@Josh_Quillan

11 months ago

Gun-mice are great! This is the fourth gun-mouse I've seen, I used to own a MonsterGecko Pistol Mouse (an optical mouse-gun with a longer baseplate and the sensor right at the front of the baseplate, and a massive scroll wheel that went through the whole mouse body, plus a metal trigger; it was well-built but its secondary button was crammed in into the angle between the bottom of the trigger guard and uncomfortable to press. The sweeping movement took some getting used to. I also had a CyberGun P230 mouse, which was moulded in the shape of an actual P230 pistol if you glued one to the top of an ancient late 80s mouse - it was nicer in the hand than the MonsterGecko, but for some bizarre reason it was a ball mouse, not optical, and of all the real gun's controls it used only the trigger, adding in an extra button below the trigger for a right click. There was also a Zalman mouse based on this concept, but I never had or used that one. Both the ones I did have were quite nice to use in general principles, but overall very disappointing, and I always wanted to see the concept done better. For one thing, nobody who makes these seems to have looked at any actual guns. Many guns are covered in controls (hammer, safety, magazine catch, slide latch are common to most handguns) which are designed specifically to be used in the thick of a gunfight, but every execution of this concept I've seen ignores these controls in favour of adding a right click button below the trigger which prevents you from gripping the thing comfortably. Why? Gun ergonomics are varied but basically always excellent, but nobody bothers to avail themselves of the research and development that gunsmiths did already, much of which is long out of patent or copyright protection. Many for example laud the Colt 1911 as one of the most pleasant to hold guns ever made. Near to the trigger in easy reach of the firing hand it has a hammer which could become a button, magazine release button, a slide latch, and a safety which moves up and down and would be perfect to adapt into a jog switch that functions as a mouse wheel, and all of these could be replicated on both sides of the gun to accomodate left-handed people. Another thing that confuses me is the lack of anything like this from major mouse manufacturers who are actually capable of making things properly and creating ergonomically sound designs with a good standard of fit and finish. Even now that many companies make ergo mice, the insistence on buttons rather than triggers (which are, after all, a time-tested type of control specifically designed for accuracy and minimal movement) when pads have used triggers for some time, makes no sense to me. Any gamer who uses a pad knows how pleasing triggers are, so why aren't they on mice? But having played Red Steel on Wii back in the day...THAT is the way to do gun peripherals. I've heard you can make wiimotes work on PCs but never had any luck trying to do it. Logitech, step the hell up and make this! Another thing - this is far from the first mouse to have haptic feedback, back around 2004 I used to own a Belkin Nostromo mouse which had force feedback. My mother banned me from using it as it made my whole desk vibrate and was audible downstairs!

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