Using a Spaceball or Space Mouse
with Open Inventor

The SoXtSpaceball (or SoWinSpaceball or SoQtSpaceball) class can be used to manage events generated by the 3Dconnexion Space Mouse and Space Ball, including motion (SoMotion3Event) and button press or release (SoSpaceballButtonEvent) events.

There are example programs showing how to use this type of device:
    $OIVHOME/src/Inventor/examples/Features/Magellan (for SoWin and SoXt)
    $OIVHOME/src/Inventor/examples/Qt/QtSpaceMouse (for SoQt)

The Space Mouse supports two kind of drivers:

• ClientMessage driver: a deamon program generates user events that can be caught by the application. This driver is available for Windows and UNIX platforms. This mode is supported by Open Inventor 5.0. If you have not already installed the driver, you will need to do so before using the Space Mouse or Space Ball with Open Inventor 5.0.
  
  
• [UNIX only] Xinput extension: a binary module is added to the X11 server. This module is loaded by the server. It generates Xinput extension events similar to normal XEvents. This is the way Open inventor worked prior to version 5.0. This mode is no longer supported.

See the 3Dconnexion website (www.3Dconnexion.com) for further information.