3Dconnexion Space Navigator Support?

[GregVDS]

Hello,

Could it be possible to have a way to use the 3Dconnexion Space Navigator device to move in Celestia? Under Mac OS X too??

Is it difficult to add?

All the very best,

GregVDS

[Tony Iorfino]

I just found this program and think it is incredible, but I keep trying to manipulate my Celestia view with my 3DConnexion SpacePilot. Is any work being done to implement support for a 3D navigation device to Celestia? I understand from the 3DConnexion's forum that implementation is not that difficult. If I could program I would give it a try, but I can't so I have to depend on the good graces of those who can.

Please consider it if it's not already in the works. It would make Celestia that much easier to use.

Thanks,

Tony

[chris]

I don't have a Space Navigator but this seems worth looking into . . . Nasa WorldWind supports it, so it seems like 3Dconnexion is ok with open source projects using their sdk.

--Chris

[t00fri]

It's sold for $60 and 60 Euro alike ... boah! Good business, notably in "Old Europe"!

Flight times in the Universe are usually LOOOOONG enough such that one can also get along quite well with mouse/keyboard. I do so since 6 years, despite earning strong Euros

F.

[Tony Iorfino]

Once you try one, you'll wonder how you made due without one.

[UncleSpam]

I've been using the Spaceball 5000 USB (and many previous devices before) to control the NX CAD software.

I also have the Space Navigator, and it's a pretty cool device as well.

I know that Google Earth supports these devices (at least the USB ones).

- Bogdan

[Corben Dallas]

Of course -- using a space simulation without a SpaceNavigator device would be like steering a space craft with left arrow, right arrow, right arrow, center... etc. etc.

In 3dconnexion's development forum i found a thread named "SpaceNavigator Driver - Mouse Joystick Keyboard". RPC9 wrote a HID driver for some SpaceX devices. It seems quite worth a try.

The forum url is http://www.3dconnexion.com/forum/viewto ... sc&start=0

The driver can be found at http://rbc.duckinegg.com/

Greetings to all celestians out there
Kai.

[Tony Iorfino]

(Bump)

Has anyone considered doing anything with this?

Happy Holidays to all!

Tony

[chris]

(Bump)

Has anyone considered doing anything with this?

Happy Holidays to all!

Tony

I've looked into it a bit, but simply haven't had the time to implement support. It looks like a great device for navigating in Celestia.

--Chris

[GPD]

I got one for blender under Linux (Fedora 8 onwards).

Instead of using the driver issued by 3dconnexions, I use a daemon written by John Tsiombikas, spacenavd
Guys, he did a great work, even provided an SDK for open source development.

Also, you can find many snippets of example code that should make supporting it a very small task.

I guess, you only need one of these, which considering that it is cheaper than my mouse (logitech MX518 lol, got it for 50 euros), I'm surprised you did not have one already to play with it.

Obviously you'll go for the PERSONAL edition.

They did some BS with their proprietary drivers, apparently enough to piss off everyone in FL/OSS, but disregard them and just get it done to play in celestia. I don't play with celestia as much as I used to with ... redshift in my Amiga (remember this), but with a Space Navigator, I'd use it more. Besides, were it along with blender and maya (2k€ program) to be the ONLY Linux programs to use space navigator, well, expect your user base to rise exponentially. I started using drawing programs like gimp, after I got wacom. Some times, you use a software to play with a hardware you fancy.

Needless to say that a space navigating program with a SPACE navigator should go hand by hand. Who knows, they might even advertise Celestia for their space navigator. I would

[FinalFrontier]

I use the SpaceNavigator with Celestia by using this little piece of freeware called "SpacemouseCursorTool" (Win32):

SpacemouseCursorTool is a small utility simulating keyboard keys using a Spacemouse or similar 3D input device. It can be used for keyboardless navigation in browsers and file managers, playing games, support for special appliances as well as other situations where only a small subset of the keyboard is typically used.

http://www.deinmeister.de/spmcur_e.htm

It doesn't even need to be installed and the SpaceNavigator driver doesn't need to be stopped while controlling Celestia with this software.

If you don't want to configure it by yourself (it takes sometime), here are my settings I use:




Or create a .reg file and import the settings directly in your registry:

Code: Select all

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\TScoding\spacemousecursor]
"numkeys"=hex:12,00,00,00
"keymap"=hex:40,00,00,00,26,c8,02,00,80,00,00,00,28,d0,02,00,00,01,00,00,25,cb,\
  01,00,00,02,00,00,27,cd,01,00,04,00,00,00,5a,15,02,00,08,00,00,00,41,1e,02,\
  00,20,00,00,00,24,c7,02,00,10,00,00,00,23,cf,02,00,00,04,00,00,64,4b,01,00,\
  00,08,00,00,66,4d,01,00,00,00,02,00,48,23,01,00,00,00,02,00,47,22,01,00,00,\
  00,01,00,a1,36,01,00,00,00,01,00,bc,33,01,00,02,00,00,00,a1,36,02,00,02,00,\
  00,00,25,cb,02,00,01,00,00,00,a1,36,02,00,01,00,00,00,27,cd,02,00
"typematic"=hex:01,00,00,00
"configname"="Celestia"
"pollingspeed"=hex:05,00,00,00
"typematicdelay"=hex:f4,01,00,00
"typematicrate"=hex:fa,00,00,00
"threshold"=hex:0a,00,00,00
"config"=hex:33


Of course it doesn't navigate as smoothly as in Google Earth, but it's a start. With these settings you can experience a nice free-fly-mode in Celestia. Pushing the SpaceNavi forward accelerates, pushing backwards breaks. It's pretty much like the fly-mode in Google-Earth.

The left button enables/disables the coordinates grid, the right button flies you automatically to the earths sun.

These are the settings for the SpaceNavigator, so they fit to the settings above: