Most PC gamers would sooner perish than have their mouse and keyboard taken away. However, utilising gamepads for third-person action, racing, or retro-emulated games may still be worthwhile. If your controller isn’t exactly functioning right, Windows 10 has a calibration feature that will ensure that every action accurately translates to your game. Apart from calibrating of PS4 controller on the PC, there are several other ways to calibrate the PS4 controller which you can discover and they are effective too but if you preferably want to calibrate PS4 through the PC that’s your choice and we are showing a way to do it successfully.
Why Would I Need to Do This?
While many gamepads, such as the Xbox One or Xbox 360 controllers, are often calibrated for PC gaming straight out of the box, other gamepads could require calibration before the system fully detects all of their motions. For instance, you very likely need to calibrate a Nintendo 64 controller before you can use it if you use a USB adapter with it.
In other situations, you can just have an outdated controller that needs some assistance. For instance, you might not be sure how much information the computer can get from a stuck button each time you click it. Or possibly the thumbstick on your gamepad is worn out and doesn’t appear to be tilting as much as it should. You may fine-tune your controller with the calibration tool to make it as precise as possible.
Since we have an Xbox 360 controller, we’ll use it in this instruction, but any gamepad you plug in should function much the same.
Open the Calibration Tool
To find the Calibration Tool, begin by going down to your Start Menu, and selecting “Settings”.
Once in Settings, click on the tab for “Devices”:
After the next window, scroll down to the link that reads “Devices and Printers” inside the “Printers and Scanners” tab, and click on it.
(You can also get here by going into Control Panel > Devices and Printers in all versions of Windows).
From here, the controller should pop up as long as it’s already connected. If not, make sure you have all the latest drivers installed for the controller of your choosing.
Find the controller, and right click it to bring up the following drop-down menu. From here, click on the option for “Game controller settings”.
After you click this, the following window should automatically pop up. From there, click on the “Properties” button.
The window that follows will contain two options: “Settings” and “Test”. To start, choose the Settings tab, and then click the button in this window that reads “Calibrate”.
From here, the Calibration Wizard will automatically begin taking you through the process to get your controller set up properly. (This window is also where you’ll find the button to “Reset to Default”, in case you want the tool to automatically reset any changes that were made during a previous calibration run.)
Calibrate Your Controller
Again, we’re using an Xbox 360 controller, so depending on your controller, you could notice a few tiny variations in the windows, but overall, they should be quite comparable. To begin calibrating, click Next.
The calibration tool will start off with the “D-Pad” calibration, which on the Xbox 360 controller is actually the left thumbstick. At first, it will ask you to leave the thumbstick alone so it can find the center point.
Let go of the thumbstick and click “Next”, at which point you’ll be taken to the next screen.
Although it’s not required, we advise choosing the “Display Raw Data” check option because it will quantitatively demonstrate the precise location of the thumbstick resting point. This information is important because it may help you determine whether one of your thumbsticks is beginning to degrade from excessive usage and whether there are other factors contributing to your declining in-game accuracy.
From here, rotate the left thumbstick a couple times across its entire range of motion. The little cross ought to have touched all four corners or at least all four sides of the box above.
Next, repeat the process with any “axes” on your controller using the same set of tools. These might be thumbsticks, pressure-sensitive buttons like the left and right Xbox triggers, or they could just be standard buttons on some gamepads.
The Xbox 360 triggers in our example are monitored along the Z-axis and should report anywhere between 100% (resting) and 200%. (pulled down completely). To test if the whole range of motion is being properly registered, just pull the right thumbstick of the Xbox all the way to the left and right. The X-axis is what calibrates the right thumbstick for horizontal movement.
The Y-axis is the same (vertical movement). Swing the thumbstick up and down; if the numbers “0%” and “100%” appear at the top and bottom of its range of motion, respectively, and are resting at 50% in the centre, your controller is calibrated correctly. The X-axis of my right thumbstick really sits about 52%, as you can see in the image above, the result of ageing and several furious Halo Online matches.
Unfortunately, while the software aspect of calibration does assist you in determining how well your controller is responding to your movements—and even, to some extent, course correct for a faulty thumbstick—the only hardware fix when it starts to get worn down like this is to go to the store and buy a new controller entirely. The parts, such as thumbsticks, may also be purchased online and changed out on your own if you’re feeling particularly handy.
Once you’ve run through all four calibrations, you can click “Finish” to move on to the testing portion of the process.
Test the Calibration
Once the calibration process is finished, it’s time to test out the results. In the same window you started from (with the “Settings” and “Test” tabs), now you’re going to want to click on the “Test” tab.
From here, any movements or button presses you make will automatically appear on-screen. This is a good way to determine exactly how quickly the buttons are registering–if they’re registering at all–as well as making note of how close (or far away) the thumbstick is resting from an even 50% after you move it around a bit.
Once you’ve finished your tests, make sure to hit Apply before you close out the window, and you’re done!
Although most modern controllers will come calibrated out of the box to work flawlessly with Windows, it never hurts to go in and re-calibrate once every few months just to be sure you’re not missing any headshots due to a controller that’s out of whack.