by John Swanson

Product: 3DCONNEXION Space Pilot Pro 3D Mouse
Manufacturer: 3DCONNEXION (a wholly owned subsidiary of Logitech)
For Pricing and to Purchace: 3DCONNEXION website

From the web site:
"Space Pilot Pro is the ultimate professional 3D mouse, engineered to excel in today’s most demanding 3D enviroments. It’s breakthrough features include second generation Quick View Navigation technology, dual function Intelligent Function Keys and at-a-glance access to important information via the full-color LCD Workflow Assistant."

I’ve had the opportunity to use 3Dconnexion’s Space Pilot Pro for about three months now. I do like it. I find it allows me to get around my models and work on them in a way that I was never able to before. It does take a little getting use to – I have to say that right up front. Once you get use to manipulating the controller cap and it’s (many) controls I think you’ll agree with me. After using it for a few hours over the course of a week or so I felt very comfortable with it....

Sure I saw pictures of it on their website but that did not prepare for the moment I opened the box it was shipped to me in. It really is beautifully designed. It’s contours look very inviting. It feels good to operate it, at least to my hand. I will stop there, but let me tell you, it is a very handsome piece of engineering.

The part you move to navigate 3D space, the controller cap, has a very solid feel to it (it has a cool blue light at it’s base). It springs back to a neutral position when you let go of it. I’ve tried a few 3D mice before but was distracted by the fact that they all seemed hard to control. The controllers of those mice moved too freely and did not provide enough resistence, I soon found myself lost in 3D space. My experience with this mouse much better right from the start, and with a little practice I was flying around the viewport with no trouble.

At the roughly $400 price point this is obviously aimed at the professional 3D/CAD user. For them the price would be quickly recovered by the increased productivity. If you spend your days in 3ds Max and are looking for a 3D mouse this is one you should look at.

If you’re not familiar with the idea of a 3D mouse I will try to explain it to you. The closest thing I can think of is the HOTAS (Hands On Throttle-And-Stick) controls in jet’s cockpit. That thing the pilot holds on to fly the jet. This is the concept of placing buttons and switches on the throttle stick and flight control stick, allowing the pilot to access vital cockpit functions and fly the aircraft without having to remove his hands from the throttle and flight controls. You would use your left hand to control the mouse, with it’s six degrees of freedom, while using a regular mouse in the other hand. The 3D mouse manipulates the model in virtual space and the traditional mouse does what it always did - things like pressing menu buttons, selecting vertices, faces, etc…Just for fun I used the Space Pilot Pro in my left hand and my Wacom Intous 3 graphics tablet pen in my right hand. I was able to get work done this way in both 3dsMax and Photoshop CS3. But the suggested set up for the Space Pilot Pro is much more comfortable. That is – your keyboard in the middle with the 3D mouse on the left and the traditional mouse on the right side – all on a flat surface.

I was able to test it on a number of different programs. Of course I used it with 3ds Max 2010. That is the program I will concentrate on in this review. I was also able to use it with AutoCAD 2009 in 3D mode, a trial version of Inventor 2010, Maya 2009, Blender, Photoshop CS3, DAZ Studio, Google Sketchup, Google Earth. All worked with the Space Pilot Pro with no trouble. Google Earth was especially fun with this tool. I felt like I was flying over the earth’s surface. Cool.

After installing the 3DxSoftware and going through Configuration Wizard, which was a snap, I went straight to the demo files. The Chicken Demo, the 3D Cube Demo, and the Jet Demo were fun to try out. Lots of bobbing chicken heads, rotating cubes, and wire frame jets to manipulate There is one demo that came with my mouse that is a three dimensional puzzle that I found challenging. The object is to put together a puzzle of a cube. In the window that displays the game there are a number of pieces surrounding a wire frame cube. When you select a piece it is highlighted - then you use the 3D mouse to move the piece into place. When a piece is not selected the 3D mouse lets you navigate around the scene to check our your options. Using this this demo as a practice device it eventually becomes easy to get parts to go exactly where you want them. I got most of the puzzle pieces inside the cube. Unfortunately I didn't have time to finish the puzzle correctly, put I present it here so you can get an idea of the game.

Being a big fan of keyboard shortcuts I was happy to find the 'Intelligent Function Keys' these are 10 programable buttons on the left side of the mouse body. Actually there are 5 dual function keys that access two different commands each. Depending on how long you hold them down one or the other is activated. A short poke and the button’s first command his applied. A longer press and the second command assigned to that button is used. After a while I was able to use these button quite easily. They are large enough and arranged logically. Button 5/10 is in the center of four more buttons spread around it’s four corners labeled 1/5, and 2/7 at the top and 3/8, and 4/9 on the bottom two corners.

At this point I'd like to tell how simple it is to program any button on the mouse that surround the controller. You can't change the one dedicated to the LCD display. By default when using 3ds Max you just press the 'Menu' button on the left below the dual function keys. Or you access it from the Utilities Panel in 3ds Max. This brings up the '3Dx Control Panel' inside of Max. This is where you find a lot of useful controls for the way you want the 3D mouse to behave in the program. At the bottom there is the 'Button Editor...' button. That brings you to large but very intuitive dialogue box laid out with three columns. The first column is a scrolling list labeled 'Command Categories' similar to, but even more extensive than, the drop down list for 'Categories' in the 'Customize User Interface' dialogue box found in Max. The second column lists the command for the chosen category. Then you simply drag the command over to the next column that lists all the available programmable buttons on the 3D mouse and drop it on any button you want there. I didn't need any manual to figure this baby out. I really admire the people who designed both the 3D mouse itself as well as the supporting software that makes it such a powerful, useful device. My hats off to them for all the thought that went into it.

