Perfect Aim on Steam Deck I How-to Tutorial I Steam Input + Gyro aim 

I just wanted to say you have completely changed gaming for me on the steam deck. I grew up playing FPS games like call of duty on console, and the steam deck is my first ever PC gaming experience. When I first got the deck maybe 1-1.5 years ago, I bought some shooters to play on it. I remember some I bought that had aim assist felt okay (like the Borderlands games and Doom Eternal), but shooting still felt a little off. I then bought Half Life 2 which has gyro on in default control scheme and I hated it, at the time I didn't even know what gyro was. I turned gyro off then tried to bump my joystick sensitivity down to compensate for no aim asssit, but I just could not get into a good groove. In general, the FPS experience on the deck was just not for me and I was pretty disappointed since it is probably my favorite genre. I stumbled upon this video recently, and I decided to give gyro on Half Life 2 another try with your settings. After a couple hours I was hooked. I gave up way too quick the first time, but after sticking it out for a bit, aiming with gyro started to feel so smooth to the point where I actually felt more accurate than I did in my console shooting days. Thank you for opening up the FPS genre for me on the steam deck, I am excited to try some other classics after I finish Half Life 2.

the gyroscope works so well on the steam deck. I can't do without it for fps. I activated the gyroscope on left trigger and it becomes very natural and very close to the mouse. I recommend to everyone to activate this function in all fps

The reason for Valve setting the gyro to be on touch by default is that is how most people used the Steam Controller. That's actually the reason Valve added a capacitive touch sensor in the first place.

Great vid! Love seeing more people embrace and preach the good word of gyro aiming and Steam Input.

Gyro, can offer more range of movement, but from my experience it kind of sucks on a train. It just so happens that this is where I have a lot of my playtime. For that reason, I went full in on using the trackpad for aiming instead. Definitely not as great, but better on the go. In terms of settings, I use high mouse acceleration (Wish steam valve allowed more fine-tuning here) no tracker ball and no edge spin, and together they bring a quite usable mix. The left analog stick I just use for some weapon menu (I am left-handed so, I use the left for aim and right for movement). But that's the beauty of the steam deck, it's up to user preference how you want to configure things.

When I played Breath of the Wild with gyro I used it to help fine tune all my shots and I can never go back to just aiming with sticks anymore. Same with the bow aiming in Horizon Zero Dawn. Splatoon also helped convince me that gyro is superior since it helps so much in fine tuning your shots and accuracy

That was a fantastic tutorial. Thank you! I spent a lot of time looking for a decent one and this was exactly what I was looking for.

I really appreciate and want to thank you for the time you took to research this and make this video to help others. It really is up to personal preference but your guide is a great reference point to start from and tweak from there. I had no idea about the mouse dampening feature. And putting the vertical sensitivity lower than the horizontal works really well. FPS's are really so fucking fun to play with the gyro controls. I highly recommended fans of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark to try the GEPD 1964 emulator for those games. With gyro controls it's like playing the games again for the first time. They hold up so well especially with gyro aim. Thanks for the upload was very helpful in getting Duke Nukem set up!

Thanks for the explanation and showcase. I’ll be copying the layout and tweaking it to my liking.

Waiting for my steam deck and really glad that you shared the info, will try it out.

Thanks, this is a great tutorial. Easy to understand what the options mean, and how to use the values you have and customise them. Thank you!

Great intructional video! Helped me tune my own settings. Thanks :)

yo man! I've been searching for so many gyro tutorials and yours by far is the one I like. I might be late, but thanks for this! liked and subbed!

Don't have a steamdeck, but it does genuinely blow my mind as well that motion controls for aiming are seen as a gimmick. The game that changed my mind on them was Ocarina of Time on the 3DS. The moment I got used to making major adjustments with the stick and precision adjustments with the gyro I thought this would be the golden standard for sure. I think at this point it's just a matter of whether or not some big shot influencer/pro picks it up.

