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Linux 3D Input Driver Project Started
zratchet writes "Mikey Lubker reports in his blog that a new project has been started to create drivers for 6-degree-of-freedom 3D input devices. The project hopes to support SDL_Input, XNA, DirectInput, and other major controller API's including game consoles and embedded systems, including controllers for home entertainment systems, robots, modeling clay, games, home automation, and more.
Check out the project here and the (soon to be) tech-demo Snowball Surprise: Adventures in Avatarctica."
Aren't these things better announced when they reach at least 0.1a, or something? If I announce a project to port all of DirectX to Commodore, do I get my own Slashdot article? Even if I never do anything with it?
Sorry... just doing some morning trolling.
Two mice provide 4-D of smooth motion. And you get another 2-D of coarser motion with scroll wheels. This would have applications beyond games as I have seen (but can't find) experiments in the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) literature on the superiority of dual-cursor interfaces.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I wrote a cool little tool to give 6-degrees input from a single webcam. It tracks the three points of a triangle, and calculates X-Y-Z-tilt-rotation-elevation based on that.
The logarithms to do the calculations are solid - all you need is a better mousetrap than I have for finding the three triangle points in a single image frame (should be very straight forward - mine works but is slow).
Is this old hat, or would there be good value to open-sourcing it? I'll likely never commercialize it on my own.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Any support for these 3D input devices? I mean, there are Linux drivers, but as of yet no open source drivers (to my knowledge) for these devices.
My blog
I figure I'm going to need 30 or 40 more degrees of movement.
Well, here's two:
- Wing Commander: Privateer Remake
- Vegastrike
See my blog for my free opinions.
Do they have 3D chicken input? The National University of Singapore seems to be putting a lot of work into it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I used to work down the hall from Spaceball (Technologies? I forget the full name), in Lowell MA. They had a product called the Spaceball which was a sphere mounted on a base, that you could twist around any of the three axes, and push in the direction of any of the three axes..
So it didn't actually twist much - it sensed your desire to rotate it (the ball stayed in pretty much the same position).. And it didn't move much in either direction either, but it knew when you were lifting it, or pushing it left, or pulling it back, etc.
Anyway, those are your six dimensions.. rotate x,y,z, translate x,y,z.
They made some game controller of it later, but the original was used in high-end cadcam applications etc. Cool device!
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo
Linux already supports the:
And most likely also the newer SpaceBall variants, because they all use USB HID.
All the drivers are GPL and included in the standard kernel release. The CyberMan2 is very cool for playing Descent2 on Linux.
I know it. I wrote the drivers.
It seems the project is more about developing and marketing a new 6dof in a world where all gaming-oriented 6dofs (the SpaceOrb, available on e-bay for a few bucks, the CyberMan / CyberMan2) failed miserably.
The SpaceOrb is supported as an input device and a joystick (so it's possible to use in any game that supports a multi-axis joystick) in Linux natively.