Oooh, this looks like the place to post an idea I’ve been playing with:

How many of you have seen an Orb gaming controller, or the somewhat more expensive pro verion, a SpaceWare Animotion controller for 3D animation software?

These devices are based on force-sensor technology, the technology behind those IntelliTouch “pencil eraser tip” pointer controls on IBM ThinkPad notebook PCs, and behind the tips of pressure- and tilt-responsive graphic tablet pen stylii such as are used with Wacom, CalComp, etc. graphics tablets, etc. They respond to the amount and direction of the force applied to them, without themselves moving (or moving only very slightly). It has been proven that human hand/finger muscles can exert far more precise and accurate control using force-sensors than with moving devices such as joysticks, and without tiring as rapidly.

The SpaceWare Animotion version, the one I’m most familiar with (being among other things a 3D animator by trade), is in the form of a hard rubber ball about 3" in diameter mounted on a desktop mount such that most of the ball is above the surface of the mounter, so that you can “grab” the ball with your fingers going well under the middle of the ball. The ball itself is attached to one or more force sensors (not sure how many are needed for it to do what it does). You can, with just one hand, exert any linear force on it in any direction (in any simultaneous combination of forward/back, left/right, and up/down), and also exert any twisting/rotational force in any simultaneous combination of axes (roll, pitch, yaw), all simultaneously and varying as you see fit! In the 3D programs, this would allow you to, for instance, animate a falling leaf, both its motion path and its swaying rotation, all by hand, all in real-time! Sure beats manual keyframing!

Now, imagine one of these babies on the left side of a musical keyboard! You could have very accurate, very responsive, and non-tiring simultaneous real-time control of up to six continuous controllers (if default is in the middle of their range — e. g. Pitch Bend), or up to twelve (six being controlled at any one time) of controls defaulting to the low end of their range (e. g. Modulation, AfterTouch, Expression, etc.)! Imagine how useful this would be on, say, a PSR9000 Pro with its PLG slot equipped with a VL or DX or AN card, being able to tweak up to a dozen of the extremely powerful expressive CCs, up to six simultaneously, on such PLG in real-time with one hand that doesn’t move from (or on) the controller! This would sure beat the socks off of Roland’s D-Beam!

For even more expressive power and control, the fact that most of us have five fingers on our left hands could be used by embedding up to five of those “pencil eraser tip” type force-sensor controls in the ball so that they fall about where our fingertips (and thumbtip) would be: each one of those could do an additional two axes of control, for up to four additional controllers that default to 0, or two that default to their midrange! Each!!

Of course, if your left hand is busy using the ball controller, you’d probably have to sequence your chords ahead of time. But ’cha can’t have everything&elipsis;