Interesting news came from the still unknown German developer Axsotic.
The market for input devices (in addition to the keyboard: -), despite the seeming variety, is rather meager.
Gamers and accountants use a mouse (although they are very different, of course, there are also various steering wheels, joysticks with triggers, etc.), enthusiasts and some accustomed professionals - a trackball, modelers and designers - a mouse and some devices from 3Dconnexion and a graphics tablet, 2D– artists - with Wacom Intuos or Cintiq tablets, supermarket sellers - with a barcode scanner ...
Axsotic, on the other hand, decided to come up with a way to give everyone working with 3D objects to do it in the most natural way possible - with their fingers.
The device is a ball fixed on three axes, thanks to which it can be rotated in all directions, as well as translationally moved in six directions. So quite a few degrees of freedom are achieved.
3D manipulator axsotic
3D manipulator control unitaxsotic, incorporates a spring and magnet system and also uses the new springbodies (spring body), which provides smoothness and accuracy of 1000 dpi when rotating and 2170 dpi when panning and scaling.
The operation of the manipulator in Windows and Mac OS X v10.4 and older is provided without installing special drivers (at the level of HID standards), at the moment support for Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya, as well as Maxon Cinema4D and BodyPaint is announced, advanced features are proposed to be implemented through The SDK, however, will not be used by users, and to increase the chances of success, they should extend device compatibility to a much larger list of 3D graphics and modeling packages, including professional CAD applications.
The device provides automatic calibration of the mechanism according to the needs of the user, as well as adjustable acceleration and correction of the response to the action of gravity. There is also a function of slowing down to 25% or accelerating 400% in response to human manipulations.
Ball diameter 40 mm, current consumption 100 mA, PC connection via USB 2.0
External dimensions - 11 x 12 x 10 cm, weight 450 g.
While the creators are filing patents and adapting their brainchild for "real life" everyone can register on the developer's website to follow the progress of cases and take a queue in the list of product buyers.
This video explains the principle of working with this manipulator:
Nevertheless, as we can see, in the video, the user works with the manipulator with his right hand, and with the tablet with his left, since, apparently, he is left-handed. If for a right-handed person to swap the devices, then how convenient it will be to perform micromovements with the left hand - it will be possible to answer only in practice. Most people will be more comfortable trying to work with a 3D manipulator.axsotic with the right hand, shift it to the left - you still have to practice :-))
