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VisionTek XG6/ Sandio 3D

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Shmak:
So I picked up a XG6 about a year ago, on a quest to navigate fps games with the mouse alone. I knew going in the the whole "freedom of 3D" would be worthless, but I was drawn by the amazing amount of buttons. Needless to say it didn't really work out.

http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/screen_shot_images/120/204033120_002.jpg

Yes, it has three 4-way hat switches. However, The software is crap, the position of the switches make for hand cramps, and the pinky finger hat... come on. Anyway, I was thinking of busting it open and trying to make the thumb hat into an 8-way.

Anyone else have one of these lying around? Possibly disassembled?

Or does anyone know enough about crappy hat switches to say whether this little project is possible?

Shmak:
I looked into this a bit more: I took apart the mouse and inspected the internals. It seems that the major drawback is the fact that each stick has a cheapo alps 4 way switch. My hope is to replace the thumb switch with a nice 8 way by connecting the extra outputs to the pinky switch inputs for a total of 8. The other thing that might be possible is keeping the pinky intact and making the diagonals simply trigger both of the directions it divides. I need to bust out the soldering iron to investigate further.

FKSSR:
I've never seen that device before, but I'd rather use a keyboard and mouse than one device that tries to do it all.

Keep us updated on your progress, though!

Shmak:
Its all about the finger efficiency man. If can can use my right thumb and my wrist to navigate a 3D space instead of the additional 3+ fingers from the left hand, suddenly complex maneuvers that require more fingers from the keyboard hand become far less difficult. Not to mention one handed gaming?

My ideal device would be a ergonomic mouse (like the Evoluent) that has a pressure sensitive stick (like an analog stick from the ps2 controller or xbox) for the thumb and a nice weighty click scroll wheel for the middle finger, along with 2 or 3 standard buttons of course. Is that too much to ask? lol

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