Android 12 is poised to bring mobile gaming to the next level. Likely in more ways than one. But for now, it looks like there is one very specific set of changes that is going to kick things up a notch.
While Google hasn’t officially released Android 12 in its final build yet, as that won’t come till much later this year, it has just released the Android 12 developer preview. Now that people have started digging around in the settings, there are a couple of new things that point to more immersive mobile gaming experiences.
More immersive gaming no matter the platform is always a good thing. And it’s something that Android could use more of.
Android 12 looks to make mobile gaming more immersive
If you peek into the settings of Android 12 right now, you’ll likely stumble upon two things that could make mobile gaming more immersive. Both also appear to relate to the same thing overall.
Haptic feedback (controller vibration) in mobile games when playing with a mobile controller. One setting, called haptic coupled audio effects, seems to open up the capability for developers to trigger haptic feedback through in-game volume. Basically the system could recognize certain parts of audio within a game and know to turn on haptic feedback if a controller is connected.
There’s also a setting called redirect vibration. And the description for it strictly says it allows the system to send vibration to a game controller when connected. This is a feature you can toggle on by the looks of it. Which means users don’t always have to have it engaged even if the game enables it.
Keeping this in mind, users will also need a controller which actually has haptics built into the controller. Simply turning on these features in Android 12 won’t start making your Razer Kishi vibrate for instance. Since it doesn’t have any vibration motors. If you were playing with something like the PS5 DualSense controller though, that’s another story.
The feature is not yet live
Even though the settings are there in the first dev preview of Android 12, they aren’t usable yet, it seems. So for now there’s no way to know just how good the haptics would work.
This is also the first developer preview. And it’s entirely possible that if this feature sticks around for a final release, it could change in some way. This is hardly the only thing that could be implemented to make mobile gaming on Android more immersive. But it’s a step in the right direction.
In Languages & Input, there’s a new “redirect vibration” setting that will let you pass through vibrations to connected game controllers. pic.twitter.com/vXAm9sDnT7
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) February 18, 2021