I’m sorry to hear that, can you please elaborate on what annoyances you encounter when updating? So I can attempt to fix it. Especially if it’s coming from the Marketplace.
If you don’t mind please use -SpaceMouse/issues so it can be tracked better.
This has been fixed in version 1.1.4 (-Spac…ases/tag/1.1.4) and currently the update is pending on the Marketplace. Refer to this discussion -SpaceMouse/discussions/36
For further discussion about this plugin I’d encourage everyone to use the Issues for bug reports -Spac…Project/issues
or Discussions for feature requests and related topics -SpaceMouse/discussions
I check those outlets more often and allows me to organize and project-manage better.
I was talking about the GIT version. Just purchased the version on the market and it works like a charm.
There’s a beta release here, not yet released to the Marketplace until I make sure it’s safe. -SpaceMouse/releases/tag/1.2.3 a lot has changed since the last stable release (1.1.4), you can read a summary of that here: -SpaceMouse/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md
Any chance of getting it to work with UE5 , hard to go back to normal navigation after getting used to the 3D mouse 
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In case you’ve missed there’s a pre-built release for UE5 on -SpaceMouse/releases/tag/1.2.4 (direct download) . Code plugins are not yet deployable to UE5 over Marketplace yet.
Hello [my hero]. I’ve got UE4 2.26.2 loaded, bought/installed SpaceNav from Marketplace, it’s working great in Editor, wondering what binding is getting lost when I hit Play. I didn’t script the Blueprint linked to my Default Pawn Class character, but see a bunch of nodes related to MotionController variable, which worked in a previous build and earlier version of SpaceNav. Any thoughts what might be the issue here? Big thanks.
Is the idea of adding the feature as a default engine behavior (and not a peid addon that need to be configured on each projects) is still in mind ?
Cannot comprehend how the 3d Connexion Space Nav is not part of this UE5. All my other 3d programs use it…even Google Earth & Sketch-Up…it does not seem like a big deal to get it running. What will this take?
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Totally agree, I can’t imagine now doing some 3D related job (3D max, Unreal…) without a Spacemouse. Epic listen!
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There’s too few of us, not vocal enough, should we start a campaign ?
I have been using a 3D connexion device for over a decade, works with Cinema4D, lightwave, poser, Shade, Blender, SolidWorks, Fusion 360 Auto cad products. THis would really boost work flow in Unreal!! sure hope they really see this as important. Can’t live without this in so many ways. To all the users of Unreal if you haven’t used a 3D connexion device believe me you are missed a fantastic tool!! I’m going to try this on 4.26, but have been using 4.27 more lately and playing with UE5 Preview, Epic please add this to UE5 before the big release, the serious dev’s and creators will thank you big time.
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Me too…Epic, please, suport 3D Connexion devices!
for people who came in late and wondering why Epic doesn’t support this device, here’s the plugin I’ve been maintaining for over 2 years now: -SpaceMouse and here it is on marketplace: SpaceMouse for Unreal Engine in Code Plugins - UE Marketplace
I’m not Epic but I hope an open-source plugin will do
P.S.: Epic did support actively the development of my plugin and they’re also in close contact with 3DConnexion and help them with their plugin.
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Hi , I’m looking into integrating a new kind of space mouse for UE, cf.
https://martinsundin.wixsite.com/website/videogallery or
https://martinsundin.wixsite.com/website/
You wrote that Epic did support you actively. What I want to do is a bit similar to what you did. With whom did you have contact at Epic?
A product manager from Epic contacted me, not the other way around. By actively I meant they granted me money to improve my plugin and they provided me with some support + they connected me with a 3DConnexion product manager, but of course I was doing 100% of the code.
Are you manufacturing those devices? It would be great to see competition for 3DConnexion. If your device communicates with HID, it is actually simple to implement it in my plugin too. I have a generic HID report to movement interface where I already have two implementations for old space-mice and for new ones. I can add a third for your SpaceCats. For a wider audience I’ve started to make a generic C++ library from the Unreal Plugin so other software shouldn’t be limited to the very opinionated 3DxWare NavLib.
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For the moment I just have very few prototypes of SpaceCat. I’m not producing yet, so there are some costs ahead. It’s very encouraging to hear that Epic contacted you for a more comprehensive plugin than what 3D Connexion provides. 3D Connexion can’t provide plugins with the relevant functionality for all 3D software themselves, so what you do is really a step forwards. For SpaceCat your plugin would need two HID interfaces, one for velocity control (i.e. velocity proportional to handle deflection like Space Mouse) and one for position control (position to position transfer function like the conventional computer mouse). We would need to look a bit closer into how to implement that, but it shouldn’t be a big issue.
