3D Connexion SketchUp Drivers

3DConnexion have publicly released updated drivers for their range of 3D motion controllers with support for Google's SketchUp 3D modeling software and the Google Earth application. One note of interest is that they appear to have dropped support for 2D applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop (no loss in my opinion as I never found it of much benefit to be able to pan and zoom in 2D applications).

As I wrote previously, I was one of the beta testers for the SketchUp drivers, and am pleased to see some of my feedback has been acted upon for this release and that everybody can now utilise their 3D motion controller to the full with SketchUp (as long as you're using Windows, no Apple Mac support yet). They've even linked to this blog from their website quoting a favourable comment I made while beta testing, nice.

Along with the new drivers 3DConnexion have also released some new hardware devices, the SpaceExplorer is the replacement for the Spaceball5000 device (which I own two of) and the SpaceNavigator a low cost, entry level device which is sure to find favour with new customers for use with the free Google Skecthup and Google Earth applications. At a cost of £39 for non-commercial use or £79 for commercial use (how are they going to enforce that?) I can see that the ownership and use of 3DConnexion devices will increase and therefore more software will be developed to make use of them. Check out eBay for any secondhand bargains (which is where I got both my Spaceballs “ooh err” at a fraction of cost).

I dream that one day Blender will support my Spaceball [1]. I also had the crazy idea that these devices would be perfect for 3D games particularly First Person Shooters like Quake and Half-Life. IanD reminded me recently about our Uni days and the hours/days/weeks I spent playing Descent (for me, the first true 3D game). With Descent's 6 degrees of freedom and a Spaceball I'd have been an even bigger killing machine than I was. I loved that game.

Personally, I couldn't live without my Spaceball 5000 which I use daily in my work designing on Pro/Engineer for the relief it provides to my aching mouse hand and the increase in control I have over the modeling process. Then, at home, I use one for "working from home", personal projects in SketchUp and now I'll be able to waste a few hours flying around Google Earth as well. Perfect.

[1] One developer did code support a few releases back but it never made it as an official patch due to GPL issues with the open source Blender. *sigh*

Category:

• 3D
• Spaceball
• SketchUp