Three Simple SL Client Changes to Increase Retention

I have been advocating a change to the SL Client for years now that did not make it into the 2.0 client, but needs to be made if Linden Labs is serious about increasing retention.  I am fairly certain that these changed would increase retention a minimum of 10%.  Here are the changes:

1. The middle mouse button (or clicking the scroll wheel) should work the same way as ctrl+alt+left click. In other words, clicking the middle mouse button will cause your camera to focus on what you are clicking on. Holding the middle mouse button and moving the mouse will swivel your camera around.
2. Holding the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously = walk (or fly) forward, and moving mouse left and right = steering.
3. Double click auto pilot should be turned on by default minus the silly “auto pilot cancelled” messages. Not only did they fail to make the easiest means of navigation a default feature, but they buried the ability to turn it on so deep into the interface it is damn near impossible to find anymore.

Now I know that some of you veteran SL users will wonder what is so special about these changes, that the fuctionality that is described already exists with different mouse and keyboard combinations.  Anyone who thinks that has apparently not played any other 3D video games on the PC.

In most all PC based 3D games including MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, the use of the mouse in movement is close to what is described: the right mouse button can be used to swivel the camera around,  holding both left and mouse moves you forward, and clicking the ground ahead of you and your character walks or runs there.

The keyboard and mouse is not designed for 3D avatar navigation, but through trial and error, game makers have figured out a compromise way to handle it, and these input methods have become standardized throughout the gaming world… except in SL.

Now not all of this can be done in SL, partly because of the nature of SL.  In MMORPGs you point and click on monsters to attack, or on ground to move to.  In SL you point and click on objects to perform any number of interactions. Like other games the left mouse performs the default action, but unlike other games, right clicking on the mouse brings up a menu of other options you can perform on the object.  Most MMORPGs use the right to rotate the camera, but those that don’t use the right button  instead use the center button or hold down the scroll wheel to rotate the camera.

SL does it the hard way, you have to hold ctrl-alt and hold the left button to rotate the camera, thus requiring two hands. You can click on your avatar and rotate too but the avatar moves with you, so if you are trying to rotate the camera to see your avatar face on, the two hand method is your only choice.  This is very annoying and increases the learning curve for players who come from gaming.

Al SL has to do to correct this situation is make the middle mouse button the equivalent of holding ctrl-alt-and the left button.  The only obstacle that might get in the way is that the middle mouse is already assigned to be the “enable microphone to talk” button by default, a function that can easily be reassigned.

Another mouse shortcut that comes in really handy in MMORPGs is the ability th hold both buttons down to move forward, and while doing this you can also steer your avatar.  It makes it possible to play games mostly using only the mouse.  This function is not that important for SL, but once you are accustomed to it, you really miss it in SL.  It would take some coding to implement, but should not be that difficult to write.

The third missing element is already written.  Double click auto pilot is a feature that can be enabled in the 2.0 client alrady, but it is deeply buried.  To enable it, press ctrl-alt-shift-D to enable the advanced menu (formerly debug), then click advanced, then UI, then DoubleClickAutoPilot.  Once enabled, you can double click on any empty space or horizontal face of an object, and your avatar will automatically walk to the spot.  It is buried in the menu because it is a little buggy, but it is not buggy enough to exclude in my opinion.  In my opinion it should be enabled by default.  Again gamers are used to clicking on the ground to move their avatars.  In SL, single clicking the ground tells you about the land, you can also right click on land and sit down there.  Double clicking land instead of sigle clicking is fairly straight forward.  Ideally it should be single click auto pilot and double click land info.

Now autopiloting in an MMORPG where terrains and paths never change is a lot easier than in SL where they change all the time,  It could b e supplemented with doubleclick teleport, a feature implemented in the Emerald browser, when the path is blocked or impassible.

New Nvidia Driver adds 3D glasses support

If you have an Nvidia card designed for DirectX 10 (8800 or better Windows XP or Vista), and you update to the latest drivers released June 19,2009, you might find something new in the NVIDEA Command Center: Stereoscopic 3D glasses support.

I have not seen this feature mentioned anywhere, not even on Nvidea’s own site. Probably because it is in the experimental stage. Older drivers supported it, but you had to hack your registry to enable it. Now you can enable it with a couple of clicks.

