Re: [Chimera-users] Chimera with 3d (6-axis) mouse?
Hi Mario, We haven't distributed any game controller support in Chimera. Conrad Huang in our lab recently tried head tracking with a Wii remote. We've tried Wii remote control of Chimera using just mouse emulation. We've tried a force feedback device called a Phantom (from Sensable) for placing markers in density maps. That was distributed with Chimera on Windows in the past but is not currently working, though I am just now fixing it. Greg Couch in our lab has experimented with a game pad API and a consumer device. So we have some interest in alternative input devices but it is mostly just in the tinkering stage. Tom Mario J. Borgnia wrote:
This reminds me that several years ago Alwyn Jones introduced the use of gamepads to control the display. Is this available in Chimera? Tom Goddard wrote:
Hi Lee,
I added Chimera support for the Space Navigator 6-degree-of-freedom input device (costs only $60) for Mac and Windows.
I expect it will work with other 3dconnexion devices such as your Space Explorer. If you download the current Chimera daily build
http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/alpha-downloads.html
for Windows or Mac OS and have the 3dconnexion driver installed, the device will move and rotate Chimera models.
I have only two button assignments: Button1 or Fit centers the models and scales them to fit in the window, Button2 toggles a mode allowing simultaneous rotation and translation (default off is called "dominant" mode by 3dconnexion). The Windows Control Panel or Mac OS System Preferences lets you change the assignments of the device buttons. You may not have any assigned to be "Button2" unless you change those settings.
There are also a few keyboard shortcuts that change modes. Shortcuts or Accelerators are turned on with menu entry Tools / General Controls / Accelerators On. Shortcut "nf" turns on "fly through" mode. Instead of the device behaving as if you are holding the models it is used to control the viewer position (ie. pushing forward flies you forward rather than pushing the models away from you). It is hard to control -- needs more programming work. Shortcut "na" allows the device to move both inactive (frozen) and active models. This can be useful if you are docking a molecule into a map with the mouse and changing view points of both molecule and map using the space navigator. Shortcut "nd" toggles translate/rotate only mode (i.e. "dominant" mode). I just added that today so it won't be in Chimera until tonight's builds.
Tom
At the risk of sticking my nose into a discussion, has anyone in cgl looked at the nostromo n52 as a potential input device? it's a USB device with a 8 way thumb pad, a trigger button, a scroll wheel, and 14 function keys arranged in three rows under the finger tips that can shift into 3 different states. I've been thinking that it could be combined with a mouse or track-ball to control the functions in a modeling program without having to use pull-down menus or typing as many commands, much like the old button box on SGI workstations. Of course, the big question would be setting up a sane command scheme. I have a couple kicking around here if anyone else is interested in this sort of a scheme. Thanks, Andy On Apr 8, 2008, at 3:39 PM, Tom Goddard wrote:
Hi Mario,
We haven't distributed any game controller support in Chimera. Conrad Huang in our lab recently tried head tracking with a Wii remote. We've tried Wii remote control of Chimera using just mouse emulation. We've tried a force feedback device called a Phantom (from Sensable) for placing markers in density maps. That was distributed with Chimera on Windows in the past but is not currently working, though I am just now fixing it. Greg Couch in our lab has experimented with a game pad API and a consumer device.
So we have some interest in alternative input devices but it is mostly just in the tinkering stage.
Tom
Mario J. Borgnia wrote:
This reminds me that several years ago Alwyn Jones introduced the use of gamepads to control the display. Is this available in Chimera? Tom Goddard wrote:
Hi Lee,
I added Chimera support for the Space Navigator 6-degree-of-freedom input device (costs only $60) for Mac and Windows.
I expect it will work with other 3dconnexion devices such as your Space Explorer. If you download the current Chimera daily build
http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/alpha-downloads.html
for Windows or Mac OS and have the 3dconnexion driver installed, the device will move and rotate Chimera models.
I have only two button assignments: Button1 or Fit centers the models and scales them to fit in the window, Button2 toggles a mode allowing simultaneous rotation and translation (default off is called "dominant" mode by 3dconnexion). The Windows Control Panel or Mac OS System Preferences lets you change the assignments of the device buttons. You may not have any assigned to be "Button2" unless you change those settings.
There are also a few keyboard shortcuts that change modes. Shortcuts or Accelerators are turned on with menu entry Tools / General Controls / Accelerators On. Shortcut "nf" turns on "fly through" mode. Instead of the device behaving as if you are holding the models it is used to control the viewer position (ie. pushing forward flies you forward rather than pushing the models away from you). It is hard to control -- needs more programming work. Shortcut "na" allows the device to move both inactive (frozen) and active models. This can be useful if you are docking a molecule into a map with the mouse and changing view points of both molecule and map using the space navigator. Shortcut "nd" toggles translate/rotate only mode (i.e. "dominant" mode). I just added that today so it won't be in Chimera until tonight's builds.
Tom
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I have a n52 as part of my control surfaces. I use it in conjunction with controllermate. For the mac, it all works pretty good. But controllermate only runs on the mac. One of the critical infrastructure problems is integration. With the development of X11, the mouse and keyboard were developed with a consistent interface across applications, along with OS management and expected application response. This has been an ongoing stumbling block for most human interfaces since. In regards to USB, this has been partially addressed by the USB/HID specification. But vendors may optionally implement standard USB/HID OS drivers, or develop their own USB/private kernel modifications. With n52, it uses USB-HID, so it can theoretically work across all computers; but that only gets the signals appropriately cued by the OS; to make it integrate into application software requires more software, like which application gets the input. In the mac this is frequently done in the system prefs; but n52 does not provide any software for this because typical user games directly go to the USB-HID as a sole user of the hardware. Also the game apps map the keys and may not allow for them to be user definable except for right/left hand options. For a single game use, this is ok. For a complex scientific viz environment using multiple application software, this not the way to go in the long term. If you have a killer app that requires a $15k haptic device, say for medical surgery, that is an exception. Generally it would be desirable for average research situations to keep the Human Interface Devices down to $25-$2k and use them across various applications. Parallel user communities dealing with similar problems are audio recording and video editing. The way they have dealt with this is through the MIDI spcification; now midi/usb interfaces are available using USB/private methods and are not USB-HID compliant. There are some control surfaces using ethernet that may have solve the problem, but are not open source; I am researching this now. As for the space navigator, it is USB=HID compliant, as well as the space pilot (except the the LCD output which is USB/private). Matthew Dougherty 713-433-3849 National Center for Macromolecular Imaging Baylor College of Medicine/Houston Texas USA ========================================================================= ========================================================================= -----Original Message----- From: chimera-users-bounces@cgl.ucsf.edu on behalf of Andrew Fant Sent: Tue 4/8/2008 3:06 PM To: chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] Chimera with 3d (6-axis) mouse? At the risk of sticking my nose into a discussion, has anyone in cgl looked at the nostromo n52 as a potential input device? it's a USB device with a 8 way thumb pad, a trigger button, a scroll wheel, and 14 function keys arranged in three rows under the finger tips that can shift into 3 different states. I've been thinking that it could be combined with a mouse or track-ball to control the functions in a modeling program without having to use pull-down menus or typing as many commands, much like the old button box on SGI workstations. Of course, the big question would be setting up a sane command scheme. I have a couple kicking around here if anyone else is interested in this sort of a scheme. Thanks, Andy
participants (3)
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Andrew Fant -
Dougherty, Matthew T. -
Tom Goddard