Always striving to improve your Second Life experience, we at Rez, like to look into all areas of the virtual experience. From changes of Trademark usage, to WindLight content creation, we try our best to leave no stone unturned.

Today I will hopefully uncover a little gem being realised by more and more people i.e. the 3Dconnexion Space Navigator. In the past, to use the Space Navigator you had to tweak the hidden Joystick Flycam options under the ‘Advanced’ menu of the Second Life client. The Wiki page did offer some insight and a well documented user, Tenebrous Pau offers his settings for the device which he has been using for a year now. However 3Dconnexion, a Logitech company, have been working with Linden Lab to bring support for their popular Space Navigator product to Second Life. This support has been implemented in the 1.20 Release Candidate.

Ok, this all sounds very exciting but I hear you ask; what is a Space Navigator and how will it make my Second Life experience better? The Space Navigator is a 6-axis input device. It allows the user to pan, tilt, zoom and rotate efficiently from one single input with far superior accuracy than that of a standard mouse. With the new Release Candidate, users can control their avatar with the navigator; you can walk up a hill, tilting the device to seamlessly enter into flight, pushing down again to smoothly get two feet back on the ground. Intended for left hand usage you can also guide your avatar with your left hand while typing with your right or using your mouse to interact with the UI.

That’s just avatar control, with the Space Navigator you can do much more. Now found under the ‘View’ menu you can activate the Joystick Flycam option and with the default Space Navigator settings you can control your camera with the device as well. Never before has the movements of Second Life been so seamless. Also, of course, a very nifty tool for the Machinima creators out there with fluid soft movements all controlled from the one device making it easier for absolute novice movie directors out there to have a go.

I was lucky enough to see the Space Navigator in action under the old Joystick Flycam settings and agreed it was a lovely device, however when 3Dconnexion announced actual support for Second Life, I decided that I REALLY needed yet another input device. Having ordered from amazon.co.uk I waited excitedly as my package arrived. Similar to a child at Christmas, I tore the box open, installed the drivers, downloaded the Release Candidate and away we go.

The first thing that struck me was the build quality, this is a very weighted object (in fact could be considered lethal in the wrong hands). From amazon.co.uk the device retails at £37.65 ($52.25 amazon.com) which as an extremely reasonable price for such a piece of kit, how many of us have paid upwards of £40 for a mouse?

I installed the driver CD onto my iMac and launched Second Life. Using the Release Candidate I had no further settings to input or install, I hit login and waited for my world to arrive. To begin with the Space Navigator takes a very short time to get used too. Having the ability to walk and fly so easily and seamlessly is, for me, an amazing achievement, but one you need to learn to control. Trin did have her fair share of bumping off things to begin with! Having used the device for a short time now and gone on the short learning curve I really cannot see ANY reason why everyone using Second Life shouldn’t have one of these. It makes you feel more connected with your camera or avatar.

Out of the box the Space Navigator works well, it should be remembered however you can use your preferences to alter some settings to suit yourself. One strong piece of advice is to turn off build mode before you attempt to build with the navigator; otherwise you might end in a disastrous mess (this can be done by un-ticking ‘build’ in the ‘Joystick Setup’ window of the ‘Input & Camera’ preferences tab, see below). There are also two buttons on the side of the Space Navigator which allow, with a bit of tweaking, the ability to jump and enable Flycam mode.Obviously, being newly supported it is not without fault, there are a few subjects on the JIRA (most of which are small niggling flaws with the software rather than big intrusive issues), which will be fixed and implemented to help future Second Life viewers. There is also a “3Dconnexion Space Cadets” group in-world for users to gather, share information and help one another.

Of course it should also be noted that this little gadget isn’t just for use in Second Life, it also works in such applications as Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk AutoCAD, Autodesk Maya and Google Earth to name but a few.

Read up on the device, admire its beauty, bask in the splendour of an evolved integration with Second Life and most importantly go buy one, now.


Resources:

Beast Linden Demo Movie
JIRA
Space Navigator