I'd just to go back to the '3Dx Control Panel' and mention to you what may be a very useful feature to some. There are three areas in this dialogue box. The 'Camera/View Movement', the 'Options' and the 'Device Settings'. The one I want to draw your attention to is the Options' section. Here there is an 'Enable Auto Key Animation' check box. By choosing that and then pressing the 'Auto Key' button in 3ds Max all the movements you do with the 3D mouse is recorded in Max, whether it's a camera move or if you use the 3D mouse to move an object around in 3D space. Very nice.

In the interest of being thorough in this review, I'd like to explain a little more of the other two sections here. The 'Camera/View Movement' have a set of two radio buttons that tells the controller how to work in the scene. Move Camera or Move Scene. I found that the Move Scene toggle works best for me. When I pull up on the controller cap I like the scene to move up, when I press down on it I like the scene to go down. Likewise when I move the control to the right I want the object in the viewport move within the VP in the same direction, and when I twist it clockwise the object appears to spin clockwise. With 'Move Camera' selected all this is reversed, as would be expected, when yo think abut it - tell the camera to go up - the scene appears to go down below the camera. The rest of this section deals with the center of rotation (camera/view, focal point, and Scene/object ) which is self explanatory because it's similar to the concept of pivots and transforms. You can also disable rolling here with click in a checkbox.

In the 'Options' section where the 'Enable Auto Key Animation' check box is found we can also 'Lock to 3D View' - this is helpfully if you want to make changes to your model in an orthographic view and be able keep that view intact while moving around your model in a perspective viewport in order to examine your work. the other check book is for allowing object movement with the 3D mouse controller. Instead of moving the view around the scene or object. the selected object is moved with the controler.

The last section is good to pay attention to when you first start to use the 3D mouse. It has controls for sensitivity of transforms and rotation as well as for telling the controller to react only to the dominant axis when you use the control. That way you are less like to move the model or scene in an unintended fashion. The 'Suspend Motion' checkbox is when you don't want to use the controller to do a very precise operation - when the regular mouse and or keyboard is better suited for use.

Symetricaly across from this is on the other side of the controller cap on the mouse’s body is another set of similarly arranged buttons that control different views of your model like top, front, and right view, twisting it 90 defgrees , or two ISO views. I found myself using this set of buttons a lot while modeling to get to the part of the model I wanted to fast.

I liked the way the control fits your hand while giving your arm and wrist the support it needs for long hours at the computer. The angle and contours of the device felt good in my hand. The placement of the buttons were well thought out and easy to reach. I made my test set-up similar to the one shown in the picture and found it very workable. Next I set up the sensitivity of the different motions of the controller cap to the way I like them to respond. I think this is very important to do. This is most likely the step that is skipped over by the people who don’t like this kind of product. After all we all have a different touch when it comes to any kind of computer input device (we’ve all past by an office or classroom and wondered why that guy is banging on the keyboard so loudly – that’s just his ‘touch’)

When building 3D models, you may want to restrict navigation to certain planes or axis. For example, when drawing 2D profiles, it is useful to be able to zoom and pan around but not rotate the view. The threeSpacePilot PRO navigation keys let users change how the controller cap works by restricting navigation to certain axis. The navigation keys status is displayed in the LCD Function Key Applet at the top of the unit.

The Ctrl, Shift, Alt and Esc keys on this 3D mouse aree conviently located above the function keys and they allow users to simultaneously navigate their 3D viewports while accessing special editing capabilities. This reduces the need to move the hand back and forth from 3Dconnexion SpacePilot PRO to the keyboard, resulting in a better workflow.

Another program Max users may find themselves using for both texture creation and post work is Photoshop. Using this mouse in PS C3 was delightful. It was helpful to be able to control the size of the brush with a little turn of the controller cap. Zooming in and out on the picture was just as easy. If you can call something this sophisticated a gadget then let me tell this gadget sped up my Photoshop work in the same way my Wacom tablet did a few years ago. Like the graphics tablet this mouse fits PS like a glove.

Personally, I don’t find the LCD screen at the top of the device a big selling point, or reason to buy this product. But that’s because of what it offers does not really mix with my 3D work. But that is not to say that it is not something you may want. I’m talking apps here. The LCD does show you which button you pressed, and it’s button information is very helpful, again at least to me. I must admit I did enjoy having access to the 3Dconnexion Twitter site where I checked out some tweets.

I'd like to end this review with something I wrote at the beginning because I feel it bares repeating. At the roughly $500 price point this is obviously aimed at the professional 3D/CAD user. For them the price is quickly recovered by the increased productivity. If you spend your days in 3ds Max and are looking for a 3D mouse this is one you should look at. It is really an amazing device that supports way over 100 different apps. The way it works inside the 3ds Max environment makes it hard to think of working in Max without it now that I have had the chance to take it for a test drive.

Minimum System Requirements:

Windows XP Professional SP2 (x86),
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition,
Windows Vista (all editions, x86 and x64)
Linux Redhat Enterprise WS 4,
SuSE Linux 9.3,
Sun Solaris 8 (SPARC),
Sun Solaris 10 (x86)
Microsoft® Outlook® 2003 or later required on host PC
for accessing email, tasks and calendar information on LCD.
USB 1.1