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Ever think about why some mice only have one ball? And these days they're lucky if they still have any! A couple of buttons we keep mashing and jerking their tails, no wonder they get pissed sometimes and don't exactly work smoothly all the time. And we never even think to give them the courtesy of cleaning
their one lonely ball (gently!) once in awhile.
Maybe if mice-makers had any sympathy, they would have thought of this (and I wouldn't need to remind them now!) and today we would have the mouse with 2 balls. Just think how much fun they would be. Different variations are possible. The first ball in the normal position in the base, and a second upper trackball. And don't forget the wheel. All kinds of 3-D gaming possibilities could be realized.
Another variation would be with both balls on top where they could be manipulated as dual trackballs with thumb and middle fingers. They could also serve as the buttons when pressed to click.
Of course, a 2 ball mouse would have to kept under strict control at all times, and placed in its cage after you are done at the computer to avoid rampant orgies resulting in hundreds of micro-mice scurrying about in the aftermath.
2-ball mouse
http://acm.org/sigc.../short-talk/sm2.htm
senses orientation [dragice, May 28 2007]
Trackball-on-mouse
http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/
I'm not a Mac user, but they do have some cool hardware [neutrinos_shadow, May 28 2007]
[link]
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Can be simulated by: removing the ball from a mouse and trying to use the two movement-wheels manually. |
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You people still using archaic ball mice... get with the program. We've moved on to optical mice two years ago. |
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Two balls on the bottom of the mouse would allow the mouse to track rotational, in addition to positional, information. |
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This extra degree of motion could allow for all sorts of exciting and novel applications. |
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For example, you could rotate the mouse cursor on the screen. Or you could rotate web pages about the mouse cursor. |
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You really laughed that much? |
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I agree with waugsqueke. Bollocks to going back to the bad ol' days of cleaning the innards, let alone two sets of 'em. |
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You can make a ball mouse with optical innards. For that matter, there are many optical trackballs. What's wrong with this idea? |
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if youre going to give mice two balls you might as well give 'em a dick too |
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Yeah, a mouse with a joystick and two balls at the side. |
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This would be great for games such as first person shooters. You could look and strafe with the same hand. Not even console games have this yet. Then you could have more options with the other hand reload, change weapons, lean, duck, jump, ect. |
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Optical ball mouse? That's just stupid [Madcat]! I didn't think about optical trackballs though. Still, the balls aren't suspended in mid air, I bet you still have to clean them out from time to time. |
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I disagree [SunTzu], I think it would suck if used like that. Most good gamers use pretty much just their fingers to get precise control over their mouses, but that way they would have to use their fingers for strafing (which should be done almost constantly). Also, that pretty much buggers up using the other buttons on your mouse, as your fingers would be taken up, and it would be confusing. |
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I think it's best to have your weapon related keys (primary/alternate fire, zoom, reload, change weapons up/down) mapped to the mouse (handy if you have 5 buttons and a wheel), and all the movement keys to the keyboard, or if you want analogue control, to a joystick. Makes sense. |
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On a practical note, if one ball got stuck on some dust, the auxiliary ball would ensure smooth cursor movement. |
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this could obviously be applied to optical mice by simply adding another "red eye." |
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wtanaka had it right though, this would be sweet because it would allow the mouse to recieve rotational input. it would be essentially adding two more dimensions like another mouse wheel,only it would be controlled by rotating the mouse. could be used for steering in driving games and looking around corners/twisting the torso in first person shooters. |
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[RoboBust] - // Optical ball mouse? That's just stupid //
An optical ball mouse would have the advantage of working on a glass surface. Not that stupid at all. |
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I had my mouse neutered after the outbreak of tiny laptop mice.... Some of them were even grown without tails. Presumably because of inbreeding. |
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I bet it'd even turn out to be useful if you had two cursors on the screen at once. You could click with whichever one happened to be closest to what you were aiming for. <3 |
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The rotation idea is great, in a FPS the typical setup is mouse for tilt & turn, keys for move. If you could build a rocker into the mouse for look up/down you could do all that on the mouse, leaving your other hand free to choose weapons, etc. The rocker could replace the scroll for normal apps so that you still have 2 fingers free for buttons (I've tried to train myself to use index for left-click, middle for scroll, ring for right-click, but it's less natural). |
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It's too complicated to be practical. Just use a Sidewinder or something. |
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