This is going to be a bit of a long post on an interesting bit of research I have done on the subject. Also I want to point out that as of yet I have not seen any considerable research or actions performed to test the entire digital vs analog nature. I'm not saying there isn't any information, I'm just saying it's very scant amount of it.
Let's just say this type of analog push-button style could be called the reintroduction of analog movement into PC gaming that has been occurring for quite a few years now even when analog gaming existed it never really made huge strides like the keyboard. While analog movement has always existed in various levels of support ranging from just a simple amount to many, many documented console commands(config commands etc.etc.). With that said even the best supporting engines of analog movement examples being the Quake(and Quake-based like GoldSRC and Source engines), Unreal as well a few others occasionally do have issues here and there and do require EXTENSIVE calibration often requiring hours if not days to accomplish it.
I'm just going to say that the Aimpad as well as Ben Heck's analog keyboard modification with cherry mx switch are not going to be too popular. Not that I'm trying to kick you while your still trying to achieve whatever level of success your trying to get but because it's not the correct application for analog control. Your relying on push-buttons with various levels of analog effects but on some level your still digitizing the effects of analog. In essence your analog system works fine but is still locked into tiers or stair steps and looking at your information it seems hard locked to three tiers of effects (low, med, high). And considering gamers mash down the keys you pretty much have difficulty keeping a fine control of adjusting per each tier of analog control.
Let's start with a preface of what I have done to research the desire by some for analog control in PC games like consoles who have analog control albeit with little to no customization. On a certain level the keyboard while offering digital only movement and giving instant fastest speed movement or selectable run speed with various keys like shift-run does give a more quick reaction compared to analog it does seem to be more instant and the fingers are quite nimble despite console gamers often being dumbfounded by the use of keyboards in games. The thumb-sticks are quite quick as well surprisingly even though they lack multi button press they do make up for it by giving you more general directions and movement. But we are not here to discuss thumb-sticks although they can be used people often forget the old joystick, the hand held device used to pilot airplanes.
In many, many gaming forums one of the most stupidest response people give is a joystick should never be used for aiming. But an interesting question is "Whom told you that a joystick is only for aiming". The irony of the situation is many early games particularly first person shooters with some auto-aim or planar auto-vert/auto-horizontal aim an example being doom or Duke 3D would often use the joystick to move the character and you would fire by placing the character on the target because the game wasn't really made to work with the mouse even though it can. Even more interesting the joystick in flight simulators or aircraft games is used to MOVE the aircraft around not necessarily aim it literally like a weapon in an FPS games. And even if you take it literally the aircraft is still being MOVED to the target based on an aircraft's body, wings, ailerons etc.etc., rather than MOUSE over to aim.
What I researched around is back when mice and more so to trackball, remember back in the early-mid-to-late 90's the trackball often outperformed sensors used in mice. During these times people began to use various controllers as well as mice and keyboard etc.etc. Obviously the mouse and keyboard did much better and often times made people either freak out because they just didn't understand due to using a joystick or gamepad. Or were amazed at how much better it was. I remember reading a forum post of someone playing doom multiplayer at an office when someone was using a mouse and was dominating while the other players were using joysticks and unable to keep up with the mouse user. In essence right when the whole arena fast play popped up the mouse and keyboard pretty much became the staple.
But here the thing is which is often a lost in translation. People still had that mantra that joystick is for aircraft and for aiming. But a handful of people began to use the joystick for analog movement along with a mouse or a trackball. These gamers are often called Joy/Mouse or Joy/Ball gamers who employ analog movement with the obviously more superior aiming device. Even early on you'd be surprised how many people actually employed this idea and this part is important because eventually a standalone unit popped up.
Although another company released the Assassin 3D(joy/ball combo controller) beforehand they eventually sold the rights to Mad Catz who released the
PantherXL which was basically an all-in-one unit a joystick and a trackball and it was also the more popular unit despite it using A3D technology. Although the device was known to break quite frequently it did gain a cult success with some players and they even modded it with better mice sensors as well as even repairing them. Probably one of the few if not only remaining modders for the panther xl is Steven Hailer(SteveoA3D) unfortunately he seems to have removed quite a number of videos including his Quake live demo showing the unit in action.
Unfortunately as you can see it does present some negatives you can't aim with the right and move with the left like most PC gamers and your locked to a trackball. Quite a number of people got fed up with the Panther breaking down every so often and they got a high-quality joystick and trackball or mouse.
The joystick presents an interesting scenario comparatively to the mouse particularly low sensitivity. Low sensitivity involves using your arm, wrist, and hand to aim but is mostly recognized for long full arm sweeps across the mousepad. It's strange for many people because they assume the hand is so accurate and precise and yet low sensitivity has time after time proven them wrong in fact in the hands of an expert player as well as a gamer with good high quality monitor(high refresh rate, little to no motion blur etc.etc.) as well as a good computer high frame rates, sound card, good headphones etc.etc. they dominate till accusations of cheating are said or even kick and ban. In essence the keyboard presenting many tens and certainly over a hundred keys can be viewed as quite cumbersome in some respect due to the fact you have TOO many buttons it's not optimized for what would be called accurate and precise layout for reduction of mistakes and errors. Often times keyboard gamers play somewhat with a frantic key press in more traditional layouts or even custom layouts. It's no wonder some stick to WASD for convenience of larger buttons like Shift.
The joystick is held in the hand and your fingers actuate the buttons, hat tricks, trigger etc.etc. there are some limitations with the amount of buttons reachable by fingers. Although you could go down to the base to press the additional buttons it needs to be done by a quick player who would perform the action quickly or use their mouse hand to initiate the button temporarily being unable to aim. The actions of the joystick is basically done by the arm sometimes the hands and wrist but more often than not the arm.
