The coolest gaming peripherals that few people want

[Mr Buckshot]

Nyko Air-Flo mouse:
http://www.techtickerblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/nyko.jpg
Very cool concept - it has rubberized gel surfaces and air easily circulates through the mouse to prevent a gamer's hand from feeling hot and uncomfortable. In my opinion, if you're playing PC games to point that your hand actually feels discomfort from a hot mouse, then you really should stop playing (my gaming time is 2 hours at night on Fridays and Saturdays and any public/school holidays) because you've played waaaay too much.

http://www.marnscda.com/PistolMouse0610u-sm.jpg

It's the famous Glock-shaped mouse. Cool concept (I can just imagine myself holding it and whooping while blasting away enemies in Crysis) but not that practical. Anyway, more important features like sensitivity, latency, scroll feel, etc don't get much attention in this pistol mouse, ultimately making it lose to those ordinary-shaped "gaming mice." As for me, I use a $10 Microsoft optical mouse that was bought in 2001.

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/graphics/normal/hardware/h755.jpg

The famous Z-board. Again, very cool and innovative. However, the only advantage I see is that the "WASD" keys align perfectly with each other and are separated from other keys to give a more D-pad like feel. In other words, the movement feels a little more natural and you won't accidentally hit other keys as you would on a standard keyboard. But I doubt anyone is willing to shell out $50 for this when a normal keyboard already provides an acceptable experience. As for me, I use a $5 USB keyboard (the new PC I built doesn't have a PS/2 port so I threw away my old Windows 98 PS/2 keyboard).

http://standing8.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/nintendo-ds-1seg-1.jpg
The often-hyped Nintendo DS live-TV adapter. I don't know about you, but I'm not too keen on watching full-motion video on such a small screen. If I really wanted to watch portable video, I'd buy a device that's actually built for that.

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/sound-card-2.jpg
A generic PCI sound card. I guess I'm being a bit biased here, but I seriously don't know how one can detect a difference in sound when upgrading from integrated audio. IMO, the only reason to buy one of these is if your mobo doesn't have onboard audio, or if the onboard audio actually malfunctions. I have played on my neighbor's PC which has a $100 sound card he got as a gift and neither of us heard any difference in sound quality between his PC and my PC.

http://www.play-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/asus-xg-station.jpg
ASUS XG Station - an external enclosure that lets full-size PCI-e video cards be used on laptops via the ExpressCard connection. Very, very, very impressive feat, but there are two flaws - one is that it needs its own power source, the other is that it's incapable of displaying on the main laptop screen and requires an external DVI monitor. In that case, you're better off buying a real gaming laptop or a desktop.

Do you guys have anything to add? It should fall into the "cool/innovative but impractical/unwanted" category

[LlamaMaster]

Does his PC have surround sound speakers? I don't know anything about sound cards, but I think you have to have awesome speakers/headphones to hear the difference.

[SnaFuBAR]

Nyko Air-Flo mouse:
http://www.techtickerblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/nyko.jpg
Very cool concept - it has rubberized gel surfaces and air easily circulates through the mouse to prevent a gamer's hand from feeling hot and uncomfortable. In my opinion, if you're playing PC games to point that your hand actually feels discomfort from a hot mouse, then you really should stop playing (my gaming time is 2 hours at night on Fridays and Saturdays and any public/school holidays) because you've played waaaay too much.
I owned one. The fan isn't for cooling a mouse, since there's nothing in them to get hot...:eyesroll: the low speed fan does a nice job of keeping your palm cool, instead of sweating. If I found one again, I would certainly buy it.

[flibitijibibo]

Yeah, the speakers can make a huge difference. Also, depending on where he got the card, it may not make too much of a difference. There are some PCI cards out there that are just about the same as a Sigmatel HDA, which is integrated. That's where the X-Fi comes in! I'll explain this when I get back from class, I'm already late. XD

[Sever]

I get it: You like to find flaws with everything. Next time, either post something that you care enough about to fully appreciate or just withhold your pessimism.

[MNC]

Too bad I use trackball.

[Kornman00]

Yeah, I read that part about a mouse overheating and had to stop and think of a time where I had EVER felt my mouse get warm. Sorry, but my hand only gets sweaty after long periods of holding my mouse :-3

OT: I swear buckshot, every time I see your avatar I misinterpret it as a gold-capped POS (literally). Its super-low resolution or w/e is making it distorted (at least on my monitor) turns it shitty (in both senses lol)

EDIT: After you pointed that out, I can now picture that too Amit

[Amit]

I get it: You like to find flaws with everything. Next time, either post something that you care enough about to fully appreciate or just withhold your pessimism.

He's just stating information that you should know before buying the item. If you want to prevent people from knowing to truth...well create your own thread. I'm not sure that everyone who creates a thread in the Off-Topic sub forum fully appreciates what they post about.


I swear buckshot, every time I see your avatar I misinterpret it as a gold-capped POS (literally). Its super-low resolution or w/e is making it distorted (at least on my monitor) turns it shitty (in both senses lol)

Interesting. Sometimes I still think it's the POA with weird colours at first sight.