I suppose it would be necessary that Epic is active to some extent in my case as well. Do you know who at Epic would be the right person to look into this? I thought SpaceCat could be particularly interesting for Quixel (for positioning their assets with SpaceCat in position control) so I contacted them but I didn’t get any response yet.
What do you think my potential market with UE would be? May I ask how many plugins you sell? (maybe that information is not for the forum, so feel free to write to sundin@gmx.eu)
Do you know if 3DConnexion has a patent maybe on the concept? The market seems suspiciously consisting of a single actor. Even if yours is much better to use, you might end up with some trouble with them, just judging by how similar it looks in the first place. Their product manager told me they have no problem with competition, but their legal department might disagree there. I would love to see alternatives, so I hope I’m crying wolf here and you can proceed to release your SpaceCat.
I already had the plugin when they contacted me. 3DConnexion also have a plugin installed with their driver, both mine and theirs work on very different principles.
Now here’s the thing with that, 3DConnexion actually investing a lot of effort in making their space mice behave the exact same way in all 3D packages. This is really good for the user, but it makes the developer’s life harder, limiting of course how you can use your device.
Basically you give their library a description of your scene and your view and they will give back a new view for you to apply to your viewport next frame, based on the device input of course. They take care of the user interaction based on how the user configured it in their app. This works great for CAD and 3D modeling but works terrible for everything else (like navigating large worlds in Unreal).
Eeeasy
I guess you should demonstrate first a working integration in Unreal for that first.
About 20 purchases a month, so it’s just a minimal side income for me. I don’t know how many people use it from though, where it’s available for free.
The original really relevant patent rights belonged to DLR in Germany, licensed by 3DConnexion and spacecontrol.de (focusing mostly on robotics as far as I know, cf. spacemice.org). These companies split after Logitech bought and merged Labtec and Logicad3D, and discontinued Labtec’s sensor technology. After that there hasn’t been much competition. The original patents have lapsed since long. 3DConnexion has patents on details of how the original concept has developed (introducing LCD screen etc). They also appears to have started a bit with strategic patenting, but the market isn’t big enough for that. My technology is also more than 20 years old. Because the market development has been so slow patents shouldn’t play a big role until it speeds up a bit. The question is if there is room for any competition in the market as it is now. Who would want to invest in all the software support that 3DConnexion has built up over the years? Last time I visited 3DConnexion they gladly told me their turnover as deterrence. We need a bit of disruptive thinking to move forwards.
What 3DConnexion really won’t accept would be if somebody started selling 3D mice mimicking their interface to parasite on their software support. The company Axigalze did such a test connection in their driver and immediately got a letter from LogiCad3D’s legal department. When you downloaded LogiCad3D’s drivers you accepted that you wouldn’t connect any other devices than theirs.
Two remarks:
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It works well as long as you only want to control the viewport with your 3D mouse. As soon as you also want to move objects or edit vertices (which only makes sense in position control which can’t be supported with 3DConnexions devices anyway) things get a bit more complicated.
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Notwithstanding all their software efforts, 3DConnexion has no support for Linux. By the way, the problem of supporting different operating systems must be problem for you as well. Did you consider using Python instead?
I think one can get a fairly good idea what SpaceCat offers from my video. My question is if I can generate enough customer value for UE to motivate my investment, or should I rather go for a deeper implementation allowing more features with e.g. Blender. Is the UE’s real time lighting combined with SpaceCat’s improved viewport navigation and object manipulation motivation enough to move on (or maybe something else in UE)? E.g. I think SpaceCat’s bi-manual interaction with rotations and translations concurrently for both object and viewport manipulation (i.e. 12DOF) is an improvement to what I’ve seen so far. I hope to find somebody at Quixel or Epic to help me answer that question. Maybe you’d know who that could be?
I see, interesting read!
Two people helped me with fixing the Linux support for my plugin on paper: Fixed lint and build errors on Linux by TekuConcept · Pull Request #64 · microdee/UE4-SpaceMouse (.com)
The only platform specific low level code in there are the platform implementations of the HIDAPI library abstraction. Nothing else should be Windows only. I can only test on windows at the moment though.
In the past I wanted to have first class Mac support but I’ve got frustrated with how Apple things work. I have problems specifically with how the space mice handled there as a mouse before 3DConnexion drivers, and then as a locked device owned exclusively by said drivers. HidManager (iirc the name) then denies HID protocol level access to the spacemice from any other software. -SpaceMouse/issues/4#issuecomment-801526344
Python is not great for Unreal Plugin development. Besides you can engineer your C++ code so it can be cross-platform with the least possible approach