Spaceball Console (or f90gl) Interface?

[Intel_C_Intel]

I have a Spaceball 4000 FLX 3-D controller (x,y,z,roll,pitch,& yaw+buttons)which I acquired from Labtec, Inc. The software that shipped with the hardware installed and ran flawlessly... so the unit works well. Now, I want to use the Spaceball 6DOF outputs+buttons inside a CVF6.5a console application - which is the mode in which f90gl OpenGL operates. (I tried using the GLUT 3.7.1 spaceball calls already inside f90gl without success.) [Labtec's (Spacetec's) SDK 1.0 is written in C++ and is targeted to operations inside windows - both of which I know little about. ] Getting the f90gl calls to work would be great; just getting the 6dof signals+buttons to deliver their information in some fortran-callable way would be great.
- Jeff

[Intel_C_Intel]

Compaq sells Labtec's Spaceball as part of Compaq Workstations.
When will CVF6.5a users have access to the capability?

[Steven_L_Intel1]

f90GL is freeware - feel free to contact the author, William Mitchell, about it.

I took a look at the Spacetec SDK - the interface is in C, not C++, and it should be straightforward, though tedious, to write a Fortran translation and interface. This is not the sort of thing we'd provide with CVF.

Steve

[Intel_C_Intel]

Steve - Spaceball calls are a part of OpenGL - which Compaq claims to offer under CVF6. Furthermore, Compaq sells Spaceballs. Furthermore, Spaceballs are available with Compaq's workstations.

The Spaceball interface doesn't have to be through f90gl, just Fortran accessible. (But f90gl does offer a low cost way for Compaq to deliver OpenGL 1.2.1... so why not interface to it?)

My sense to date is that you're OK with CVF users having a 2nd class human computer interface. - Jeff

[Steven_L_Intel1]

CVF doesn't "offer" OpenGL - Windows provides an implementation of OpenGL and CVF provides declarations of interfaces, types and constants that allow you to use that implementation.

Can you identify the standard OpenGL routines used for Spaceball devices?

Steve

[Intel_C_Intel]

Steve -

Reference: The OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT)
Programming Interface
API Version 3
Mark J Kilgard
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
November 13, 1996
p.24 7.10 glutSpaceballMotionFunc
p.25 7.11 glutSpaceballRotateFunc
7.12 glutSpaceballButtonFunc

The document is presently available via:
http://reality.sgi.com/mjk/glut3/glut-3.spec.pdf

From my viewpoint (as a long-time Fortran programmer), the real beauty of the GLUT interface is that it delivers high performance graphics with virtually no MS Windows hassle and mental overhead. A Spaceball interface would add 6DOF manual input to that environment.

- Jeff