Thanks for this man! Ordered my Deck and learning as much as I can until it arrives c:

I remember the PS Vita using gyro to help with aiming in Killzone and Uncharted, and it worked great as an assist to such small controls. I'm excited to tweak the steam deck using this, Ion Fury is much more difficult with joysticks

Youre life saver man, i was struggle with Left4Dead cuz the aiming. But now i got my aiming way more 100% better than before thank to your tutorial video ❤.

Great video, never considered this and now I will set it up and test it out for some time!

Just used these they are awesome and great for grinding yen and stars. Superb video man!

A true scholar. This is what it’s all about thank you for researching tinkering and sharing with us

My go to for gyro activation has been left stick touch. This way everything depends on how much I am touching the left stick. This might not make as much sense for Doom which by default doesn't have the analog movement speed unless you use mouse move, but for Sea of Thieves it's been stellar

i love gyro + trackpad. but i kill almost all vertical sensitivity on the trackpad and use gyro for vertical aim. and (for me at least) it's awesome. btw. i love the mouse dampening for ADS setup you have. im definitely going to add that. thanks for sharing

Very cool! Definitely helps when playing My FEAR games! Thank you so much!

Ive used your settings on the GPD winmax 2. Thank you so much for this, including the turn 180 in real life should equal 2 turns with a 50% vertical is perfect. Just finished Black mesa on a handheld and i suck at controller aiming. Game changer!

If you want to be really dirty you can use the trackpad as mouse so you can do very quick and snappy turns, and then gyro as joystick to really abuse aimassist, if the game supports mixed inputs that is. You basically get aimbot in those games, but it's perfectly legal.

I used to play like this COD on Wii U, I was mind blowed by both, how good it was, and how it was possible that companies just ignored something like this, for so many years

Awesome video! I've been searching on here for almost an hour, looking for a video to kinda explain the basics of gyro aiming, and this was PERFECT! One suggestion, get some sound deadening in whatever room you're recording in. It sounds like this was filmed in an all concrete jail cell! 😂

Tip: Someone probably already thought of doing this so you only really have to go and search a similar button layout made by the community. You could still configure it more to your liking if it's not perfect.

Sick little guide. May actually be able to comfortably play Doom Eternal and Ultrakill handheld now!

Will try this setup this weekend i feel hopeful as i had a horrible time trying to learn manual joystick aiming on SD in dusk

FlickStick: quite REVOLUTIONary in its concept.

Good insight, this has been a thing since the Steam controller, it is the controller I use exclusively for FPS games on PC and the same tricks carry over to the Deck. Your method here is better for games that don't have good controller support, you can also set the Gyro to joystick, I personally don't like it to always on, because then you are constantly having to keep track of your hands position. sometimes you just want to move with out the screen going all over the place because you re-situate how your sitting, what is great about this system is you make it work for you, if you are like me, you will either set the gyro activation to on touch for the joystick or the track pad if you are using that, another method I like is left trigger soft pull since aim down sights is very common a left trigger pull and this is typically when you are tying to aim more accurately, but you can still enable it without the aim down sights with a soft pull, obviously you would set the dampening to full pull in this situation. I am one that prefers the track pad when I have it set as mouse and not joystick, I have it do a track ball action with no friction and an outer ring binding set for continuous movement, what this dose is let me flick my thumb to cause the screen to turn and continue to turn until I place it back on the pad, I can move my thumb to the outer ring to have it move at a constant slower pace so emulating a joystick of sorts and have the gyro enabled on touch for fine tuning the aim at the drop of a hat, works really good on steam controller, the pads on the deck are not quite as good so I am still trying to get the same level of control, haven't quite got it yet, but it is close.

Really nice and helpful... Thanks!

Impressive! Still getting the hang of it but sure it's fun to use the gyroscope. Thanks for uploading

I've made it a mission in december to get used to flickstick, I spent 30-60mins a day in serious sam 3 using flick stick, after 2 weeks I was competent in using it. I've just recently completed doom 3, and going through bishock infinite using flickstick / gyro aiming - it feels so good to play. I use quite a high gyro sensitivity (x8 when using the new mouse to gyro steam input, when configured the same as flickstick.