There are two methods that are supported. The first requires a special 3D ready monitor with two video inputs, a set of glasses that opens and closes shutters on either eye and an IR device that triggers the glasses, at a cost of $600 or so. Eventually this will come down, but it costs to be on the cutting edge.

The other method is to use a pair of red/cyan glasses, (called anaglyph 3D, or Nvidea calls it 3D Discover) which if you don’t have a pair lying around, you can get four pairs packaged in the DVD of Spy Kids 3D which you could probably find on sale for $10 or less. I have a few different kinds lying around and the ones from Spy Kids work the best.

The stereoscopic effect can be enabled or disabled with a simple key press (ctrl-t is default but you can set it to whatever you want) and works with any Direct 3D game with mixed results.

It does not work with OpenGL — Sorry Second Life and Google Earth fans!

I tried it in Guild Wars, and the stereoscopic 3D looked fine, but the text labels on the screen were not in 3D and looked wrong. Also much of the text is in bright primary colors that changes with the red/cyan glasses. I am sure there are other games in the same boat, so the system is not perfect.

I tried stereoscopic mode in other direct 3D games. Tomb Raider Underworld looks fantastic, race games are amazing fun in anaglyph 3D, even The Sims 2 and 3 work fine. Because all of this is handled at the driver level, no game has to be rewritten to work, it just has to use Direct 3D. Older games work wonderfully well without having to be rewritten.

There is a certain fatigue factor after long use, so you can’t play this way for hours, but it is a fun way to rediscover many of your older games, and enjoy them again. It also adds a new feature to PC gaming you can’t get on consoles.

Apparently once they get the bugs worked out, NVidea will be promoting it more and will be selling special anaglyph glasses anywhere video cards are sold.

A Quick Peek at Free Realms

The new 3D virtual world Free Realms by Sony, launches today! So I thought I’d post a review.

Free Realms is sort of a hybrid program. It is kind of like a virtual world, kind of like an MMORPG, and kind of like an online game portal.  “Kind of like” gets used a lot in explaining Free Realms. For example, “the graphics are kind of like World of Warcraft”.

It probably has the distinction of being the first MMORPG for all ages.  Really young kids (below 8 yrs) might find many activities too hard but others just right, Adults might find it a little too cutesy, but it manages to balance things enough so that parents and children could play together and both find it entertaining.

Free Realms has multiple activities. Some include “Brawling” (like a MMORPG style melee fighting), racing, demolition derby, “cooking” (simple 2D flash games for kids),  raising a dog or cat, playing board games (chess checkers, etc), and playing collectible card games. There are other types of activities available if you sign up for the full version of the game.

I tried this out in beta, but even then it already seemed like a full complete game. I did not really run into many bugs or horrible lag. Some players did however. It seems the better your computer hardware, the fewer problems you should have. A good video card seems to be especially important.

I found the game entertaining enough to play and the world is big enough for quite a few hours of fun, but it seems that as soon as you get far enough into an activity, your progress is hindered unless you sign up for the full version ($4.95 a month) . The “Free” part of “Free Realms” only goes so far it seems.

For example, I got into a battle with a “boss” and managed to defeat him by using some health drinks. After the battle, I looked to see if I could get some more health drinks, and it turns out the “gold” I have been collecting cannot be used for more health, only “Station Currency” which requires credit card purchase

Nevertheless, there is enough to do in the free parts to know whether or not you enjoy it enough to become a full member.  It is an entertaining enough program, and I suspect there may be quite a few players who do sign up.

As a “virtual world” it is very basic. You can customize your avatar, though there are not a huge number of choices. Each activity has a different outfit, which you can customize as you advance in level, or purchase optional items. The video demos I see indicate that home and yard decoration will be an option, but did not see anything like that in the free version. There are no player submissions. Chatting is limited for child safety reasons.

The MMORPG part is also somewhat basic. Even in the free game, you get better armor and weapons as you level. Being kid friendly, there is no “killing” or “dying”, it is all about knocking out the other guy before you get knocked out.  If you get knocked out 5 times in a mission, you lose the mission.  Most missions involve talking to NPC’s which launch individual “instanced” missions.  I have yet to see any team missions.

Racing felt a lot like one of those Nintendo kart racing games, where running over things gives you additional abilities like turbo boost, etc. Click to start a race, and others may join you, or more likely you will face a bunch of computer drivers.

