How We Measure Drift

When you connect your controller and run the test, your browser talks directly to your controller using something called the Gamepad API — a built-in web standard that reads raw input data from any connected gamepad. Each analog stick has two axes: left/right and up/down. At rest, both should sit right at zero. We watch those values while your stick is completely untouched, and if they're moving — even slightly — that's drift.

The number you see is how far your stick is drifting from true centre, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A reading of 0.00 means your stick is perfectly still. Anything above that is the controller sending input your hands never asked for. The higher the number, the worse the drift. We record which stick is affected, which direction it's pulling, and how severe it is — then add your result to the community dataset so it can be compared against every other submission for the same controller model.

One thing worth knowing: the Gamepad API can behave slightly differently across browsers, so for the most consistent results we recommend running the test in Chrome. And because browsers need a button press before they'll expose controller data, you'll be asked to press any button on your controller before the test begins — that's completely normal, not a bug.