I am used to playing FPS with a thumb trackball. I do terrible with joysticks, still pretty bad with gyro... but making the Steam Deck touchpads mimic my trackball, and I'm great with those... I love the touchpads.

So I just got my deck and first played HL2 on it, which, by default, has gyro on with touch of joystick or right pad. And joystick + gyro feels amazing. I've been trying trackpad + gyro and I have a lot of trouble getting used to it, if it's a fast game... maybe joystick + gyro (always on or not) is the way to go. For brutal doom it feels PERFECT at least, I've been playing too much of it haha. Thank you for those videos ! Very insightfull.

Great video. needs more views.

I played recently old FPS like Quake 2 with gyro and it's just really gave me even more enjoy than keyboard and mouse.

this is working perfectly for me

For fps I set the gyro aim to one of the rear buttons (R4 is my fav) that way I can also use the gyro for hip fire and just hold it down while aiming down sights and it's amazing

I don't own a steam Deck but I do use gyro on a PC for classic boomer shooters. However funnily enough, some community source ports of old games for android, have gyro, and they also work stupidly great there. I play Doom mods or Quake with a touchscreen and gyro with precision so much higher than a controller, if it wasn't for the screen layout and my touches being tracked on screen using developer options on mobile, no one would assume I'm using touch and motion on a phone.

I grew up on console, but switched to PC (& KB/M) in 2013. I've lost my ability to aim in FPS games with a controller all together. The Steam controller fixed that issue for me because of the gyro. I just got a Steam Deck and the gyro feels like Steam controller 2, which is nice. I just need to get my settings down. I usually use the left analog stick to move, and the right track pad to aim when I use my Steam controller. So that's what I plan to do with the Steam Deck. For anyone reading this who wants to know IMO what the best right track pad sensitivity is for aiming, I'll make this simple. If you look at a wall in whatever game you're in, and you drag your thumb from one edge of the track pad to the other edge, your in game character should turn 180 degrees. That's always felt great to me. At very least I suggest you start there and make adjustments to see what you like.

thanks for the great video

This is working without any problems guys

I remember playing Portal 2 with gyro on PS3 back in the days. Now that I have the deck I need to get used to it again.

Very good explanation of the possibilities of gyro and Steam Input. One question though: where did you get that weapon wheel?

Thank you are one of a kind. !!!

Fantastic video! Are there any updated instructions or notes for the new "Gyro To Mouse [Beta]" mode on the Steam Deck?

i dig your set up. been using bith joystick and trackpads. only difference for me is that i use mouse smoothing (as well) on trackpacds

Gyro on steam deck is underrated but an overscan option for the screen would give a slightly better screen size (zoomed) which is what you get on tvs already.

Great video. Do you have a community copy of the layout that we can grab and fine tune per game?

Thank you for the video! Does this work with streaming? For example, PS5 remote play to the steam deck?

Hi there, i just bought my steam deck today... waiting anxiously for her to arrive. I have the steam controler, hands down the best controler i have and ever played. The gyro plus the toutch pad makes some one like me that used to play kb and mouse to be able to play fps with a controler. Seeing you using the joystick + gyro and looking at the steam deck layout , the trackpads looks alot smaller than my steam controler. Dont know if you have or had one but how do you feel about aiming with trackpad that small? As you sayd, now the small young people may came from playing in mobile games, and the trackpad is closer to what they are used then using the joysticks. Im just curiouse and realy anxiously to try this device. Im extremely happy with my steam controler and what valve done with him till now and thankfully people liked the Steam Deck, so maybe we can see new controlers for the future

Thank you

Thanks for the tutorial man, i'll try using this on Half Life Black Mesa.

Hi, great video. Do you have your template saved and shared by any chance so I can just download it instead of setting this while thing up manually? Thanks!

@the zero can you link a video to create the doom 2 setup that you have running?

