure, we’ll have to keep a close eye on it and see what players say in a year or two then, it would be unwise and dishonest to throw down a conclusion written in stone when we don’t have all the exact specs around and no real wear tests being made by any lab or observed after a number of intense play by gamers: the product is a novelty just released!
this being said, I do not have actually access to a lab, but anyone able to do so could make the hayabusa undergo a series of accelerated wear tests that would take only hours or a couple of days to simulate years if abuse (say 2 to 5 years would be reasonable, longer than that people tend to replace aprts and or buy new articles). So if someone is eager to test the hayabusa profesionally it would be interesting to see how it compares to a jlw a jlf and a LS40 or LS56. Or we’ll just have to wait a minimum of a year or two.
I never said sanwa or seimitsu were “perfect” and hori hayabusa “crap”.
The flattened lower portion of the seimitsu and sanwa pivots is not well designed if you want my sincere opinion and may be one of the reasons of excessive wear and sticking if not properly cleaned and lubricated but I must admit I had some models which in dry state lasted relatively long while the some others( same models, say LS32 spealing of seimitsu) rapidly started to “stick” : this may be a tolerance and or finishing issue (some pivots seemed not so smoothly finished although new)
If some people still prefer the jlw over the jlf for sturdiness and reliability (not feel or distance of throw etc) it means that sanwa didn’t make leaps and bounds of progress when designing the jlf pivot for example. by taking a better material for the pivot, they would have outclassed the hori hayabusa by far… but they didn’t.
@Moonchild, when you say
I had similar feelings years ago. I thought people,in the industry always designed everything the right way and would “never” opt for easy or cheap solutions. Time and experience have shown otherwise and I learned my lesson.
Why would people opt for something that makes no sense? Well ask that to the people who designed the seals on the Challenger spacecraft which exploded because simple polymer O-RINGS were POORLY DESIGNED (they didn’t choose the right material nor right dimensions and it led to critical leaking). It was a real mess when they finally knew what precisely caused such a catastrophe, simple o-rings…
If NASA technicians can make mistakes , imagine in the gaming joystick industry!
Your remark is interesting. You think that with a delrin housing they would obligatorily use a delrin pivot… Why so? usually the pivots and housings are made of dissimilar materials in almost every case: either the pivot is supposed to resist longer , OR the housing. Sometimes, everything is designed out of PE, teflon, delrin etc but it’s not common practise.
In the industry they think with cost and tooling issues as well and a certain level of efficiency, not “the best possible materials in existence” : some parts are designed to be replaced and are tagged “sacrificial”
Look at the JLW: Sanwa preferred to bet on the pivot making it out of steel. which lmeans the housing was considered cheaper to replace.
Now that everything has risen in price, Sanwa offers a similar housing for the JLF but opts for a sacrificial polymer pivot that can be easily replaced at costs less in tooling than the former JLW steel pivot.
As for dissimilar materials, (well 99% of the time, bearings with one unique material exist but are not so common) there is always one material that has higher lubricity than the other, you have to understand this. It’s not a “mistake” and it is peerfectly possible to have a soft material coupled with a hard material also. look at the bronze bearings coupled to stainless steel in the industry, bronze is many times softer and malleable than stainless or maraging.
@Moonchild, when you say
I had similar feelings years ago. I thought people,in the industry always designed everything the right way and would “never” opt for easy or cheap solutions. Time and experience have shown otherwise and I learned my lesson.
Why would people opt for something that makes no sense? Well ask that to the people who designed the seals on the Challenger spacecraft which exploded because simple polymer O-RINGS were POORLY DESIGNED (they didn’t choose the right material nor right dimensions and it led to critical leaking). It was a real mess when they finally knew what precisely caused such a catastrophe, simple o-rings…
If NASA technicians can make mistakes , imagine in the gaming joystick industry!
Your remark is interesting. You think that with a delrin housing they would obligatorily use a delrin pivot… Why so? usually the pivots and housings are made of dissimilar materials in almost every case: either the pivot is supposed to resist longer , OR the housing. Sometimes, everything is designed out of PE, teflon, delrin etc but it’s not common practise.
In the industry they think with cost and tooling issues as well and a certain level of efficiency, not “the best possible materials in existence” : some parts are designed to be replaced and are tagged “sacrificial”
Look at the JLW: Sanwa preferred to bet on the pivot making it out of steel. which lmeans the housing was considered cheaper to replace.
Now that everything has risen in price, Sanwa offers a similar housing for the JLF but opts for a sacrificial polymer pivot that can be easily replaced at costs less in tooling than the former JLW steel pivot.
