A Pistol Mouse for Your Fragging Pleasure

ErgoSeating writes "In my search for an ergonomic mouse I stumbled upon something called the PistolMouse. This mouse is shaped like a pistol and uses a trigger as the left button but tracks with an optical sensor on the bottom, not the sight or barrel. In a twist of irony, the mouse is ergonomically shaped because the pistol grip alleviates stress on your carpal tunnel-ridden wrist. Its Linux compatible and looks like it could be just the thing to brighten up my desk. Here is a review of the item with some good pictures." Not sure how it's ironic -- the modern handgun reflects hundreds of years of user testing -- but it looks fun, and a hoot to travel with by air.

Comments

Re:Firearms the original point and click interface

[Speare]

Crossbows were made before firearms. Firearms may be merely an evolution of crossbows, where an explosion of powder was used instead of the release of a tense string. Crossbows themselves are merely bows which store your arm power until released, by, um, pointing and clicking.

Re:Not new

[Kesh]

Especially with the advent of Bluetooth. Cuts the need for a cord or IR sensor, so you can wave the light gun around more freely.

Re:Firearms the original point and click interface

[arete]

While the firing of crossbows is certainly point and click, the loading and preparation is not. And my understanding is it's not reasonable to leave cocked crossbows lying around.

I usually take "point and click interface" to mean "interface that somebody probably smart put a lot of work into so that any unqualified moron can make do more or less what they want to great effect, although the user may not have considered or understand the ramifications of their actions"

That is why I usually consider cartidge firearms to be the original point and click interface. Sometimes I limit it to semiautomatic weapons and dual action revolvers, because you can click over and over with effect and without thought.

I respect your opinion, though, even though I think you're on a little bit of a slippery slope. Of course, the most effective point and click device is always a well-trained underling... but I was limited myself to technology.

Proving once again that I am a nerd.

Re:Not new

[Lisandro]

Because it's not simple. The same movement you would need to steer around is the movement needed to aim at certain parts of the screen - which is what you'd use the gun for, otherwise it becomes a fancy mouse, letting you only shoot at the center of the screen. A lot of the "immersiveness" of FPSs comes from the fact you're pretty much free to move and look/aim arround.

I remember the Time Crisis series at the arcades used a lightgun and a pedal to take cover / reload the gun. I think that's pretty much as far as you can go without having to actually physically move.

Re:Firearms the original point and click interface

[Dun Malg]

I usually take "point and click interface" to mean "interface that somebody probably smart put a lot of work into so that any unqualified moron can make do more or less what they want to great effect, although the user may not have considered or understand the ramifications of their actions"

Funny you should phrase it this way, because this is exactly the reason the crossbow was developed. Archers with regular bows required years of training, while even a particularly thickheaded soldier could be taught to use a crossbow in about a week.

Re:Firearms the original point and click interface

[arete]

I'd accept that the crossbow might've been the first ranged weapon designed with that idea in mind, but I sustain the technology wasn't there to accomplish the goal of untrained killing until the cartidge.

As someone else pointed out, the amount of effort to cock a crossbow isn't necessarily tremendous - but it's definitely there. As I pointed out, using an underling isn't a technological P&C.

And as you point out, it only takes about a week of training for a thickheaded soldier to use a crossbow. To use a firearm at close range only requires watching TV - people successfully kill all the time with only that much training.

(This is not to dismiss the very real skills someone with mastery of firearms has, but they aren't required to be very deadly - at least at short range.)

To address another nit somebody might pick, I'd agree that both crossbows and bows were easier and more effective than early firearms. That was not true for an untrained user by the time of common cartidges.

To answer another uncle-post, with a dual action cartidge revolver, if you put the cartidges in the little holes and close it, all you need to do is pull the trigger.

And when you see somebody cock a gun in a movie, it's almost always stupid. Practicing proper gun safety generally means not having a round in the chamber. So you have to cock a semiautomatic or automatic weapon. Once. And you'd do this well before you entered combat, if you knew it was coming. If you cock your weapon after that, you're ejecting a good round from the chamber - wasting ammunition and making a fool of yourself. If a character walks up to another character and cocks his gun, either the director or the character is a fool.

Re:Not new

[Tim C]

My guess is that it simply wouldn't work. If raising and lowering the gun is jump/crouch, how do you aim up and down? Not to mention the sheer physicality of holding it up and waggling it about for extended periods - maybe it would be ok for a few minutes at a time, but an hour or two? That's before we get on to the technical problems, of course, like that it simply won't work with an LCD.

Quite often, if you're sat wondering "how come no-one has done $foo?", it's becuse someone tried $foo and it just didn't work out. (That shouldn't necessarily stop you from trying yourself, of course)