SpaceNavigator driver [OpenSource]

Hi David, thanks for the heads up!
I'll see if I can get this fixed.
Don't have much spare time at the moment though, anybody know when this 5.4 thing is going to be released ???

 

Says "Depreciated" in the Asset Store Downloads, hoping for an update as well.
Gladly pay $20 for an update.

 

First, thank you for making this driver!

I just got my first Space Navigator yesterday, mainly for using with Unity, and I'm having some trouble in 5.3.5.

It works fine until it doesn't. When it stops working, it will then ONLY zoom in and out, and the only axis that works is the forward and back tilt. The switch over happens when I do anything in the scene view. Even just clicking in the scene view will cause it to stop working.

Somewhere in this thread someone mentioned that it may be conflicting with another camera script, but I've tried it even in totally blank projects and still the same thing.

 

Yes, unfortunately doesn't work in version 5.4 beta :-(

 

Might be the new drivers actually from Connexions... hope not

 

No idea. This is the first time I've used one of these things and I was really excited about using it for Unity dev.

 

Mine now works in Beta's 24 and 25. I updated the drivers about 1 week ago.

 

Hi there, I've done some testing and the driver works in 5.4 beta 24.
3DxWare version 10.4.4 is causing problems.
I talked to 3DConnexion about it and they confirmed, the bug will be fixed in 10.4.5.
Please use 10.4.3 for now.

I actually posted this before, but that post got lost due to unity's forum fumbling...

 

Awesome! The older driver worked. Thanks again.

 

Actually I had no luck with the older drivers....what procedure did you follow, Ony? I uninstalled current and installed the old ones, but had no luck getting the driver working Unity. I'm running Windows 10, maybe you're running a different OS?

 

I'm running Windows 7/64, so yeah maybe there's a difference in drivers?

 

Pat -- which OS are you running on?

 

I'm also running Win10...
Are the 3DConnexion demo's working properly on your machine ?

 

Yup the demos work properly on my machine. 3DConnexion is a very hard company to reach. I've been trying all angles to find out when they'll release the 10.4.5 drivers and I get absolutely zero response. Have you heard anything?

 

Do you have any plans to add a Play mode interface?

 

@aviationdoc they still haven't released 10.4.5 ? wow, they sure are taking their time :\ what a bummer
I haven't spoken to them recently.

@Elecman no plans, I thought that getting the pos/rot data out would be what people need
what kind of play mode interface are you thinking of ?

 

Basically it is to control the camera like in Editor mode. But in Editor mode, the screen effects won't work, and the lighting is a bit different. I would like to make some youtube videos of fly-arounds but it has to be in Play mode for it to look good.

 

You could write a little script and use SpaceNavigator.Translation / Rotation to move your ingame camera around.
Check out the FlyAroud runtime sample.
(don't forget to disable the runtime editor navigation checkbox)

Also, I heard that Unity is working on getting screen effects to work in the editor view.

 

Thanks, I will have a play with that.

 

The new drivers are available on the 3DConnexion site now.

 

Thanks for the heads up!

 

Any way I can swap UP/DOWN for ZOOM IN/OUT? Currently IN = UP, OUT = DOWN. But I prefer to have it as In/Out are Zoom In/out, not Up/Down...

 

When you download the package from the asset store, all source is included.
You can open ViewportController.cs and swap some axis in the Fly, Orbit, etc. methods and adapt it to your liking.
The benefits of open source software

 

Love the open source, hate the work!
Thanks for the info. I will play around withe script!!!

 

Love the plugin - so crazy helpful in projects where I have to zoom in and out a lot.

Though I have drifting issues. I'm using Unity 5.4.0 on PC. If I just import an (very heavy) asset into an empty scene, and then move around, the camera keeps moving a couple meters even after I stopped pushing the Navigator.