As for dissimilar materials, (well 99% of the time, bearings with one unique material exist but are not so common) there is always one material that has higher lubricity than the other, you have to understand this. It’s not a “mistake” and it is peerfectly possible to have a soft material coupled with a hard material also. look at the bronze bearings coupled to stainless steel in the industry, bronze is many times softer and malleable than stainless or maraging.
Honestly the Hayabusa parts are not of higher quality material AT ALL, they’re flat out standard but the parts seem to be tooled and finished with better tolerances than the JLF (except the housing which I disagree with strongly for technical reasons that are underrated and silenced by excited players who recently acquired the said item). What I do think is an interesting step towards modders is the possibility of having the choice for the microswitches, other than that nothing is really new, it’s all hype and an aletrnate take on the jlw and jlf.
Is that worth tagging my post as “spam” or “insightly” again by furious fanboys??
I should have been more precise. IT’s not so idiotic if well designed , but if HORI or SANWA had implemented an aluminum part, MAN would you pay the price in spades for their R&D tiny effort.
Look at the “silent” JLF, SANWA doesn’t reduce the price of the silent microswitches, they are the exact same price if not a tad more than the street price if bought on Mouser or similar component sources.
Better worth buying custom parts, but personally apart from the wear issue, aluminum isn’t worth the price if a gamer wants an actuator that slides much faster, because it won’t. This being said, they do last forever if that is what counts and I respect that so it ends up to a personal choice, not day and night performance, but “sturdiness” (with a cost).
It may simply be a misunderstanding between me and Darksakul when he said :
.
Fortunately, stick parts are cheap and easy to replace. If something feels good and works well for a couple of years, I don’t mind dropping $2–$5 to fix it.
So having played a bit more with the Hayabusa, I realize that I do enjoy it a lot more than a JLF, but the feel to me is similar enough to the LS-32 that I feel that it’s relatively on par.
After a few hours of use, I think @GeorgeC summed it up the best: looks and mounts like a JLF, and plays/feels at least as good as an LS-32.
That being said, my main stick panel is mounted with an LS-32, and I think I’ll keep it that way for the time being. The Hayabusa, however, will be reserved for locations (ie, a Sanwa Sega arcade panel) where I can only mount Sanwa sticks, but I’ll want the feel of a Seimitsu stick.
@Agieze
That’s a very thorough analysis of the Hayabusa, and it’s very interesting seeing it from that perspective.
I haven’t taken apart my Hayabusa to check on the materials, but even then, I don’t think I’d even be qualified to make any sort of assessment in that aspect. However, I feel that Hori’s product description is more marketing-focused than actual technical-detail-correctness-focused, with the whole “one point of contact” and all.
Everyone with two fingers of brains understood what Hori meant when they were explaining their products. They said point but we understood how it all worked. If they would have been more technical, that interview could have been half as long as some of these rants that @Agieze made and that just isn’t practical. The tolerances of these materials should be enough to handle the 1-3 lbs of pressure that is put on them and if kept lubed will last at least a couple of years for all but the most abusive of players. These things aren’t going to space but they do their job well.
@Agieze - You said that people are too quick to applaude everything that Hori does but that really isn’t true. This community has never been overly generous about Hori’s offerings to the small components pool of products. Cases, yes, but their buttons and joysticks have always been laughable and usually ended up replaced with parts of higher quality. Only now have they created something in that area worthy of applause.
I don’t fully understand why you were spam tagged but insightful is a good thing. Welcome to engrish buddy. Laugh.
You just nailed it right in the eye man. If you read my first post, you’ll notice I said something along the same lines when it comes to commercial pitch arguments, the drawbacks are always minimized concerning their own products and maximized when it concerns rival companies products , and it goes as far as to reach a caricatural level of scientific nincompoopery.
Honestly when reading the Hori commercial I had the impression I was going through vapid publicity in a FLEX magazine. You know the type “this protein is scientifically 347% more potent than whey”. Yup, 347%, not 348 nor 345… really 347 and you’ll get 5 times bigger and 9 times more ripped only in two weeks, just like the steroid hulk protrayed on the box.
Realistic guys like you and me won’t rule out one brand or another and simply test and appreciate them for what they are and their different feel: I think you summed it up, the hori stick (I didn’t test it yet) probably feels somehow like a lix between seimitsu and sanwa models, nothing more nothing else.
