Controlling desktop applications with six degrees of freedom
Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 213.210.42.20]
on May 28, 2008 10:37 PM
This has brought so many memories back for me that I feel I have to reply. Back in the mid 80's we had a couple of apple II 's. We had bought a cad application which we ran on them that used a rather novel interface. It was a grapefruit size ball with a a 'joystick' attached to steer it. You could also twist the end of the joystick to zoom in on your drawing. As far as learning curve was concerned it was about as flat as they come. OK it was only any good for 2D drawings but it did the job.
Disclaimer ... There was a bug that really annoyed me and I managed to sus out how to recreate it . Since their office was a few miles away from us I went over there and proceeded to show them how to recreate it. At that point the boss walked in and asked what we were doing and having been told that it was the '%^$£' bug said 'If anyone can tell me what causes it they'll get a raise'. Unfortunately that rather fell fell flat on it's face - damn they should have employed me !!!!
Anyway from what I remember the thing was so damn fast. Bear in mind that this was running on a 6502 processor with 64k ram (5/12" floppy disks) the twiddly thing with the grapefruit was a great way of doing mouse plus zoom and a couple of extra buttons would grab the extra dimensions as well.
So if anyone wants to patent it then TUFF
But then why develop it );
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Controlling desktop applications with six degrees of freedom
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 213.210.42.20] on May 28, 2008 10:37 PMDisclaimer ... There was a bug that really annoyed me and I managed to sus out how to recreate it . Since their office was a few miles away from us I went over there and proceeded to show them how to recreate it. At that point the boss walked in and asked what we were doing and having been told that it was the '%^$£' bug said 'If anyone can tell me what causes it they'll get a raise'. Unfortunately that rather fell fell flat on it's face - damn they should have employed me !!!!
Anyway from what I remember the thing was so damn fast. Bear in mind that this was running on a 6502 processor with 64k ram (5/12" floppy disks) the twiddly thing with the grapefruit was a great way of doing mouse plus zoom and a couple of extra buttons would grab the extra dimensions as well.
So if anyone wants to patent it then TUFF
But then why develop it );
ttfn
#