I think vertical sensitivity might be double that of horizontal because it internally maps a certain amount of mouse movement to a certain rotation as a fraction of the total possible amount, and in the vertical you have half the freedom of rotation as in the horizontal (180 vs 360 degrees).

Gyro is the answer to the problems endemic to conventional controller use, particularly if you're coming from extensive use of M&KB. The Steam Deck is simply right on in this regard. Now...there's the matter of a little game known as Descent and its reboot Overload. Gyro control with 6DoF? That's the challenge.

I can't play any first person shooters on my steamdeck since my aiming is just so bad. I will try this out and see if it will work for me. Thanks!

Is there a way to set all this gyro stuff up by default, and then tweak things within an individual game’s Steam Input config? Context: The problem I keep running into is that, between not being able to set up a baseline experience, and games not allowing m&k input while using controller inputs (auto detect swapping from one back to the other is arguably even worse)… I’m having a really hard time getting a gyro experience that can have any consistency for me to get used to. Setting gyro up As Joystick instead of As Mouse feels teeerrible and it seems to be impossible to increase the initial sensitivity and max sensitivity to a level consistent with the As Mouse experience. The only workaround that I’m aware of is to map the buttons to m&k inputs, but then you have all these things in the UI telling you to press this (but it’s not that, because you’ve mapped your buttons to emulate keyboard inputs, so it’s just distracting you). That doesn’t seem to be a problem for most, but it really throws me off. 😮‍💨

I'd love an update on this video

I’m playing Dread Templar and if I set the joystick behavior to “as mouse” the weapon wheel no longer works since it only react to joystick input. Anyone knows how to fix this?

I hear you, mate. This video gave me insight of how beneficial gyro aim can be. I will mos def try it out and give it a chance. I'll report back to you..

Is there a way to get gyro to only activate when holding down L2? If so, how do you program that?

I really love these old school like shooters like Ion Fury, Ultrakill, Dusk... but idk should I go for steam deck If only playing FPS games with mouse? I'm using gamepad only for races & indie (and third person adventure a bit)

I tried gyro on Steam Deck with Horizon Zero Dawn. It keeps drifting and it’s hard to find the view center even when it seems to work.

I was getting frustrated with the Ravenfield because of the aiming problems. After this video I will try again to get it right. And also installing Fallout 4 and doing the same with it to be able to hit anything. :D

I have an issue with shooters on the steam deck where after an hour my right hand goes numb at the wrist due to using the right stick so much. Takes seconds of a break for it to go away but it's still annoying. Doom is more comfy since in the original you don't have to look up and down.

My gyro is enable on right joystick and trackpad touch, and it drifts, and sometimes goes into a full spin… it’s so random though… i have set it to left joystick and even on left trigger and still. I don’t get it. It worked the first time. Now it drifts and that defeats the whole purpose for me.

I like to have it activate gyro on right stick touch cause I play the doom mod hideous destructor and I let go of right stick to reset my deck position after handling the recoil in game

Ahh, so lowering the sensitivity of the mouse in-game is pretty important as well as using the raw mouse setting, I've been playing games with in-game sensitivity at default which resulted in gyro being slightly more sensitivity I wish. Knowledge acquired.

Motion aim it's really nice, even on the Switch, I'm kind of amazed PS4 doesn't support motionn aiming for the most part.

Awesome video. What games would say are the best training grounds for getting used to gyro? I wonder if aimlab or something that is worth installing. I'm trying to play Black Mesa but gyro feels so unnatural I can barely progress on easy

Yeah gz doom vertical sensitivity is twice as fast. I have to half it even before I played doom rpg se balance on steam deck. Gonna try this today.

I use Gyro on Ps5 constantly, but I only use an Xbox-1/X controller on PC because it's easier to keep connected. Helps that I bought the dedicated dongle years ago and it just works, plus if the battery dies I have rechargeable back ups. If the Dualsense had a better battery life I'd probably make the switch.

