Measurements and tests
Sticks
A stick reports where it is as two numbers, across and up and down, each from −100% to 100% of its travel. PadBench shows where each stick comes to rest when you let go, how far that is from centre, and how far and how evenly it reaches round its edge. Under each stick circle are its drift, where it is now and its edge; the Sticks tab has the rest.
Rest and drift
Let go of a stick and it springs back towards the centre, but it rarely lands exactly there. PadBench watches for each release: the stick pushed past 30% of its travel, then still near the centre. Where it settles is its rest, which the Sticks tab shows with how much it wandered there.
Drift is the furthest from centre the stick settles over its releases. Once there are three, the furthest is left out, so one release onto a resting thumb stops counting once two others disagree. Before its first release, a stick left alone since it connected stands in.
Inside a 15% dead zone, the game ignores it.
Outside a 5% dead zone, the game reads a slight push.
Past 10%, drift reads High once two releases agree: a stick resting there reaches past the dead zone many games leave it. While a stick is within its drift and three times its usual wander, the tester reads it as At rest and leaves its ring on the drawing unlit.
To measure it, flick each stick in a few directions and let go, a few times over. Reset traces, in the Sticks tab, forgets the releases and starts again.
Dead zone
A game treats a small area round the centre as no input, so a stick that rests a little off centre does nothing there. Each game sets its own dead zone, and many let you change it. Drift matters once the stick rests outside it.
A browser or the pad itself may apply a dead zone of its own before PadBench sees the stick, and so hide drift. A low drift figure is what reaches PadBench, not a promise.
Edge and roundness
Push the stick all the way and rotate it slowly round its edge. PadBench traces how far it reaches in each of 72 directions, and the stick circle fills in as it goes. Once it has gone most of the way round, Edge shows the least and the most it reached, as a share of its full travel.
The Sticks tab's average error is how far the traced edge is from a perfect circle at full travel, on average: 0% for a round gate and a perfect stick.
A round gate: Edge 98%–101%.
A squarish gate: Edge 100%–115%, as its shape makes it.
Many sticks reach past 100% on the diagonals, because their gate is squarish rather than round. That is how they are built, so PadBench notes it and never marks it as a fault. A stick that falls short in one direction while it reaches the others may be worn, or need calibrating.
Each axis
Below the sticks, the Sticks tab shows each axis live, with marks at the lowest and the highest it has reached. An axis that never reaches its end in one direction can't give a game its full range that way.