nearby.org.uk blog

I have to admit when first seeing the The SpaceNavigator, on Franks Google Earth Blog, I was a little skeptical that the device could be *that* good, boy was I wrong. In fact I’ve had it just a little over an hour, and hard to put it down, (similar case here). (thanks again to Frank for pushing me into trying it)
IMHO the best part is that it makes ‘User Based’ navigation a very real possibility, it appears its been a possible with the Joystick ‘Controller’ interface for a while, but I’ve never managed to get to grips with it, like I think it should of worked. (this is using a MS Flight Stick so should be quite good, but found it easy to get disorientated*)

Mouse and Keyboard (and an option with Controllers and this device) is still ‘Earth Based’ in Google Earth, which while does make sense, I repeatedly finding myself wishing I could just rotate my viewpoint rather than the ground spot I am looking at. (If anybody is reading this my next request would be for a quicker way to switch GE between the two modes)

Anyway back to exploring the Earth….
*This might be partly due to 3DConnexion making a design decision not to implement Roll. (having said that would like to see it as an option!)

P.S. It seems its not easily available in the UK yet, but the 3Dconnexion’s EU shop do ship to the UK.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Google Earth, SpaceNavigator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.