I like to set flickstick to activate only when I push the stick all the way, and have it behave like normal stick for the rest of the range; it's a tad tricky to setup though, I always have to check how I did it in previous games when setting it up like that on a new one...

Good vid. I don't have a Steam Deck. I thought it'd be fun just to swivel left to right in a PC chair, controlling the gyro with one, but I do have a Steam controller and I like gyro. For those beginning, it takes experimentation, obviously. Choose a game, do easy difficulty so you can get used to it. After a while, or even a few days, amp up the difficulty. With right trackpads using gyro, the ideal situation is to have the trackball with low friction, but able to use gyro when pad is touched. Implementing both flick stick (on right stick) and the trackpad method may be handy. I hope a new version of Steam controller comes out soon.

I love gyro, but Steam Imput it's weird to set up on PC. I'm trying to map my own custom gyro on some games but it doesn't save any changes i made while moving from option to option. Also i don't know how to access Steam Imput outside of a game (i just tab + shift while a game is running and access SI from there). Can anyone recommend a good guide to SI for begginers?

MX Anywhere 2S. Bluetooth mouse that works perfect for FPS games. One hand on the stick other on the mouse.

MayI ask a stupid question? How did you install GZDoom on the Steam Deck? It's not available in the Steam Shop as far as I know. Thanks

I used to hate gyro aiming, thought it was too awkward. Tried it on the 3DS and Vita. But after getting used to it on BotW on the Switch, then again on Splatoon 2... I'm now surprised how people used to get by playing shooters on home consoles without taking advantage of this "gimmick". I'm glad Steam Deck supports it, and even improved it by leaps and bounds with all the options.

Thanks for this. Why is the button layout to keyboard mapping needed instead of just using default controller controls? Is it because some of the older fps games don't allow controller input?

Do you know how to get controls to work for destiny 2 via geforce now?

I accidentally turned on the Gyro for the desktop mouse. I didn't know what I was doing, and I was confused at first why my mouse would seemingly randomly move all over the place. Didn't realize the Steam deck has this functionality. I actually prefer it browsing on the internet and stuff on the desktop. I will probably adopt this functionality while playing Halo because my aim with the joystick is absolutely horrid. I'm not as young as I used to be.......

Anybody know how I can make it to where gyro activates when I press LT?

It's way more accurate using right trackpad as mouse and D-pad as WASD. Gyro can then be attached to right trackpad or left trigger.

Would this work for 3rd person shooters like Warhammer Space Marine that has melee combat as well? I find that when hordes of enemies appear i'm struggling to aim between them all using just joysticks.

man THANK YOU VERY MUCH because I thought i wouldn't play fps on deck until I saw this... rally appreciate it. However im trying how to export these settings to another game (I tried this with CALL OF DUTY 2) and I can't find the way... could you please, help me?

I tried using gyro while on a rollercoaster, it didn’t work very well

I got a weird problem that the gyro isn't responding as long as I use the left joystick. Any idea why? And how did you set up the slower right joystick with the left trigger?

you call your gyro settings fast? I test it with a 90 degree turn and with my settings the ingame camera turns 360 degrees. This whay i oonly need to turn 45 degrees to cover a big part of the screen. I do this because i need that high sensitivity for flickstick.

I'm surprised you don't use the right track pad. With the right setting and mouse acceleration, you'll have far more precision than a stick will ever give you plus the quick turn ability that flick stick provides.

It sounds like you're recording the audio in a tunnel! That's kinda wild!

I cannot seem to find your layout on the community tab for Doom II. Would you be willing to upload it? Also, when you’re setting up your entire configuration, do you have a saved template you typically work off of? Last question, have you ever tried gyro on the XIM Nexus controller?

May i ask what are You typing on? i can't tell if it's a full-size keyboard or if it's something else?? Thanks,

ty

The plus poin of keyboard and mouse is they open the potential of higher play level such as crazy flick shot in cs:go or next level movement in apex , but thats just my opinion

how do you record the gameplay for this tutorial? is there a way to stream it to pc and then record with obs or another screen capture software?