[Zeph]

A generic PCI sound card. I guess I'm being a bit biased here, but I seriously don't know how one can detect a difference in sound when upgrading from integrated audio. IMO, the only reason to buy one of these is if your mobo doesn't have onboard audio, or if the onboard audio actually malfunctions. I have played on my neighbor's PC which has a $100 sound card he got as a gift and neither of us heard any difference in sound quality between his PC and my PC.

You just need to know what to listen for. The integrated sound card for my notebook is ok, but there's a lot of times that I just want to rip it out. I grew up with a musical background and can easily tell if a sound card is integrated or not. Speakers play a good role in it as well. Still, you should have some form of PCI sound card. It's not much, but it does take some load off the CPU.

[Mr Buckshot]

I read a review for the Volkswagen Phaeton and the headline said "an awesome Volkswagen that no one wants." I was then inspired to make a thread like this, but centered on gaming peripherals.

I do have a $30 surround sound system, but most of the time my parents make me play with headphones since they get irritated by the game sounds coming through the speakers. As a result, a dedicated sound card = waste of $$$ for me.

sever does have a point, but most of the time I'm optimistic. I am infamous for pointing out each and every flaw with the X360 though :P

The point of this thread is for people to post gaming peripherals that are "cool but useless."

Here's another one I found:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/video/ageia-physx/asus_p1_card_angle_sm.jpg

The Ageia PhysX card, which is a dedicated accelerator that drives gameplay physics. Only GRAW 1 uses it I believe. When multi-core CPUs and powerful GPUs already have more than enough power to push a physics engine, a dedicated physics card is redundant. Just look at Half-Life 2 and any later games that use the Havok physics engine - the physics are already very realistic without an add-on card. Heck, Crysis's physics are also hyper-realistic.

[Con]

Having a PhysX card isn't about realism, it's about handling a huge volume of physics calculations. This may be handled easily by the system for most games, but for developers who feel ever building in the map should be destructible to the last brick, I imagine it'd be a good thing. As I see it, it's essentially more processing power except just for physics. I don't see a huge need for it right now, and it probably wont be needed in the future either as tech advances.

[legionaire45]

Not to mention unless you are playing something based off of Unreal 3 or GRAW you won't be getting any acceleration.

Nice to see that Sever is being his happy self as usual.

oh, and btw:
*whispers* The Zboard is a cheaply made mushy-keyed unresponsive piece of crap :downs:.

If you are using crappy speakers don't even bother wasting your money on a sound card unless you want the environmental effects (which aren't officially supported in Vista unless you buy either an Asus Xonar [which only supports EAX 2.0 or 3.0 and OpenAL IIRC] or an XFI [at the moment you shouldn't bother considering supposedly Creative is working on a new version of this native to PCI Express that should be out eventually].).

Although the other things are marginally cool. Sadly I doubt the XG station is going to see the light of day for consumers any time soon considering "Interested parties should contact their Asus sales representative concerning production scheduling."
(http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/13/ces_asus_xg_station/)

[Warsaw]

Another cool gadget is the Headplay immersion device. It basically takes your monitor and puts it into a stereoscopic headset to give an effect similar to virtual reality. I don't have a link right now, but I'll get one up later unless someone else beats me to it.

[Kornman00]

The Ageia PhysX card, which is a dedicated accelerator that drives gameplay physics. Only GRAW 1 uses it I believe. When multi-core CPUs and powerful GPUs already have more than enough power to push a physics engine, a dedicated physics card is redundant. Just look at Half-Life 2 and any later games that use the Havok physics engine - the physics are already very realistic without an add-on card. Heck, Crysis's physics are also hyper-realistic.
1. No, its not the only thing that uses it. Read (http://www.ageia.com/physx/titles.html).
2. And what if you don't have the cash to buy a tipped out new CPU or GPU?
3. Less CPU AND memory is consumed if you use the physx card since the simulation of the soft bodies, fluid, rag dolls, etc are all done on the card itself and part of the model data stored on the card (for even faster calculations, no waiting for I\O completions)
4. Sure, Havok can perform realistically, but I'd rather have a choice in the matter of 3rd party physics engines, not a single monolithic library.
4. Think of it this way, can you render as much shit just as fast using a software renderer? No. You don't need the card for realistic calculations, its for giving the CPU more time for AI, networking, etc.

[Bodzilla]

KM speaks the Truth.

I've actually thought about getting one for my Comp, it should be fairly well redundant, but anything that takes Pressure off the CPU and GPU sounds like a Tick in my book.

[Sever]

KM00, l2count. 5 comes after 4, not 4 again.

[Xetsuei]

KM speaks the Truth.

I've actually thought about getting one for my Comp, it should be fairly well redundant, but anything that takes Pressure off the CPU and GPU sounds like a Tick in my book.

It will only do it for these (http://www.ageia.com/physx/titles.html) games, of which the only one I see decent is UT3.

[Kornman00]

KM00, l2count. 5 comes after 4, not 4 again.
n u, I had a formation to goto, I was in a rush :saddowns:.