VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri May 27 2011 - 14:54:34 CDT

Hans,
  I have the SpaceNavigator partially working on MacOS X, but this
has been complicated recently by porting to 64-bit MacOS 10.6.x.
The MacOS X SpaceNavigator code is currently disabled in VMD 1.9
because there is still one little bug to fix with queuing of events,
which can cause the SpaceNavigator inputs to lag what you see in the
display by a couple of seconds when running on a machine with slow
graphics (or a huge molecule) that's not able to keep up with the
rate of SpaceNavigator input messages. It's on my TODO list to get
this code debugged, but as I mention, it got more complex now that I've
ported VMD to 64-bit MacOS X, and I'll have to see if they have the
drivers and SpaceNavigator development code working for 64-bit
mode yet or not.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 05:37:51PM +0100, Hans Martin Senn wrote:
> Hi all
>
> There seems to be a tradition of a question on this topic popping up about once a year. So it's my turn now...
>
> I'm on OS X 10.6.7, VMD 1.9, and recently got my hands on a SpaceNavigator 3D mouse. I got the current version (1.6.3) of their proprietary driver/PrefPane software, and the device works fine in other applications.
>
> However, VMD seems to ignore it entirely. From previous posts and a handy tutorial/manual page (http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/minitutorials/spaceball/), I got the impression that VMD should provide (limited) support for SpaceNavigator devices also on OS X. I was expecting at least some sort of acknowledgment on startup that VMD has recognised the device (like "Info) 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator enabled"). But there is absolutely no reaction whatsoever...
>
> Have I missed something? I would be grateful for any suggestions or comments.
>
>
> Thanks
> Hans
> 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
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