3D input

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In article <39:doelz at urz.unibas.ch> doelz at urz.unibas.ch (Reinhard Doelz) writes:
>>We have a ``Dimension-6'' -- a steering ball that senses rotation and
>>translation in 3 dimensions.
>I'd like to know whether you could give me the adress of the company
>and how you managed to write a driver!

Ok, to get a Dimension-6 I think you should contact:

	CIS Graphik und Bildverarbeitung GmbH
	Helmholtzstrasse 21
	Postfach 10 01 80
	D-4060 Viersen 1
	B. R. D.

	Phone: +49 2162 - 3 00 11
	Telex: 8 518 835 cis d
	Fax: +49 2162 - 142 87

Not too far away from you!  We have an early version of the steering ball,
which has worked flawlessly; looking at the sales glossy, it looks like
they have improved the design considerably, e.g., added a wrist rest.

The ``driver'' is very simple:  The ball is connected to a RS-232 port.
My initialization routine sets up the serial port in ``RAW'' mode, and
the reading routine does the following:

	1.  Send request code to ball.
	2.  Read serial port.
	3.  Compute checksum.
	4.  Return a structure with data.

The version we have now sends the request after reading the port, so
data will (hopefully) be available the next time the reading routine
is called.  I can mail the code to anyone interested.

The flight program requires some minor modifications, but I cannot
recall exactly what.  I could have a look...

Just to widen the discussion on flight: Have you heard any comments from
people with real experience of the planes in flight?  I think the visual
feedback is very powerful, but would a real F-15 pilot be annoyed by
significant differences in plane characteristics?  Philosophical
outgrowth: when modelling a real-world system, how can we (as computer
specialists, not application specialists) determine what are the
significant attributes of the system?  For example, how important is
feedback of G-forces in a flight simulator?

Dag M. Bruck
-- 
Department of Automatic Control		Internet:  dag at control.lth.se
Lund Institute of Technology
P. O. Box 118				Phone:	+46 46-108779
S-221 00 Lund, SWEDEN			Fax:    +46 46-138118