 

Hi Pat,
The plugin is not working on unity 5.5. The data returned by the sensor for both translation and rotation is zero. But it works perfectly on version 5.4. Everything initializes properly in 5.5 and there are no errors. I made a stripped down version using TDx.TDxInput and everything still returns zeros. Maybe it's because they switched the mono runtime to 3.5 on unity 5.5? I've been using a spaceNavigator on my own engine for the past 5 years using TDx.TDxInput running on .net 4.5 and It's worked fine. I even tried using the version of TDx.TDxInput that i use in my own engine (same version #) and it also return all zeros. Any Ideas?

 

Hey Pat! I wanted to share a quick anecdote that probably won't be super interesting to anyone except you...

I am primarily identified as a Mac developer but it's impossible to ignore that most/all VR development is happening on Windows so I've been spending more and more time on our team's VR machine, teaching myself Unity and hacking demos together. Suddenly I remembered: that cool 3D mouse thing that I bought that ended up being basically unusable on Mac.. maybe it would work on Unity! So I was disappointed to see nothing on the 3DConnexion site. I checked the asset store as a last-gasp effort, and here I am a week later, zipping around like a hummingbird. THANK YOU!

I too am having the issue where it will be working (5.4.2f2) until precisely the moment it stops. I keep hoping to figure out a way to reinitialize the connection without restarting Unity. Having read the thread, I'm going to try leaving the dialog open as some have suggested.

What I would like to know is how you're doing, after 3-4 years of frustrating work on this tool? Open source can be exhausting and thankless. Is there anything that we as a community can do for you?

 

Hi Pete,
Thanks very much for your anecdote!
Hearing tuff like that makes a project like this worthwhile.

What would I like from the community?
Well, there's two things that come to mind:

• ideas that could improve the driver
• actuate bug reports, "it doesn't work" is not much to go on. I'd love to see detailed steps on how to reproduce the problem + a description of the system (OS, unity version, 3dconnexion version).

Greetings from the Maldives, hope to get some development time in again on this project when I get back from holiday.

Ciao, Patrick

 

Would it be possible to get the contoller to react to colliders in play mode (i.e. not sink into the terrain)?

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "sink into the terrain".
Check out the Fly Around scene in the Runtime Samples folder.
In it, you control a sphere which interacts with other objects via physics.
That sounds like what you're trying to achieve.

 

Hey PatHightree. Thank you for this driver. I love it. Working almost perfectly here.
The only thing is that is not holding my settings for speed, inverted axis and so one. Always coming back to default setting after a restart. I'm using iMac with Unity3d 5.5 and your 3dconnection space mouse driver 1.5.1, with 10.4.3 OS X driver for 3dconnection drivers. any solution/workaround? Thank you anyway!

 

Yes, in the Fly Around Scene, you have a plane that acts floor where the cubes are sitting. However the sphere will go straight through the floor and other colliders that I have tried.

 

AH, now I understand what you mean
That's just a question of correcting the sphere position when it gets under the ground plane.

Here's a version of FlyAround.cs that does this:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using SpaceNavigatorDriver;
3.  
4. public class FlyAround : MonoBehaviour {
5.     public bool HorizonLock = true;
6.  
7.     public void Update () {
8.         transform.Translate(SpaceNavigator.Translation, Space.Self);
9.         Vector3 pos = transform.position;
10.         if (pos.y < 0.5f)
11.             transform.position = new Vector3(pos.x, 0.5f, pos.z);
12.  
13.         if (HorizonLock) {
14.             // This method keeps the horizon horizontal at all times.
15.             // Perform azimuth in world coordinates.
16.             transform.Rotate(Vector3.up, SpaceNavigator.Rotation.Yaw() * Mathf.Rad2Deg, Space.World);
17.             // Perform pitch in local coordinates.
18.             transform.Rotate(Vector3.right, SpaceNavigator.Rotation.Pitch() * Mathf.Rad2Deg, Space.Self);
19.         }
20.         else {
21.             transform.Rotate(SpaceNavigator.Rotation.eulerAngles, Space.Self);
22.         }
23.     }
24. }

 

Bug report:
When no space navigator is plugged in, the scene camera resets to a zero position and orientation after starting then stopping play mode.

