Being a new Surface 3 owner, I figured I would purchase some games from Steam during the big Steam summer sale that were good for touch controls. I found that many of the games that I have tried worked perfectly fine using touch. But I also noticed that these same games did not work at all using the Surface pen.
I found this a bit surprising since I always assumed that pen input was directly translated to mouse input at a fairly low level in the OS through some type of driver. I thought games would just interpret pen input exactly as if it was mouse input. This does not appear to be the case.
I was a bit disappointed in this since I sometimes like to use the pen instead of touching the screen. It just feels more accurate and doesn't smudge up the screen. Does anyone know more about this? Is there any way to work around this?
What also was surprising is that pen input did work when I played these same Steam games using Steam's in-home streaming. In this scenario, the game runs on my desktop and the tablet is just used as input and video output. The pen worked exactly as if it was a mouse. I guess Steam is doing some translation here. And in a way, I guess this is the workaround if I want to use the pen. But it just doesn't seem worth it for touch-based games. I guess I will just have to use real touch instead of the pen.
Anyway, I thought this was interesting and could be helpful if anyone else was interested in playing touch-based games using the Surface pen. There are definite limitations in some games.
I found this a bit surprising since I always assumed that pen input was directly translated to mouse input at a fairly low level in the OS through some type of driver. I thought games would just interpret pen input exactly as if it was mouse input. This does not appear to be the case.
I was a bit disappointed in this since I sometimes like to use the pen instead of touching the screen. It just feels more accurate and doesn't smudge up the screen. Does anyone know more about this? Is there any way to work around this?
What also was surprising is that pen input did work when I played these same Steam games using Steam's in-home streaming. In this scenario, the game runs on my desktop and the tablet is just used as input and video output. The pen worked exactly as if it was a mouse. I guess Steam is doing some translation here. And in a way, I guess this is the workaround if I want to use the pen. But it just doesn't seem worth it for touch-based games. I guess I will just have to use real touch instead of the pen.
Anyway, I thought this was interesting and could be helpful if anyone else was interested in playing touch-based games using the Surface pen. There are definite limitations in some games.
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