[sldev] adding support for a new input device to the SL viewer

[Maurizio de Pascale]

Hi Ettore,

> I've been working on something like this on and off for a while (whenever I
> have some free time) and currently I have a solution more or less working
> for controlling the avatar, edit mode and flycam for Windows and OS X. Maybe
> we can work together...
>   
That would be a good idea.
I'll be glad to study how you're approaching the problem and work
together to have it done faster and better (hopefully ;) )
just let me know how you would like to proceed.


> I think so - my approach was not to follow the mouse events flow because it
> was just too crazy and platform specific. To get something moving (quick and
> dirty style) I just added a scanDevice() call after scanJoystick, but that's
> bad as well. The best approach I think depends on what kind of device you're
> working on: if you're working with joysticks, 3D mice or other N degrees of
> freedom devices I say LLViewerJoystick is a good class to expand. That's
> what I'm doing right now.
>   

> Hacking the event system with fake mouse events seem the way to Event Hell
> IMO. This is what I did/am doing (I plan on posting some patches in a few
> days):
>
> - As you know the viewer already uses DirectInput on windows for the flycam.
> On OS X I'm using the HID manager, and I believe there is a library on Linux
> to handle HID devices.
> - I developed an open source library to have a cross-platform API to access
> the device. The implementation is DI on Win and HID on OS X, any other
> platforms can be added by just implementing a few functions. This makes
> viewer code unaware of the underlying implementation.
> - I am refactoring the joystick implementation to use the above library.
>
> Sorry if this is too vague - expect a patch soon.
>
> Ettore
>   

I've looked into the LLViewerJoystick class.
However at a first glance it looks like nothing more than another hack
:( mostly forwarding messages to keyboard input handling.
Looking forward to see your patch.



thank you for your help,
Maurizio de Pascale
mdepascale at dii.unisi.it