4 ms·

why does it feel so much worse when you don't drag from the middle and instead from the e.g right side? It feels stuck and sometimes it snaps. If the point from

why does it feel so much worse when you don't drag from the middle and instead from the e.g right side? It feels stuck and sometimes it snaps. If the point from which rotations are calculated changes then I think it should somehow be visually obvious what this means for the rotation and be shown on the screen

romwell 2y ago
Thanks for the feedback! Imagine you're spinning a globe with your finger. Obviously not much would happen if you poked outside the globe. And while your finger is on the globe, you can't point at the sky (unless you finger is, well, stuck to the globe while you're rotating it - pointing to the sky would let go of the globe). This is what you're doing here, and absolutely, I should add a visual representation for the globe and where you're poking it when you hold the mouse button down. You feel "stuck" when the cursor attempts to leave the globe. And moving the cursor around that boundary is how you rotate around the axis facing poking from the screen. This behavior can be changed/customized to an extent, I picked what felt good to me here.
- nox101 2y ago
  > Imagine you're spinning a globe with your finger. Obviously not much would happen if you poked outside the globe. And this is why arcball is not a good solution. I'm not putting my finger on a global. I'm spinning a world, terrain, airplane, etc. There's no "ball" so arc"ball" doesn't fit. It gets worse. What if there is a ball but it's say 4 cm across on my screen. When I rotate with "arcball" am I touch that ball or some imaginary ball much larger than the visible ball. This problem exists all over depending on the thing I'm trying to rotate, arcball won't match.
  - romwell 2y ago
    > I'm spinning a world [...] there's no "ball" I don't think I understand you, unless you insist that the Earth is flat :) >It gets worse. What if there is a ball but it's say 4 cm across on my screen. Then you zoom in / adjust gizmo size / etc. Surely any interface can be made unusable if you shrink it down far enough. The arcball gizmo is usually visible; I was too lazy to paint a nice one in a bare-bones demo.
crote 2y ago
Oooh, yeah. This really bothered me too! Its behaviour is really intuitive when you strat with a drag from the middle, but even starting on the edge of the pink cube really makes it freak out. This essentially forces you to start from the middle, but then you don't seem to be able to do any rotation around the axis pointing out of the screen. To do that rotation your best bet is to click and drag around an inscribed circle - but that in turn means you can't rotate around any other axis in the same movement without running into freak-out behaviour. And anything between those two extremes doesn't really behave intuitively.
- romwell 2y ago
  Well, FWIW I increased the radius of the gizmo to 1/3 from 1/4, and made it visible. I'm still not handling drags outside the canvas area - those will cause jumps, but everything else should feel better.
edflsafoiewq 2y ago
You probably clicked outside the ball. You can't see it, but the radius is 1/4 of the canvas width.

romwell 2y ago

Thanks for the feedback! Imagine you're spinning a globe with your finger. Obviously not much would happen if you poked outside the globe. And while your finger is on the globe, you can't point at the sky (unless you finger is, well, stuck to the globe while you're rotating it - pointing to the sky would let go of the globe). This is what you're doing here, and absolutely, I should add a visual representation for the globe and where you're poking it when you hold the mouse button down. You feel "stuck" when the cursor attempts to leave the globe. And moving the cursor around that boundary is how you rotate around the axis facing poking from the screen. This behavior can be changed/customized to an extent, I picked what felt good to me here.

nox101 2y ago
> Imagine you're spinning a globe with your finger. Obviously not much would happen if you poked outside the globe. And this is why arcball is not a good solution. I'm not putting my finger on a global. I'm spinning a world, terrain, airplane, etc. There's no "ball" so arc"ball" doesn't fit. It gets worse. What if there is a ball but it's say 4 cm across on my screen. When I rotate with "arcball" am I touch that ball or some imaginary ball much larger than the visible ball. This problem exists all over depending on the thing I'm trying to rotate, arcball won't match.
- romwell 2y ago
  > I'm spinning a world [...] there's no "ball" I don't think I understand you, unless you insist that the Earth is flat :) >It gets worse. What if there is a ball but it's say 4 cm across on my screen. Then you zoom in / adjust gizmo size / etc. Surely any interface can be made unusable if you shrink it down far enough. The arcball gizmo is usually visible; I was too lazy to paint a nice one in a bare-bones demo.

crote 2y ago

Oooh, yeah. This really bothered me too! Its behaviour is really intuitive when you strat with a drag from the middle, but even starting on the edge of the pink cube really makes it freak out. This essentially forces you to start from the middle, but then you don't seem to be able to do any rotation around the axis pointing out of the screen. To do that rotation your best bet is to click and drag around an inscribed circle - but that in turn means you can't rotate around any other axis in the same movement without running into freak-out behaviour. And anything between those two extremes doesn't really behave intuitively.

romwell 2y ago
Well, FWIW I increased the radius of the gizmo to 1/3 from 1/4, and made it visible. I'm still not handling drags outside the canvas area - those will cause jumps, but everything else should feel better.

edflsafoiewq 2y ago

You probably clicked outside the ball. You can't see it, but the radius is 1/4 of the canvas width.