This is Tech

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Last week I picked up a 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator for a steal on Buy.com. I have been tempted a few times to buy one just to try it out, but didn’t have any real need for the hardware. On sale for around $37 with shipping, it seemed like it was time to give it a try.

Overall, the device is solid. It has a nice weight to it and seems well constructed. I don’t do much 3D modeling, so I fired up Google Earth to give it a try. Navigating using the SpaceNavigator was much more intuative than a mouse. Next I tried sketchup, which was also much easier to navigate. I got a little hung up trying to get the appropriate plug-ins installed, but after that it worked well.

The weakness with the SpaceNavigator is its lack of broad support for non-3d applications. This tool is a no-brainer for people who work in a CAD program all day, but your average user just doesn’t spend enough time in Google Earth to buy a dedicated peripheral. I assumed that the various axises of motion that the device has could be individually mapped by the user. This device would be great to control music playback or in a video editor like Final Cut Pro. Surprisingly, outside of the 16 applications that are officially supported, the SpaceNavigator has no effect at all. It seems like a cop out not to allow the user more options to adapt the SpaceNavigator to other uses. At the least it should be capable of being used as a simple pointing device.

To some extent, this criticism is unwarranted. The device appears to be the perfect tool for its intended purpose. The only real flaw in the product is that it is so cool, that people like me, with no practical use for the tool, still want a reason to use it. Now if they would just create an better API or toolkit so we could start exploring other uses.

If you know of any hacks for the SpaceNavigator, or you have an interesting way that you put yours to use, let me know in the comments.