So I'm doing a VR experience and today I'm working on using the thumbsticks of the quest controller more like a gamepad to control selection of a UI menu for a trivia game that's going to be in the experience.
Now Unity returns the thumbstick via a Vector2, easy enough. I literally sketch out an XY graph, figure there's a threshold I need to account for for each direction, a much smaller threshold that we can ignore for each plus and minus on the other vector, and if the Vector2 meets all my criteria I can fire off my functions for the direction. So for UP my code looks something like
if(Vector.Y > pressthreshold and (Vector.X < threshold and Vector.X < -threshold){ Print(up!)}
And then I did that for each direction... And it kinda worked. But it was wonky as hell because my quest is old and the thumbsticks drift. So I spent like an hour and a half trying to find just the right thresholds and it just did not want to be consistent...
So I figured I'd ask chatgpt. And it basically spits out: Just take the absolute value of your X and Y and whichever one is bigger is your plane, and then the positive or negative of the value determines your direction.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
I am in shambles. I have once again overcomplicated the simplest freaking thing.
TLDR: My brain is pudding. Just had to vent. 
fwiw that doesn't reject diagonal inputs, you may want to do something similar to what chatGPT said except with a threshold, i.e. if the |x| : |y| ratio isnt, say, less than 0.8 or more than 1.2, you can reject the input as being too close to a diagonal input.
Only bother with this if you actually want to reject diagonals of course, this is especially not useful for menuing in a list that's only horizontal or only vertical navigation.
yeah you might want to have people try it out a little bit because ive found that having thresholds right in the middle can feel weird (granted not for gamedev but for other rotating things)
Yeah, preventing diagonals was my original intention with the secondary threshold, but these thumbsticks are so unreliable that I think I'm better off sticking to a single axis. Originally I was gonna go with a grid of 2 x 2 for my answers, but there's no reason I can't simplify them to a single column. Also, this trivia thing is occurring within the confines of a lewd game so simplifying it would also probably help with keeping the player from getting flustered. I am intending a time limit on it.💁♂️
If that's the case, you might want to arrange your options in a diamond and have selection work as up/left/right/down, and instead of navigating and pressing A, have option select be by holding the stick in a cardinal direction for a duration. Sort of like how a weapon wheel works. I'm struggling to think of an example that's been implemented somewhere that makes this more clear but I'm gonna go scour youtube real quick
e: it's called a radial menu. Possibly consider a radial menu - all you have to do is take a
tan(x_value / y_value)and compare it to some ranges for up/left/down/right, it's button-free and from a UX perspective it's less likely to result in a misinputIf it's not like a core mechanic of the entire game don't go to all this trouble though lmao I'm just passionate about UX
Oooh. I don't know if I'll implement it, but that is a good idea, thanks! It's certainly got the juices flowing. Anything that reduces the amount of times they fumble around looking for a button would be helpful.
I didn't play it but didn't Mass Effect do something like that with their dialogue options?