JOYSTICK

A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer. A popular variation of the joystick used on modern video game consoles is the analog stick.

The joystick has been the principal flight control in the cockpit of many aircraft, particularly military fast jets, either as a center stick or side-stick.

Joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as cranes, trucks, underwater unmanned vehicles, wheelchairs, surveillance cameras and zero turning radius lawn mowers. Miniature finger-operated joysticks have been adopted as input devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones.

Joysticks pull off a really neat trick. They take something entirely physical -- the movement of your hand -- and translate it into something entirely mathematical -- a string of ones and zeros (the language of computers). With a good joystick, the translation is so flawless that you completely forget about it. When you're really engaged in a game, you feel like you're interacting with the virtual world directly.

In this article, we'll find out how several common joystick designs handle this translation. As we'll see, the technology has evolved a great deal from the first game console designs to the sophisticated "force feedback" models available today.