[rescue] Spaceballs.

[Corda Albert J DLVA]

A spaceball constituted one of the first mass-market attempts to
provide a 6-degree-of-freedom input device, analogous to the
2-d mouse, for use in 3-d applications.  It consisted of a ball,
(usually about the size of a small orange) mounted on a stick
(which was affixed to a base of some sort which also provided
a number of push buttons).  The idea was that you could
navigate through 3-d space by twisting/lifting/pressing on the
ball in various combinations to orient yourself in space.
Many of the balls also had a "hidden" button embedded within
the ball itself which you could activate by squeezing/pressing
on the ball just right...

Interesting approach, but I don't think it ever really caught
on... there were a number of later spaceballs that hit the
market for PC games (space-orb?) but I don't think they sold
very well.

To this day, I don't believe the problem of easily positioning
yourself in a 3d-space has been adequately solved (or at least
not solved to the extent that an easy/intuitive I/O device on
par with the 2-d ease of a mouse or trackball has not been
developed).

-al-
-acorda at 1bigred.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Weiss [mailto:ajwdsp at cloud9.net]
> Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 5:25 PM
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: RE: [rescue] Spaceballs.
> 
> 
> Excuse my temporary fall from geekdom... What is a spaceball?... other
> than the singular form of a word that is the title of a great 
> Mel Brooks
> film.
> 
> Andrew
> 
> On 7 Dec 2001, Dan Sikorski wrote:
> 
> > I've got a spaceball, and it has a connector precisely like a sun
> > keyboard (sorry, i don't know the name of the connector) 
> I've never done
> > anything with it, it's just been sitting around for a few 
> years.  Anyone
> > know if this thing works in solaris?
> >
> > 	-Dan
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