However, even if I can’t use it to make Unity’s Scene View a lot more friendly, I would still like to try making some games that use it, so that I can inspire more people to get a decent “3D” controller instead of using the archaic WASD or other digital button method. However, none of the 6 axes of the SpaceNavigator seem to be connected to the 8 axes available in Unity’s Input section. Any ideas on how it might be possible to get this working?
This is the coolest app I’ve come across since Unity! Thanks a ton!
I started going crazy with it and realized that I needed a full license to do what I wanted to do with it, so I got one. My accomplishments so far have been (using the SpaceNavigator as sole input):
Play the FPS tutorial using one hand for all movement/look control. It’s just like having two analog sticks, except one hand is free! In terms of the tutorial level, it’s better to use a mouse for finer control, but the “analog” movement is awesome, and I’m already getting ideas about how to make a game out of this.
Control vertical and horizontal scrolling throughout the OS, scrolling trackpad- or mighty mouse-style.
Control brush size in Corel Painter with the “dial”, like in Photoshop
Make the snazzy blue LED turn on when I type a key.
If anybody else has a SpaceNavigator and wants me to give them my ControllerMate settings that made this possible, let me know.
I tried to send it to you a while ago, but something is broken in regards to private message attachments. Give me a few minutes and I will try to get it up in this topic. I contacted OTEE about this issue but it hasn’t been resolved yet.
(I uploaded the file…)
Hopefully this will translate well to your crazily expensive device! Here’s a rundown of what I’ve tried so far:
-Safety: disable programming using right button
-Lights: turn light on and off with a button; light blinks when typing; a light and sound show plays when you type “James LaBrie Rules”. (LaBrie rules goes in ~/Library/Sounds. Set it as your default system sound to watch the show.)
-Scrolling: navigate windows with scroll bars by tilting and turning
-Unity Game Control: made to test the FPS demo. all controls handled on the device except firing.
-Painter: change brush size and zoom in and out
-Cinema 4D: this is an effort to control the view, but it doesn’t work well. Someone at OrderedBytes actually tried fixing an earlier version of this that caused serious problems, but this version still has problems. I have disabled it by default, but feel free to suggest a better method if you desire.
Also, the Prog Metal Mayhem program tends to be buggy and force you to hit a key before everything works right again, but only sometimes. I’m pretty sure this is a fault of ControllerMate, but have not heard back from OrderedBytes about it yet.
I’m pretty sure the makers of ControllerMate had different things in mind for this software then what I have done. Have fun, good luck, and let me know if you have any improvements!
I tried ControllerMate briefly. I should warn you that it can prevent trackpad input if you use a mouse and then set it up and unplug it. I forget the exact order of events, but it was very frustrating because I had unplugged my mouse at home and then my trackpad didn’t work at school. I had to restart with shift held down in order to regain control.
They include a warning message now, when you first use ControllerMate, to stop that exact thing from happening. The program assists you in setting things up in System Preferences, or disabling virtual mice if you so desire. Here is an excerpt from the Preferences pane:
“For example, the virtual mouse may disable the trackpad on PowerBooks/Macbooks if the “ignore trackpad when mouse is present” option is selected in the System Preferences.”
This is perfectly reasonable behavior, but you have to be prepared, and I think they guide you along very well. I feel that option is worthless anyway, because using one hand on the mouse and the other on the trackpad for scrolling is an excellent combination.
That’s not to say there aren’t a few other actual bugs to be ironed out, but almost everything I’ve tried works perfectly with it, and its interface is fantastic.
I was only able to try out a couple of the controller configs you created as I don’t have half of the programs you created settings for. They worked well and are a good start.
Here’s my first attempt at controlling Unity with the SpaceExplorer, some of which is based on Jessy’s configs.
This package allows you to control the Scene View at the global level. Pressing button 1 repeatedly will cycle through the various scene manipulation modes. Button 2 can be used to reset the controller if a bug occurs.
Next I want to see if I can can configure it to control things at the object/model level.
Well I decided to get one of these things to try out and I whipped up a controller mate script that I like a bit better. There are 2 modes… panning and sliding, controlled with button 2. Button 1 resets CM in case of errors. This CM file also detects when Unity is started and disables the bundle otherwise. Additionally it talks to Growl and notifies of mode changes and such. Try it out, hack it up, let me know what you think.
PS. I still want to see native support for the SpaceNavigator, this is only a hack
I think this is a cool thread… I’ve just downloaded, installed and registered ControllerMate and am now using it with Jeffs “SpaceNavigator-support”. It’s nice to be able to use the SpaceNavigator inside of Unity at all, but it behaves kind of “jittery”. I guess that’s normal, isn’t it?
So I again vote for “native SpaceNavigator support” in Unity… I love the way it’s done in Cheetah3D
I made this ControllerMate config tonight, it’s my first attempt at getting the SpaceNav to work with Unity. It doesn’t use modes, or even the buttons. You just grab the SpaceNav and it does its thing and when it’s centered it’s off.
You might have to play with the sensitivity and the dead zones a bit.
The main limitation of a ControllerMate implementation is that you can’t use all the axes at once because it’s just emulating using the mouse. With my config in particular you have to basically work with one or two axes at a time. There’s a priority hierarchy, orbiting->zooming->panning.
Hopefully proper support for the SpaveNav in Unity will be coming soon…
3DConnexion has recently updated its drivers so that the Maya plugins are built-into the main installation, and it all works a lot smoother these days. (Not that it was bad before - it just needed some tweaking). This makes working in every other 3D app just a little more painful, again.
