Space Traveler
polycounter lvl 19
So, I got to use one of these gizmos at work today. I've got to tell ya, it's pretty damn slick. It's a very small device, fits in the palm of your hand.
Basically, the knob controls all 3d viewport movement. You pull it up to pan up, push down to pan down. Pushing it left/right pans those ways, and forward/back controls zoom. Pushing into the corners controls camera rotation, much like an RTS game. The knob itself doesn't move much, and it's movement is 'spongy' (don't know how else to describe it). It's very smooth action.
They currently have drivers for 3dsMax and Maya, with Modo and Lightwave drivers on the way 'soon'. Very fun and intuitive to use. From the dealer we bought from, it was only $99 though, not $199.
http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/3a1.php
Anyone else use these suckers before?
Basically, the knob controls all 3d viewport movement. You pull it up to pan up, push down to pan down. Pushing it left/right pans those ways, and forward/back controls zoom. Pushing into the corners controls camera rotation, much like an RTS game. The knob itself doesn't move much, and it's movement is 'spongy' (don't know how else to describe it). It's very smooth action.
They currently have drivers for 3dsMax and Maya, with Modo and Lightwave drivers on the way 'soon'. Very fun and intuitive to use. From the dealer we bought from, it was only $99 though, not $199.
http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/3a1.php
Anyone else use these suckers before?
Replies
Like is the workflow working with the mouse to edit geometry with your right (depending on which handed you are), having the space moving around while you do this with your left, and then quickly popping back to the keyboard when you need to select another function?
So basically your left hand is moving around your workspace between the traveller and keyboard constantly?
Or is it the opposite. You move the traveller with your right hand, jump your arm over (versus releasing your orbit button on the keyboard) to your mouse, and choose what you need to edit.
In other words, does it add to the process creation time and fatigue with having to use 3 input devices? 8 buttons still leaves many back and fourth with the keyboard.
nm, found picture. Which still leads to the above question.
But the prize is a total turn-off
Makowka, I'm not sure if the buttons are scriptable, but they are certainly programmable. I'm sure that you can assign macros and stuff to them without a problem. Whether you could assign in-app scripts to them, I'm not sure.
Yeah, I guess it would depend on workflow for how much use it'd get - personally I think I might get some decent use out of it, since when modelling I only really use 4-5 hotkeys anyway.
don't know that space traveller though, only the bigger ones (space mouse/ball). nice things but apps are not really built to take advantage imho. i wish there was a zbrush-driver though.
one second hand for a fraction of the price. resellers offload them in droves each time big companies switch their CAD workstation equipment.
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Any examples? I'd be willing to try if I could get one second hand. I did try this before at Siggraph once and liked it. The thing was again, the price and how useful would it be?
Hmm found one one ebay
http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-3DConnexion-Spac...1QQcmdZViewItem
Its a older version and serial though. I also looked through the driver selection. Nothing about windows 64.. You'd think with the target audience?
these days workstations usually have at least one serial port. usb or serial version of the device doesn't make any difference in performance, really.
and yes, that device is perfectly capable however i had one of those exact 4000flx's and personally prefer the space mouse (any model, really) for ergonomic reasons. the space ball is a bit lightweight which was problematic for me everytime i had to lift the ball. after a while it always felt like rsi extreme edition.
as said, these things are nice to have but with the 3d apps i used it with (max, maya) it was a bit of an awkward feeling after a while. i had high hopes and liked it in the first hourse but now prefer the mouse + hotkeys for that. viewport navigation can be somewhat tricky, depending on scene scale and app-specific controls.
i mainly used these devices with custom motion-capture software, where it was mandatory to have such a device connected.
don't forget, these devices are mainly considered an advantage and used in CAD/CAE/CAM where default viewport navigation in those dinosaur apps can sometimes suck really hard.
I really enjoyed using it. No keyboard at all, unless I specifically needed a numberical value on something. I controlled navigation with the device, and everything else with my mouse. How can ergonomics and ease of use be garbage? I dunno...
Everyone has their own opinion, though..
newest driver (all in all over 70 meg's installed, yeah...) straight from their page and off i went.
overall navigation seems improved, i had far less problems than before navigating around the view, no more total orientation screwups that had to be fixed by using mouse + hotkeys to navigate back into a useable position (most frequent annoyance with earlier drivers). however there are still some issues with user view - models suddenly jumping around during a smooth move, slight performance degradation.
something in the control panel seems broken or whatever, my button mappings never stuck. after an application restart it was all back to default max functions, not mine.
have now sent an angry mail to support, let's see what comes out of this. seems, the driver stores all the mappings somewhere hidden, probably in the registry, no chance to edit the stuff by hand or write-protect it.
one thing that i found really annoying is that you can not invert the motion axes - it's possible to turn them on or off individually and adjust their sensitiviy though.
this invert thing would be very handy and is implemented in their UNIX driver. can't understand why they left it out. well, i just requested it anyway.
overall i can see how some of you were impressed when testing the device at a trade show. it makes fluent moves in the viewport easy. mouse+keyboard seems very rigid in direct comparison. but ... it's still so much faster and accurate than using the spacemouse. especially during modelling i found it hard to steer where i wanted to. my failures looked still cool though
i can see this device being useful for scene flythroughs but not in situations where you want to get to vertex 1023 as quickly as possible on the most direct way. so, not really useful for the majority of work...
i got me a sidewinder and have enjoyed using it, but i'm not specialized enough to make the most of it and it's not efficient to put 20+ hotkey-combos onto it because you'll never remember them all quickly enough. for e.g. a modelling or animation specialist doing a lot of repetitive tasks, this seems pretty useful though.