One other thing. The dead zone seems to be much bigger then when used in 3ds Max. Adjusting the speed doesn't seem to make a difference.

 

I have reproduced the pos/rot zero bug and am trying to find a solution for it.

Are you on a Mac ?
On Mac there was a problem with drift, so a deadzone was added.
You can tweak the values of TranslationDeadzone and RotationDeadzone in SpaceNavigatorMac.cs
If you tweak those variables and find better values, please let me know because I don't have a mac.

 

I am on windows. Is there another way to fix the deadzone?

By the way, how is the lobbying going to integrate this into Unity? I asked some staff once about this and they didn't seem to know what I was talking about:

-Unity dev: you need to talk to the input team.
-Input team: not our department.
-Me: it is in the top 10 of the feedback site and it is not rocket science.
-Unity: we make our own priorities.
-Me: sigh.

 

Ah, on windows I did not add any deadzone inside the driver.
So the most likely cause for it would be the per application configuration in the 3dconnexion driver.

I fixed the camera's pos/rot being zeroed on play.
I fixed settings not being retained between sessions.
The asset store publishing portal is acting up, so I don't know when I'll be able to publish a new version.
But I pushed those fixes to github, so you can get it there.

Regarding integration into Unity, I haven't actively pursued this and they haven't reached out to me.
I guess sadly, that the feedback site is a remnant of a bygone era.

 

Version 1.5.2 has been submitted for review.

Fixes:
- Fixed sceneview camera pos/rot being reset on play/stop.
- Settings are now saved immediately after any modification.

 

Thanks for the fix

 

1.5.2 is now live on the asset store

 

Yes, that works, but I am still having trouble flying through various colliders (eg walls).

Thanks!

 

A simple approach for that would be to keep a record of the previous position.
Then set up an OnCollisionEnter handler, and when collsion happens, restore the previous position.
It won't feel smooth, but it would keep the flying object from penetrating.
If you want smoother, I would split the visible from the controlled object and connect them via a physics joint to allow them to separate.

 

Would using RayCastHit be another possible solution? I.e. do a raycast right before you move to make sure you don't encounter a collider and then don't move if that is the case?

 

That would work, it would be simmilar to the OnCollisionEnter method I described above.
The result would be jerky, go ahead and try it.

 

Is the anyway to accessthe settings (sensitivity etc.) from within UNity?

 

No problem, Settings is a static class so you can access it from everywhere.
Like this:
float translationSensitivity = Settings.TransSens[Settings.CurrentGear];

 

I had another look at the deadzone issue on Windows. There is a much larger deadzone in rotation when compared with 3ds Max and Autodesk Inventor. The deadzone in translation is the same though.

I modified RotSensScale in SpaceNavigatorWindows but this had no effect but change the sensitivity. The deadzone remained the same.

The application specific settings of the standalone driver app does not have a setting for deadzone, only sensitivity (which is not the same as deadzone).

Is there any other way to fix this?

Edit:
Strangely enough, there is no rotational deadzone in play mode, only in edit mode...

 

I'm sorry to say, on the windows side I haven't implemented any deadzone (there is on the mac version).
So the deadzone is part of the 3dconnexion driver.
The only thing I can think of is that I'm using a non-standard/recommended (polling) method of retrieving the data from the driver. (its the only way I have found that works inside unity)
Maybe if I were using the standard way to communicate with the driver, the deadzone wouldn't be there.. I don't know.

 

Interesting. Anyway, it's just a small annoyance. Happy it works pretty well overall

 

Thank you for this awesome plugin! It works perfectly on Windows 10 Unity 5.6.

I've tried to get the _device.IsConnected status, but it seems to always return true, even when it is not plugged in. It would be nice with a public method that indicates if the Space Navigator is plugged in.