It is definitely worth trying out if your computer can handle it.

Memo to devs: 3DVWs do NOT belong in BROWSERS!

This is part 2 of an ongoing series about what works and does not work in 3D Virtual Worlds (3DVWs) in hopes of educating anyone thinking of building their own. In part 1, I discussed the importance of avatars. For part 2, I want to discuss the silly but strangely popular idea that if we could access a 3DVW from a web browser it would be a huge hit, and finally bring 3DVW programs to the masses.

The primary attraction for even attempting to create a 3DVW that runs in a web browser is from looking at all the success the 2D virtual worlds have been getting.  Conventional wisdom says that the primary obstacle standing in the way of 3D virtual worlds having the same level of success is that people do not like downloading and installing a separate program just to play.

There is some truth to that, studies have shown that only one out of 10 new visitors to a 3DVW website will bother to download the program. So requiring a download apparently drops your audience 90% right off the bat.

I believe this is only an obstacle initially. People will download a good program that promises to benefit them, especially if it is free and comes from a reputable source.

From what I have seen so far, and from what I have heard is in the pipeline, there is no real point in trying to run a 3D virtual world in a browser, its bad conventional wisdom based on faulty logic.

There may be some good reasons to have 3D displays embedded in a web page, if nothing else its an attention grabbing novelty.  But 3D multiplayer worlds with chatting and building capabilities do not fit into the web page model the same way they do with 2D virtual worlds.

The state of the art

A quick note on the state of the art (in case you do not follow my blog): There are a few 3DVWs that can run in a browser already. Among the ones currently available are Exit Reality, Just Leap In, and Vivaty. All three still require either a small download or a browser plug-in to work. I have tried all three and they all feel like novelties rather than full fledged 3DVWs. If the primary goal is to add a 3rd dimension to the 2D Virtual World, none of these come close.

There is a largely unrecognized truth in all this: 3D virtual worlds are not 2D virtual worlds with depth. The two attract different kinds of players. Play style and activities are of a very different nature. 2D is much more social, 3D is a more creative outlet. 2D is “point and click” just like the web. 3D is played like a video game.

Once you accept this truth, it logically follows that a 3D virtual world designed to play in a web browser will never work. Playing inside a web browser is too limiting, too simplistic.

A good example is Google Lively. It was probably the greatest 3D virtual world ever to reside in a web browser. It was a failure, because people found it too limiting. Outside of chatting, the two primary activities in 3DVWs is building stuff in 3D, customizing your environment.  Lively provided a simple but inflexible interface for building, and no real ways to customize. Exploring what other people have built was not that interesting due to limited content. Every room was variation of the same 5 or 6 rooms. Lively’s legacy is that it mostly killed the dream of browser based 3D worlds.

A downloadable full fledged client may limit your audience, but it makes your world much more flexible, usable, and customizable.

Alternate approach #1: Put the client in a browser

Since it seems that every browser based 3DVW requires a download anyways, maybe the approach is to embed a mini client in a browser.  This is the approach being used by Pelican Crossing and 3di. This allows you to create an embed on a web site that opens the Second Life client inside the browser, the user of the embed is taken to a location specified by the embed.

The primary question that comes to mind is “why?” Linking to Second Life locations is already possible via SLURL. There.com and other 3DVWs have ways of creating links to specific locations as well. A client embed looks cool, but it is limiting the size to a part of a web page (which you can click to full screen) but does not add functionality to the client. Multiple embeds on a page are unworkable unless you have a really good computer.

Now what would be cool is a way to convert Second Life places to VRML and embed them so you can show non SL users your creations. People would not have to have an SL account to see it, nor have a full SL client, just some generic VRML viewer. This is actually possible. There are tools available to convert SL objects to XML files for backup purposes, and these could easily be converted to VRML files.  The biggest obstacle to this idea is the lack of wide access for SL to XML converters. This is a very sticky issue (maybe you have heard of the copybot controversy?).  Still it is a cool idea.

Bottom line it is easier to add a browser to a client, than a client to a browser.

Alternate approach #2: Accessing 3DVRs via interactive streaming video (Cloud gaming)

Cloud gaming via embedded video is coming very soon. At least two companies OnLive and Gaikai are developing interactive web video technology allowing you to play (nearly) lag free video games remotely through streaming video.

