I just saw this pop up on the Steam Controller reddit and thought some would benefit from reading it here too if they are considering making use of gyro aim, because with Steam Input the Steam Controller, DS4, and Switch controller all PC games can use gyro.
On my old Steam Controller I couldn't depend on gyro because it drifted a lot unless I get it to stop after a calibration, but I'd have to calibrate it too often and even after doing it it wouldn't fix it for sure. The new controller seem to drift slower so maybe it's something going on with my PC but it's an workable amount.
After reading the below I gave always on gyro a shot, with touch pad to recenter myself or to do sweeping quick turns, and it's amazing how easy it is to track thing in the heat of battle. In Warframe, in air bullet gliding tracking things that that I zoom right by with gyro as if I've been doing this all my life. It's very natural feeling. Though I have been practicing gyro aiming/cursor pointing since I had the first controller, just not as the main source of aiming.
"How to Use (And Think About) Gyro Aiming -- From the Perspective of Someone with 1000+ Hours Gyro Experience with Splatoon 1&2 and the Steam Controller Alone.
Seeing how this sub finds himself in a weird position of rebirth/renaissance mixed with the atmosphere of a mourning community at a funeral, let me provide you my perspective on Gyro Aiming, the most enticing, amazing and misunderstood feature on any controller, but especially in the 'unguided' environment of the Steam Controller Customisation UI.
I've been a fan and proponent of gyro aiming ever since I aimed better in Killzone: Mercenary multiplayer -- a shooter on the Vita -- than in any PS4 CoD. And ever since Nintendo adopted Gyro Aiming as a main tool, most prominently in Splatoon, I can't play without it unless it's with a mouse.
Splatoon is not a game marketed towards hardcore gamers and grizzled FPS veterans. It works both as a 'gateway drug' to shooter games and as a place where people can compete in the ranked modes. It uses gyro aiming as a default control method, so even Nintendo believes in the ease of access of that control method.
It is great, any you can be great at it in no time. As long as you realise one key thing:
Do not think of the gyro as a mouse replacement, nor as a tool to fine tune your aim with the touchpad, but that the touchpad and gyro do two completely different tasks: touchpad is there for quick turns, the gyro for tracking, flicking and 'aiming' in general. If you use a low mouse sens you should know what I mean, since your arm movement is there for the large macro-turns whereas the wrist is where most of your actual target acquisition is accomplished. On a mouse, that all happens with the same input device (the mouse), whereas with the SC you want to dedicate each input to each type of movement. In other words, your trackpad 'becomes' the arm and the gyro the wrist.
This 'division of labour' makes it work so well, but is also the biggest hurdle to overcome when getting used to it, since you now need two input methods to achieve what you intuitively do in one motion with a mouse. Splatoon works the same way, which is why it disabled the Y-Axis on the stick completely when you use motion aiming: You're only supposed to turn on the X-Axis with that thing, not aim with it. I do the same thing on the SC, as there's a slider called Friction Vertical Scale that makes it so that any kind of faster movement on the touchpad will lower or disable any Y-Axis input while still allowing movement on the Y-Axis to happen for menus or if you need to recenter the crosshair.
If anyone is curious about my Steam Controller setup for most games, here is my recipe:
Put yourself at any point in-game and configure a touchpad sensitivity that allows you to quickly and consistently turn 180°. Then, pick any two objects in the game world and position yourself in such a way that they are more or less exactly on the edges of your screen/FoV, and configure your gyro sens in such a way that you can comfortably and consistently move between those two objects quickly. Now, you should have a good sens for any movement within about 45-50° in either direction from the middle of the screen with the gyro that you can aim at with comfortable wrist movement, which is where most of the action will take place. Anything within 5-25° outside that FoV can be hit by more pronounced wrist movement (even bigger movement than that is possible in the worst case, of course) and anything beyond that with the trackpad.
The rest is all about getting comfortable with combining both forms of aim."
