I hate mice, but for me, track balls are less accurate. I find drag & drop to be more error prone.
I’d try a vertical mouse, but I’m concerned about thumb RSI, and my thumb is even less accurate for fine motor control than my index and middle fingers.
What I want is an accurate eye tracker; then I could bind keys for left and right click and never have to take my hands off the keyboard.
An eye tracker would be interesting, but the tech would also get badly misused.
It already is. The main purveyor of eye tracking tech markets it mainly for use in ways that are barely ethical, although they are careful to couch it as “research.”
But, being able to abuse a tool doesn’t make the tool bad. I still want a good one that doesn’t require me too wear special equipment, but gives pixel-level accuracy.
If my trackball starts being wonky, it usually means it’s time to clean it. Otherwise, I find it much less prone to move during clicks and leaving it in neutral is also much much easier.
An eye tracker sounds nice, but there are times when I want my cursor to be in another place while I am looking somewhere else.
On the other hand, if I could pair it with my multi device keyboard’s device selector, it would be great.
The way I’ve thought about this, there is no cursor unless (V is viewpoint), is modal like Helix, Kakoune, or vim:
Mod+k1 - move cursor to V
Mod+k2 - click at V
Mod+k3 - click & switch to hold mode
Mod+k4 - position cursor at V, release
Mod+k5 - abort
Variations of this for other buttons.
The issue is drawing; our eyes jump around, and move in jerks; however, tracking software I’m sure smooths those out. You could have a mode that really slows down and smooths out the tracking in a spline.
I’m not thinking so much about drawing and artists, here. The best tool for drawing is, IME, a special tool like the ReMarkable 2 or Pro. I’m purely concerned about my main use case - selecting crap on a screen.
This is exactly my vision. The problems, for the past decade, seem to be getting
accuracy
affordable
unobtrusive
You can pick one. Almost nothing is affordable. Accuracy seems to be directly related to how constraining it is - you need special glasses with embedded cameras, or an actual headrest like at a optometrist’s, or some sort of unwieldy headgear… and prices seem to be proportional to accuracy regardless of the technology. And, in ten years, I’ve only noticed a single company that’s working on this, with some low-res half-hearted entries for gaming, like Microsoft.
I would accept a bottom bar emitter with top bar cameras. I only care about the monitor screen(s) use case. It has to cost less than a couple thousand dollars, and it has to have, like, 4-6 pixel accuracy, for positioning a cursor accurately on one side of an “i” or the other in a text editor. This may be asking for the moon, but it anyone knows of a product, please… let me know.
The 800 lb gorilla in the market is Tobii, and they’re squarely aimed at researchers (who can afford expensive equipment) and the physically handicapped (who have few choices in computer solutions). It’s really hard to get either accuracy metrics or prices out of Tobii, but I figure this is one of those “if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it” situations.
I hate mice, but for me, track balls are less accurate. I find drag & drop to be more error prone.
I’d try a vertical mouse, but I’m concerned about thumb RSI, and my thumb is even less accurate for fine motor control than my index and middle fingers.
What I want is an accurate eye tracker; then I could bind keys for left and right click and never have to take my hands off the keyboard.
I love trackballs but agree that they can be a little fiddly at times. It’s just that mice are worse for me personally.
An eye tracker would be interesting, but the tech would also get badly misused.
It already is. The main purveyor of eye tracking tech markets it mainly for use in ways that are barely ethical, although they are careful to couch it as “research.”
But, being able to abuse a tool doesn’t make the tool bad. I still want a good one that doesn’t require me too wear special equipment, but gives pixel-level accuracy.
If my trackball starts being wonky, it usually means it’s time to clean it. Otherwise, I find it much less prone to move during clicks and leaving it in neutral is also much much easier.
An eye tracker sounds nice, but there are times when I want my cursor to be in another place while I am looking somewhere else.
On the other hand, if I could pair it with my multi device keyboard’s device selector, it would be great.
The way I’ve thought about this, there is no cursor unless (V is viewpoint), is modal like Helix, Kakoune, or vim:
Variations of this for other buttons.
The issue is drawing; our eyes jump around, and move in jerks; however, tracking software I’m sure smooths those out. You could have a mode that really slows down and smooths out the tracking in a spline.
I’m not thinking so much about drawing and artists, here. The best tool for drawing is, IME, a special tool like the ReMarkable 2 or Pro. I’m purely concerned about my main use case - selecting crap on a screen.
That seems nice. And then you can make the pointer more like a reticle.
Yeah, you’d definitely need extra stuff for drawing.
This is exactly my vision. The problems, for the past decade, seem to be getting
You can pick one. Almost nothing is affordable. Accuracy seems to be directly related to how constraining it is - you need special glasses with embedded cameras, or an actual headrest like at a optometrist’s, or some sort of unwieldy headgear… and prices seem to be proportional to accuracy regardless of the technology. And, in ten years, I’ve only noticed a single company that’s working on this, with some low-res half-hearted entries for gaming, like Microsoft.
I would accept a bottom bar emitter with top bar cameras. I only care about the monitor screen(s) use case. It has to cost less than a couple thousand dollars, and it has to have, like, 4-6 pixel accuracy, for positioning a cursor accurately on one side of an “i” or the other in a text editor. This may be asking for the moon, but it anyone knows of a product, please… let me know.
The 800 lb gorilla in the market is Tobii, and they’re squarely aimed at researchers (who can afford expensive equipment) and the physically handicapped (who have few choices in computer solutions). It’s really hard to get either accuracy metrics or prices out of Tobii, but I figure this is one of those “if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it” situations.