Most online games works like this:
1. your computer or console “renders” your environment from game data stored on your computer.
2. you take action
3. action is sent to gaming server
4. gaming server decides outcome which is sent back to your computer
5. go to step 1.

“Cloud Gaming” works like this:
1. Your computer gets a streaming video feed from an online server.
2. you take action
3. action is sent to gaming server
4. gaming server decides outcome, renders the outcome from game data stored on the server, and converts it to streaming video
5. go to step 1.

That seems like an awful lot of work for the game server to handle, but if they can get it to work, there is no real need for powerful gaming computers to use the service. Theoretically, I could play Crysis in high definition detail on my ipod. There would be no need to get the latest hardware, or constantly updating your console.

Sounds pretty good, but unfortunately it could not work with Second Life as it is currently designed, because there is no way the service could handle all the custom textures. Handling the bandwidth of the streaming video is one thing, handling the bandwidth with the Second Life Servers as well would be a networking mess.

Just because SL will not work in a cloud computing environment does not mean another 3DVW could not.  If models and texture data were hosted on the same physical network as the rendering, it would eliminate the extra bandwidth. The 3DVW would have to work via submissions like There.com does, rather than instant feedback like SL. Building could be done with offline tools, then submitted. Since the whole technology of “Cloud Gaming” is in its infancy, I do not expect to see a 3DVW built with it for at least another 5 years.

Sounds difficult, but that may be the only way to get a usable 3DVW to play in a web browser.

Really, I don’t see the point.

Google Earth 5 is Awesome!

I recently launched Google Earth only to be told I need to upgrade to version 5, so I did. I reported in December that the southern half of Manhattan was converted to 3D. Well playing with version 5 a ton of other cities have been converted to 3D as well. Check out the above Washington DC. Still a lot of missing texture maps, but a lot of buildings appear in exquisite detail.  The columns of the Capital building are 3D columns.

Many other cities are in 3D. I checked out the Las Vegas Strip in 3D, and my hometown of Phoenix (pictured above) looks great.

Google is promoting the ocean detail available in the new version, but another less promoted (probably because it is still a bit buggy) is LIVE WEATHER MAPS!

Yes, with the Weather layer enabled, not only can you see global temperatures, but clouds overhead from the most recent weather sattelites. As you can tell from the first two screenshots, it is a clear day in Washington DC and it happens to be partly cludy in Phoenix today.

Those familiar with the book Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson know that he describes a piece of software similar to Google Earth where the user can even track the movements of an approaching fleet of ships. Google Earth is not quite that sophisticated yet, but it is quickly getting there.

Fun With Virtual World Cartography

OK, where to start. Let me start with where the screenshot was taken. It was taken at Rumsey Maps, which includes a huge 3D map of Yosemite Valley, as well as a bunch of other cool examples of cartography.

Maybe I should now start at the beginning. I was researching for an upcoming blog article and came across a fact that Second Life has over 1800 square kilometers in land. (I originally thought it was around 1000, but I was looking at old statistics). There are however reports that the amount of land is dropping rapidly because of the change in open space policy.

Anyways, I got into yet another discussion about the difference between There.com and Second Life, and this land issue came up. There.com actually resides on a 3D planet sized sphere slightly smaller than planet earth. It is possibly the largest 3D object in virtual space navigable by virtual avatars. It has even been circumnavigated, taking weeks to complete. The question always comes up, how much actual land is there in There’s globe? Turns out the answer is 630 square kilometers, plus or minus 20, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The next question usually is, how does all this compare to the real world?

It was about then that I discovered this entertaining video called A Geophysical Survey of World of Warcraft

Now this video awoken the geek in me, and all this talk about the relative land mass in There.com and Second Life, and that got me started on a pretty cool project.

The end result being this map. A scale map of Second Life, There, World of Warcraft, and Oahu:

Click picture for full size version. Its about a megabyte big, so feel free to copy and distribute it elsewhere so as not to kill my bandwidth. The relative scale is 14 pixels = 1km.

According to Linden Labs figures, the total land in Second Life is just over 1,800 sq. km. Oahu is around 1,500 sq km. So when you measure all the Second Life regions,  they a little bit bigger than Oahu.

