Huzzah! After almost a year in development, the Novint Falcon has gone native with Valve’s Orange Box — that’s Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. “Native” meaning that you no longer need a special version of the game to use the Falcon. What does that say to me? It’s time to really review this thing, since everyone involved clearly believes it’s fit for human consumption now.
If you start your Steam client, it should update all the relevant games. Or you can just read the news here. If you’re Falcon-curious, they’ve got a deal right now where you can get the Orange Box and a Falcon for $150 — that’s a pretty solid deal for such a major peripheral. And since Novint is working with EA and others, you can bet they’re going to have lots of support, and there are probably hacked versions of a lot of other games out there.
And what about Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike? Support is coming soon, I’m just going to arbitrarily say some time in the next two months, based on nothing but a blogger’s intuition.
I’ve been VERY curious about this device for quite some time. They are really going to grow the library of supported games to get me to throw down for it though.
we currently support over 50 games, and are soon to release Left 4 Dead, Counter Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Tiger Woods Golf, and many more. We are also working on our F-Gen drivers which will let the Falcon play any PC game. thx, tomnovint, ceo
Oh ho ho! FPS gamers are starting to drool I bet.
I tried this with Left 4 Dead at CES – very cool, but takes a lot of getting used to.
So, basically it is a complex and expensive device all created to give the player the feeling of being able to pull a trigger to fire, instead of clicking a mouse, while sacrificing high accuracy.
No, I haven’t used one, but I’ll keep my $150 and keep left-click headshotting everyone. We don’t use joysticks in fps’s for a reason…even ones shaped like pistols.
See Simon above – takes some getting used to, but definitely can’t replace the mouse and keyboard completely.
It is much more than that. Have a look at the video on this page, and the reviews. thx, tomnovint, ceo
https://home.novint.com/store/promote.php
nice pic and story Devin. I think L4D will be sooner than your intuition ;) thx, tomnovint, ceo (let us know if you want a Falcon to review, if you don’t already have one) ;)
I’ve had it for a while and I absolutely -love- it. There is no better way to play an FPS and can’t wait to try it with the upcoming titles, especially Battlefield.
The mid part of the axis(x,y,z) give more resistence as you reach the extemities as it moves that direction faster in the game so you never reach the sides.
The immersion is incredible, using Crysis as an example you feel every jump, every bullet hit you, and the force of the tree landing next to you.
As a long time FPS gamer, who has always been very picky about my mice, for obvious reasons, the Novint Falcon Game Controller is awesome.
Anyone who “claims” to be a pro FPS gamer, and hasn’t tried one of these yet, who claims the mouse is used for “obvious reasons”, and says they’ll stick to “left click headshotting” all the time….. You’re very wrong about this particular device.
I see one thing very clearly when I see people with attitudes like that… it’s called ignorance. Fear of change is what makes some “old-school” gamers fall off the top.
Trust me, I’ve been gaming for a good 20+ years now (yes, way back to the t-80 days, if you can call that “hardcore” gaming =P) and the Novint Falcon is without a doubt just as accurate, and precise as a mouse. It’s even got an edge NO mouse in existance today can compete with, and that’s the simple concept of the natural sense of “touch”. When a bullet hits you from behind a crate at 3 o’clock, what does your mouse do? Right, nothing. If ANY type of object hits you, and you can’t tell where it came from, can you mouse help you figure out where? Right again, nope. The Falcon literally extends your natural sense of touch IN TO the game, so now when “something” hits you from “somewhere”, as naturally as getting hit by someone sitting next to you, you FEEL where it came from. Your ability to face “that” direction, and react is FASTER because there is no, “where did it come from”, thought process. You simply face that direction as logically as you would if something hit you in real life.
Now, with that said, There IS a learning curve to the falcon. There’s a learning curve with ANY new technology that breaks ground. Some new ideas, and technologies never really catch on, or simply fizzle out, so some people tend to ignore this learning curve, or interest until they see it’s here to stay. I’m here to tell you, this is one technological advance in gaming that is, with absolution, here to stay.
If you’re a gamer, you love immersion, and in this case even more accuracy in your FPS games, this is one learning curve that is MORE than worth it’s time.
I can go on, but that should suffice for the curious, and the devil’s advocate. Bottom line: If you haven’t tried one (and that means getting past the learning curve, into natural use like a mouse) then there is really nothing to argue about. Anyone on here saying they don’t like it, or it’s not accurate, or fun, etc, that just means they don’t have one.
With that in mind, now is a good time to snag one, they’ve got an awesome deal at the Novint site right now.
Best Regards,
Haxsys
P.S. tomnovint – I need a job! I’m a computer science major in Oregon.