Now some people are going to be asking what exactly does the joystick bring besides a huge learning curve from the normal. It gives you the analog control you want but it may reduce the pure digital speed factor basically the instant on/off. But the analog control even if it may reduce that jolt of speed, provides much more general movement and control over the character if properly implemented and the user is willing to play around with various config settings calibrating and fine-tuning the movement. One example I recall is a Quake player who used a Joy/Mouse setup and people kept asking him why his character moved funny, so even externally the character model was moving in a such a different way people saw it. Apparently when using the joystick the analog movement actually causes the hips of the quake model to turn based on the movement of the legs. In simplest terms everyone is moving their character like a robot the only movement seems to be a partial hip or full body turn with slight arm turning when mouse viewing. The analog player is moving around more realistically even with parameters for various body parts at least with the joystick movement.
Other interesting factors is the fact that many gamers don't creep around as often or if they do they use modifier keys to slow down their movement albeit with some arbitrary limit. But with the joystick you can move as slow(depending on the game much slower than modifier walk) or as max speed as you want whenever you want without taking an extra step nor putting your hand in an awkward posture. On top of that the joystick is not the only device I recall several gamers from various FPS particularly Unreal Tournament. Using a
CH Pro Throttle as analog stick for movement. The normal slide throttle forward and backward for those movements and the miniature joystick as side to side movement.
Despite the fact the joystick can be used for analog movements it's not exactly perfect. Most are meant to be used with the right hand, there are some left handed joysticks and there are a few symmetric. But unfortunately joysticks are made for aerial vehicles and not exactly for FPS games and also considering most PC gamers aim with the right hand, left handed sticks are hard to find. But one major problem exists also and that's the sensors although joystick sensors have improved over the years they aren't exactly always found to be of such high quality in consumer joysticks. And considering geekhack is about having higher quality key switches as well the buttons in some cases could use an upgrade with some joystick still using cheaper methods for button presses(membrane dome, lower quality microswitches etc.etc.). As long as high-end, high-quality joystick is built using USB 2.0(1Khz) maybe even better using USB 3.0/3.1 updated polling style and with good quality internals(high quality, high polling sensors sensing lots of information) as well as strong heavy construction to prevent it flying across the desk it would really do MUCH better for FPS games.
USB 3.0+
A Special Note on Future USB Specifications.
The USB 3.0 specification dramatically changes the way that a host and HID-devices communicate. The basic data flow and transfer concepts are preserved, while some packets or specifications have been integrated or removed entirely. A few notable changes in dataflow should be mentioned.
A dual simplex connection is now being used which allows packets to leave and arrive simultaneously; these transfers are also no longer serial in nature (where packets must finish before the next begins). SOP packets have been replaced by isochronous timestamp packets (ITPs), while token packets have also been removed (IN is replaced by the handshake packet, while OUT has been incorporated into the data packet). SuperSpeed USB also supports continuous bursting for all types of functional data transfers, unlike USB 2.0. Also note that in the USB 3.0 specification continuous device polling has been eliminated and has been replaced by asynchronous notices.
This last note is of particular importance as each device now sends data when it is recorded; it is still host controlled, but in a different way that no longer limits packet sizes. A SuperSpeed interrupt can move up to three maximum sized packets per service interval (125µs, formerly known as a micro-frame), meaning that the maximum theoretical rate at which data can be received by the host is every 41.6µs, the equivalent of a 24000Hz polling rate in USB 2.0 terms*. The size of a service interval (125µs) represents the minimum theoretical rate of data transmission, or what would roughly equate to a 8000Hz polling rate in USB 2.0 terms*.
* The non-serial nature of USB 3.0 makes these translations an inexact correlation, but an idea of the increase in transmission speeds can be seen through these estimations.
If you go to various search engines and put in something like "Joystick analog movement" or "Specific game joystick analog movement" out pops various posts from people who played games like Jedi Knight, Soldier of Fortune, Quake, Unreal etc.etc. using Joy/Mouse or Joy/Ball or Throttle/Mouse or Throttle/Ball or any other single handed controller using a mouse or trackball.
Unfortunately many of these threads are filled with people rehashing the same thing "Joystick is not for fps games", "OMG that is stupid you can't do that your gonna suck etc.etc.". Always failing to understand that it's for movement not for aiming and even if they understand they always say something like I'm not gonna waste my time or retrain myself etc.etc. but again it's probably not a factor of being ingrained in them using keyboard and mouse more likely there isn't as much support nor products of high quality to justify a switch. Even worse it's not so much these threads but the lack of quality threads from people posting good information.
A few videos from this person Unfortunately they are just recorded games and not actually recording the person using the Joy/Mouse setup in person to see it in action.
I'm not trying to rain on your parade I understand your doing something different and providing more capabilities and your pad does seem ergonomic with less buttons for less mistakes. But it just seems to lack that analog field found on a joystick. With the joystick you have quite a lot of room to move around versus the cherry mx 4MM travel distance. And also on the joystick not just make errors with little to no consequence but also have more room to adjust the actions your performing without relying on such a limited travel distance with cherry mx. And it's not just any cherry mx switch it's the cherry mx red 45g and even though it and the cherry mx brown are pretty close in weight the browns tactile bump does add a bit of resistance but the reds are linear and are noticeably lighter than the browns like I said before I question someone making such find tuned movement on a mx red all the time especially in certain moments. Maybe in a slower paced gamer or a more relaxed moment of time or even a different game but it just seems like people are gonna punch through the analog system abruptly all the time and hit max speed and if it still registers pre-max(mid, low) speeds your character may still sorta stutter in an analog fashion rather than a digital on/off motion more like a staircase effect rather than 1/0 for all intents and purposes if this occur people might ask why your character sorta stutters when running to full speed compared to everyone else.
