Configuring a space mouse was way harder than it should have been. Here is the way to reproduce a "working" version.
Ignore the proprietary driver at 3dconnexion and the open source ones from spacenav. They are useful for custom programs, but useless for paraview which currently uses VRPN to lower their maintenance.
Warning: VRPN does not work if you have one of the drivers running at the same time.
Install and configure VRPN
- Download a version. I just built the head of the git repository.
- Configure the build with
-DVRPN_USE_HID=True
, build and install. - Copy the
vrpn_minimal.cfg
to/usr/local/etc/vrpn.cfg
. The one that comes with the source code has lots more options to enable/disable, but one line is sufficient. sudo /usr/local/bin/vrpn_server -f /usr/local/etc/vrpn.cfg
Profit!
- Download and build ParaView. This time the extra flags are
-DPARAVIEW_BUILD_PLUGIN_VRPlugin=True
and-DPARAVIEW_USE_VRPN=True
. Adding-DPARAVIEW_AUTOLOAD_PLUGIN_VRPlugin=True
is probably a good idea too. - Startup paraview and follow these instructions. There is tiny bit of information missing:
- When you create the
VR Connection
you need to specifyid=0
andname=channels
- When you add and
Interaction
the order of the drop-downs isRenderView1
,OrientationAxesInteractivity
, andSpace Navigator Grab
. A configured version of the state for paraview v5.0 isspacenave_vr_state.pvvr
. - Don't forget to press the
Start
button. Also, paraview doesn't like to shutdown unless you pressStop
.
There is also an abstraction called VRUI that ParaView can interact with. I have not tried that.
I only got this working on RHEL with a plain old SpaceMouse. The instructions I wrote are for the case of when I format my hard drive I could reproduce it. It's been a while, but I believe I (mostly) used the instructions in VRPN, but the important bits are in step 2 above (put the config file in a good location, and
sudo
to start the server). I would guess that mac would be similar, but can't help with windows.