A stick building friend of mine told me about these buttons that activated instantly on the touch. He said that it was difficult for him to adjust to these buttons because of the instant activation and the slight lag from the physical touch of the button of a Sanwa or Semitsu. He said that he would try to find the site of these things as they are made from a specialty manufacturer and can’t be found on sites such as Lizardlick or Akihabarashop. The only other information I could gather was that they were around $15 a button, and he was unsure as to what sizes they were or whether they could snap in or screw onto anything. Would anyone happen to have an idea of what these magical buttons are and where to find them?
They have those on some cellphones & they don’t feel tactile.
“You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads!”
-Dr. Evil
Your friend is probably talking about some kind of contact switch - like the capacitive ones on ‘touch’ lamps. For those you don’t need a button, a patch of conductor will do. I looked around a little, and didn’t find one that was particularly suitable for use with a stick, but they’re probably out there.
capacitive buttons would be crazy. I shutter just thinking about all the accidental inputs.
I still remember my old LG Chocolate every time I put it inside my pocket. I got charged a lot of unintentional long distance calls that almost got me bankrupt.
I don’t think they’d be reliable enough for an arcade stick.
Man, arcade stick folks are turning into Audiophiles…
I need to design some nice mahagony ring of wood for folks to loop the USB cable of an arcade stick through. Call it a ‘quantum ring’, and with a long spiel about how the natural amber crystals present in the ring activate the quantum entanglement of the electrons, so that when the stick says ‘go low’, the same is INSTANTLY occuring to the matching electrons on the endplugged into the console, and thus eliminating lag.
Prototypes available now for the low low cost of $4,000. It’s not easy getting those amber crystals in tune, so know you’re paying for quality.
Anecdotal evidence available on request.
It’s true; I played on one of the prototypes while waiting for a bald eagle to barbecue.
I think he meant buttons that activate like the opticals ona sanwa flash
I was thinking these:
Touch sensitive switches, touch sensitive push button, touch sensitive door opener
New Range Of Touch-sensitive Buttons - a Design Engineer Article at Engineer Live
Would still require physical movement of a piece that blocks or unblocks the light, and a spring to return it to neutral. No change in speed, just less click.
I remember ShinAce did something like that with happ buttons a long time ago…
OP is talking about capacitive buttons, not optical ones.
That said, my experience with capacitive stuff tells me that for gaming, they’ll feel unintuitive especially since most of us are accustomed to the physical resistance of a button with a spring.