Capacitance d-pad control?

[Galane]

What would it take to make a surface mounted d-pad with no moving parts? I'm thinking of a center contact with four around it. Hold a thumb on the middle contact then rock and roll to contact one or two of the directional contacts.

Space saving and no need to scavenge those parts from a controller, and nothing to wear out. Could also do capacitance touchpads for the buttons.

[RDC]

The problem with those capacitance type of buttons/switches is both sensitivity and lag. Most of them have an amount of lag that if you tried to play a game with it, you'd notice it real quick. So the sensitive needs to be cranked up, which then makes it too touchy for doing anything precise. Since both of those things are what make a good D-pad, it's why there aren't any of them around made this way. It could be done, but it's a catch-22 kind of deal and way more work than it would be worth.

It could be done with a Touch Sensor IC, or a PIC/AVR also using some AN lines, which would give you more control over how it's setup as the tweaking could be done in code, but then that way adds coding to the mess and have to be done specifically for the version of controller being used.