To figure out There.com land area, I took the scale map of There, selected all the water and made it black, then inverted the selection and made the land white. I went around the map making sure I did not have any stray odd pixels to mess up the calculation. I also remeasured known distances to make sure my scale was correct. I then used a histogram function to find out how many pixels were black and how many were white. Of the 14,256,222 pixels, 122,883 were white. Divide that by 196 (14×14) = 627 km sq. There is stuff in There missing from the map (Saja, Snowman Island, and Coke Island), plus possible errors to my methodology, hence the plus or minus 20 km sq. part.

In scaling all the maps, I used multiple methods as well. The second life client, used to tell you the total distance from where you are to your destination, it doesn’t anymore. But, I found a way around that by finding the “grid position” of the region I am on in the debug tools then going to a region on the far left and the far right and finding how many regions across it is and multiplying by 256 to get meters, and divide 1000 to get kilometers. The regions charted at slurl.com (which is the map I used) is 186km across and 110km top to bottom.

I did the scale work in There years ago on my web site. Two prominent dots on the map, the white mountain on Comet and the tiny island of Egypt are 225 km apart.

WoW was based on work done on this link, confirmed in the video above.

Then I needed a real world island to use as a comparison. Ireland was way too big when I scaled it, Manhattan was way too small (about the same size as WoW). The big island of Hawaii fit but covered most of the map, and then decided to use the most populated and more famous island of Oahu.

And there you have a method, as accurate as I can make it, of comparing the relative size of three prominent 3D worlds with the real world.

Dark Times for 3DVWs Part 1: Worlds Collide With NCSoft

This is the first of three “opinion” pieces I am writing about the future of 3D Virtual Worlds. I believe that ultimately the future looks bright, but we are at the beginning of a long overdue “shake up” that should finally separate myth from reality. Lets start with legal realities:

So one of the oldest but least successful MMO providers Worlds.com filed for patents of their 3D online technology back in 1995 and were awarded the patent finally in 2007. The two patents obtained were Scalable virtual world chat client-server system, and System and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space

During those intervening 12 years a multi billion dollar MMO industry has grown. Some of it based around the same technology patented by Worlds.com.

So earlier this year I saw an announcement that Worlds.com has retained a major patent rights law firm to represent them, and on Christmas Eve they filed their first suit against NCSoft, founded in 1997 two years after the original patent application.

According to Wired, NCSoft’s official statement in response: “We can’t comment on potential litigation except to say that NCsoft takes all legal action seriously — even if the company believes a lawsuit has no merit. We intend to defend ourselves vigorously.” (emphasis mine because it is funny)

I have not studied the patents, and do not know how broad or narrow they are or what they actually cover. I do know that in worlds.com programs, you pre-load all the shapes, textures, etc. and there is virtually no way to do custom textures and buildings etc. MMORPGs work just like worlds.com programs, hence they seem to be the first target.

NCSoft is the largest MMORPG producer in the world (yes bigger than Blizzard), producing Guild Wars, City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage 2, and the upcoming Aion. They were part of a landmark suit before. Marvel sued them over the ability of players in City of Heroes to create custom heroes that look like Marvel heroes. The suit ended amicably, with CoH game runners creating “Generic Heroes” of characters that potentially violate copyright.

Worlds.com lawsuit has far reaching implications. If Worlds.com wins, they could theoretically go after every producer of 3D online games, potentially killing the whole industry. You can bet there is a lot of support building for NCSoft to do everything in their power to invalidate the patents.

Two things can kill a patent: Prior art, and obviousness. The other defense is that the burden of proof of patent violation is on the patent holder.

Prior art can come in the form of older patents. Like this one. Or it could come in the form of 3D online games that existed prior to Worlds.com development. Obviousness is also an obstacle as the whole concept of 3D online games is a combination of Habitat (a 2D virtual world built by Lucasarts in 1985) and Doom (a 3D game that included multiplayer network play in 1993).

Then there is the burden of proof problem. The patents were based on technology developed in 1995. The technology around online game playing has changed radically in the 14 years since, and there are many ways to do the same thing. In a future posting I plan to compare the underlying structure of Second Life, There.com, Guild Wars, and World of Warcraft. The technology behind these four games is so radically different there is no way they can be compared as using the same technology except in a “look and feel” way.

While I do not know the ins and outs of patent law I do know technology. The whole paradigm of online game play changed radically in 1997 with Diablo. Blizzard offered online play for the successful desktop game and ran into a huge problem: cheaters.