All I wanted to say was my opinion about the new pivot system and it’s wear issues over time. Seems to upset many fanboys when the Hori idol is being disrespected and stared directly in the eyes in the very temple of the almighty Geek.
Heck in the days I thought Wico rubber grommet sticks felt cool, hard to shake and all but a real fun to wobble the whole arcade cabinet to death when playing a neogeo game or some capcom fighter… it was only many years later that I first heard of a technician admitting the grommets could crack under exposure to heat, get gummy by combining with sweat and dirt, tear … and be sometimes difficult to order due to Wico’s limited availability of certain spare parts.
Today I wouldn’t touch a wico rubber centering joystick even if I were offered one, I’m more into speedy feeling joys.
Who knows if the hayabusa will be follow the same fate as the wico rubbers if the pivot fails before a sanwa or a seimitsu clone does, and end up like a nostalgic collector product.
Yeah well those who spam tagged me should take at least a couple minutes of pause between their 12h non stop gaming sessions in their mom’s basements. At least to drink some water or keep their act straight.
As for the load on the joysticks, I made similar assessments on materials before studying materials. It’s normal. But just a funny hint for you to understand that you shouldn’t underestimate what some products can be put through, just look at the custom springs that some arcade custom shops sell : while common aftermarket joystick springs are rated to a common 1-2lbs, some heavy duty compression springs are rated at…9lbs! NINE pounds!! (circa 4.5 kg).
Just for the fun of it I’d like to try one out one day on a buddy’s old half-wrecked cab.
Imagine repeatedly pulling off “final moves” with such a joy and you’ll understand that wear can be an issue and designing an efficient pivot should not be a joke.
paradise arcade sells such a spring
This means that some dudes literally wrestle with their joys (I did at a time) and put tremendous amounts of pressure (and thus load) , often in a cabinet as opposed to joysticks intended for “lap” use (like hori, x arcade, console joys etc).
the type of part that will cost 2-5 bucks will certainly not be the housing. that’s why I talked about the concept of “sacrificial parts” in the industry. Replaceable parts have to be easily machineable, relatively cheap in terms of material cost too… and possibly as small and simple as possible.
honestly a joystick housing isn’t that complicated , at all, it’s even ridiculously simple but gaming companies have priorities and will only permit small parts to be sold for a cheap price. Replacing a housing isn’t really worth it unless it’s a collectible item, that is compared to the price of a new complete unit.
…Or you could just buy a new pivot if/when the stock one fails.
Those high tension springs were made for the sake of science and only sold for experimentation purposes and custom applications. This was discussed in the Paradise thread but only in passing.
Well it depends if the hayabusa housing fucks up or not, but I haven’t bought one yet to test.
Replacing a pivot or an actuator is exactly what I do with sanwa and seimitsu sticks. It’s dirt cheap if you have access to the right source.
So
You forgot to mention that that product did also sell out and was frequently requested for a restock even though on paper it seemed like a horrible idea. I remember looking at PAS’s Facebook page and seeing how a few guys commented about a restock for the said 9lb spring saying they loved it for shumps.
-Snip Name-
ETA on custom 9lb springs for JLF? It works wonders for schmups and brawlers!
Like · · November 19, 2013 at 8:54am
That’s true and Bryan had no idea people would actually want them. LoL. To each their own. I feel like pivots grind with 3 lb springs. I can only imagine 9 would be crazy rough.
With 9 pound springs you’d need to order a box of pivots! And watch out for carpal tunnel syndrom signs! (oh and to the nutcases who flag all my posts, you happened to forget one on this page).
playing with Wico rubbers was already “special” with certain games, but they were commonplace in some arcade salons in Europe 25+ years ago. It would be interesting to propose these springs in japanese arcade salons to see how the local arcade addicts appreciate them!
They are flagging you because you are double/triple posting. If you posted last just edit your post if you want to expand your thoughts. Basic forum etiquette.
Just because It’s not for you or some other people doesn’t mean people who use them can’t enjoy it. Also the people who do enjoy using them probably just don’t give a damn about every little specification, they probably don’t give a damn about the technical nuances that you oh so love to point out, and they probably do it for a simple reason: Its fun for them. As such they customize their joystick to fit their personal preference that they enjoy using. From a technical standpoint things may seem absurd, but it’s funny that one who doesn’t even own or has yet to try the product is so quick to bash it.
But then again who am I to say such things? I’m just a mundane kid who’s a local arcade addict in the same sense that I don’t give a damn about every little specification and technical nuance. I just use whatever the hell i like, hayabusas, anodized actuators, custom springs and all.