SOCD Is Helpful When You Press Two Keys At The Same Time That Do The Opposite Things
Unlike many mechanical keyboards, which claim to be great for gaming, all provide the same functionality as each other and may only differ based on the feeling they provide & nothing more. Some keyboards actually provide features that are useful for that. One of them is SOCD. This feature can be found in Inductive & Hall Effect keyboards, but it can also be found in regular mechanical keyboards. Many articles try to explain the concepts, but in a very dry & not easy-to-understand way, which is why I am going to explain in the best way in this quick article. Have fun~
Quickly go to:-
What Is SOCD? And How Does It Work?
The easiest way to explain SOCD is to use an example. Let’s say you are playing a game. You’re using WASD keys to move your character, so you use the A key to go right & the key D to go left. Now, what do you think would happen if we were holding A down and then suddenly pressed on the D key? How do you want this to be handled?
There are multiple things that could happen here. You can, for example, have the last key take priority, or maybe it’s the first key that should keep being triggered. Some keyboards cancel both keys, which makes them annoying to play even older games like MSX games (I have a keyboard that acts this way, so I know, lool). Usually, games are programmed to respond in a certain way, but you can also have the keyboard itself handle the simultaneous key presses at the hardware level. This is what SOCD is all about. It simply allows you to determine how you want the presses to be handled. It will work the same regardless of the game you’re playing.
The SOCD options the keyboard provides differ from keyboard to keyboard. Some keyboards allow you to pick which key gets priority, while some others only make it so that the last key gets priority.
Now you know what SOCD is. It won’t hurt to mention that it stands for “Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Directions”.
And Finally
SOCD is a simple but very interesting feature. I consider it one of the true features of a gaming keyboard. As it can make a difference in some games.
I hope my explanation of SOCD was easy to understand, and I will see you in another Tech Fairy article. Check out the mobile apps I developed, which I hope you find useful & interesting.