Before 1997, the only thing online programs dealt with was communicating between players was position, movement, and chat. Everything else was handled by the player’s own computer. People soon figured out that by modding the game on their hard drive, they could do things that other players without the hacks could not.

The fix implemented by every online game that followed was for the game servers to keep track of everything. Hit a beast with a sword, the damage is calculated on the game server and the info is relayed to your computer to display the damage. Swing the sword again and another exchange between your game and the game servers is made. This keeps the game fair for all players. It also requires a very different conrol structure for online play, different than anything worlds.com has ever developed.

This lawsuit is do or die for worlds.com. Once the star of online gaming they have watched dozens of upstarts fly right past them. They have announced two new virtual world projects, but I bet they do not have the money to actually do them. They are counting on winning lawsuits to get them the capital to go on. Losing is likely a death sentence.

Good riddance I say.

I believe that all software patents are an abomination and should end!! Copyrights are fine, if another company is using art or code without permission, go after them. But NCSoft has built all of their games from the ground up. They are mirroring what everyone else is doing true, but they are doing their own thing. For Worlds.com to profit off the work of others because it is “similar” to what they did first, seems to me to be immoral.

But since when has law been equivalent to morality?

A trio of articles about legalities of virtual worlds:
The Rocky Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds, Part 1: Trademarks
The Rocky Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds, Part 2: Patents
The Rocky Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds, Part 3: Copyrights

Note: While Red Light Center was built by worlds.com, it is a seperate entity, and not part of the litigation.

Update: Case Has Been Settled!

A review of the SpaceNavigator in SL

With the soon to be released version 1.20 client of Second Life, they will be adding support for 3D mouse navigation, specifically the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator. Here is the official info as well as video tutorials.

It looked pretty cool, but was not sure about spending $70 for another input device. I checked out their site, and what sold me was the fact that it works on many 3D programs, including a few others I use.

So is it worth it? It depends entirely on what you want it for. Some things it excels, some things it fails. Here’s a breakdown of the three uses in Second Life:

Flycam – This is a new feature to the 1.20 client that as far as I know is only available to SpaceNavigator owners. It is freaking COOL! Basically, in flycam mode, you leave your avatar behind and use the SpaceNavigator to move your camera.

You move the camera in all directions, and go through anything. It blows throught the 40 meter limit of the normal client camera, allowing you to look at stuff three servers away, especially if you have the view distance turned up.

If you are interested in making Machinima in Second Life, flycam is the perfect dolly/crane camera utility. Flying through scenery, is tons of fun.

NOTE: You cannot spy on other avatar’s actions from a long distance, so no you cant use this for voyeurism. It does improve exploring of scenic builds (my main activity) 100%. Grade: A+

Avatar Motion – The default action with the SpaceNavigator is to move your avatar in a joystick motion. Not just walking around, but also pull up to fly, and push down to land. It also controls the avatar camera to a certain extent.

This last part can be annoying, the first "customization" I did to the controls was to set the "panning" value to 0.0. Other than making "strafing" easier (walking sideways), and the fact you can navigate one handed, there is no real advantages to SpaceNavigator avatar motion over mouse and keyboard motion controls. Grade: B

Building – if you edit an object, you can manipulate the object in 3D with the SpaceNavigator. Other than showing off to friends how you can move and rotate objects at the same time, this feature is completely useless. Trying to build in SL with SpaceNavigator is an excercise in frustration, and makes building in There seem easy in comparison.

I think it would help if the 3D motion were limited to the build mode, like only rotate in rotate mode, etc., but it wouldn’t help that much. Stick to the mouse for building in SL. Grade: F

Bottom line, the selling point for me may be the selling point for you: How many other programs do you use that can benefit from the SpaceNavigator? Many CAD programs work with it, so 3D artists may find it indespensible.

Navigating through Google Earth 4 with it is totally awesome. Try a "fly through" of the Grand Canyon for example.

I also find it useful for Poser 7, though it only controls the camera. I keep the main camera locked, but when posing hands or face cameras, the SpaceNavigator makes things easier.

Anyways thats my review, hope you find it useful to decide if its worth $70-80 to get one, or not. Its definitely not for everybody, but some will enjoy the hell out of it.