3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator

[voltron7]

Looking to buy/try one....
anyone here have one they don't use or want?

Thanks

[Polygonstate]

On 3D Conexion website they are having a refurbished sale.
I use the spacenavigator and just bought the refurbished space pilot for $189. It looks like brand new.

Here's the refurbished store link.

[voltron7]

Polygonstate,

Thanks, I've been looking at the same link, too. Good to hear it came in great condition.
What are your impressions of the 2 devices? Do you use them in 3dsmax?

Thanks

[Polygonstate]

Yes I use them on Max. Thing is they worked way smoother with 2009 than 2010. For some reason with 2010 once you hit 300-500K polys the frame rate drops a bit (I use GTX 285). It's not very bad ( I wouldn't work without it ever again anyway) but it used to be better. Maybe they'll tweak the drivers as they always do and it will help a bit.
Apart from that like I wrote before I would never, ever work without one again.
To me the SN is the most useful piece of hardware I have ever bough.
And now with the pilot I didn't touch my keyboard since the day I got it. I love it

[voltron7]

Thanks for the info

[tammo]

I have one sitting on my desk, collecting dust.

What exactly are you doing with it?
Rotating the perspective view?
I have the impression that its like an analog joystick, slow and unprecise.
Maybe i have to force myself to work with it some time until it becomes useful,
kind of like when you switch to a wacom tablet from a mouse.

First its kind of strange and slow and after a few days you notice
that you are working much faster in 3d then ever before.

[Polygonstate]

SN does not limit you to perspective/camera views. I use it on every view.
You can edit it's sensitivity very easy. Move the stick a bit and everything crawls with high precision, move it all the way and you're flying mad fast.
Program buttons and say bye bye to keyboard.
It needs to get used to that's for sure but it's well worth it in my opinion.

[3sgteMKI]

I feel the same way as tammo. Theres one laying around here. i installed the software, played with it for 5 minutes- haven't touched it since. I was also disappointed the drivers didn't allow it to be used for any other purpose then viewport navigation, so I uninstaled them. I am looking forward to trying out a wacom tablet though.

On the other hand it did work pretty smoothly and seemed to have great build quality, just didn't help me out much.

[Polygonstate]

One thing I can add to get used to it faster is make sure you reverse the orbit on rotation and zoom and pan.
That made a world of difference to me.

[tammo]

I tried to use it again.
I updated the driver and tried to fly around in a big interior scene.
There are lots of bugs like screen freezes, performance loss and strange behaviour if you move your mouse pointer into the active window while navigating.
Its also a lot slower than moving around with my tablet.
I really wanted to like it because i have spend money on that thing, but its useless for me.

[voltron7]

Well, I am going to try it for myself, reviews seem all over the place wherever I search. I only want it for viewport navigation and less keyboard use...

[jonahhawk]

My big issue with it is that it does not have enough buttons. The larger, $500 model has plenty. I tried it a couple years back, I remember reversing the navigation/orbit. Our scenes push millions of polygons quite often. So tools like this are not so fun. Our firm was given several as a promotion (wish I could give you mine) but I don't know anyone who actually uses them. I see them around but they collect dust.

I'm not knocking them... I want there to be something like this that works naturally and fluidly. We just don't have the graphics support for 5M+ polygons. We would have to invest heavily in graphics support just to get the $100 navigator tool to work.

my 2 bits.

[jujubee]

I have one too. The blue lights are pretty. But it's unplugged and will remain that way.

[voltron7]

Good info jonahhawk. I don't usually get into scenes that heavy, so i'll give it a whirl.

My big issue with it is that it does not have enough buttons. The larger, $500 model has plenty. I tried it a couple years back, I remember reversing the navigation/orbit. Our scenes push millions of polygons quite often. So tools like this are not so fun. Our firm was given several as a promotion (wish I could give you mine) but I don't know anyone who actually uses them. I see them around but they collect dust.

I'm not knocking them... I want there to be something like this that works naturally and fluidly. We just don't have the graphics support for 5M+ polygons. We would have to invest heavily in graphics support just to get the $100 navigator tool to work.

my 2 bits.

[mcnamex]

wacom tablet for me, worth more than SN, I could use it for texturing and 3d sculpt work