[X3D-Public] Common translation tool via X3D PlaneSensor?

[doug sanden]

> 
> it seems many people want some tools to realize common 3D “handles” 
> like known from popular modeling programs (Maya, Blender, …) – here’s 
> an example from the three.js folks: 
> 
> http://mrdoob.github.io/three.js/editor/ 
> 
> Since there have been many requests for such tools in X3DOM, we have 
> started to implement the PointingDeviceSensor component´, as we didn’t 
> want to re-invent the wheel and keep conformant with X3D. 
> 
> 
> 
> However, it turned out that it is quite hard to achieve what we want 
> with the PointingDeviceSensor component, especially for the 
> Transformation tool (please find attached a screenshot, as well as the 
> corresponding X3D file). 
> 
> There are two issues where I would be pleased to hear your opinion: 
> 
> 
> 
> 1.) The axisRotation field lets us track pointer motion mapped onto 
> a different plane than the standard Z=0 plane. This is great to realize 
> the handles: For the X and Y handle, we keep the standard orientation 
> of the virtual sensor plane. For the Z handle, we rotate it. 
> However, since the sensors always fire the _unrotated_ transformations 
> (in the local sensor coordinate system), we need to apply an extra 
> rotation above the target transform in order to translate motion on the 
> Z handle properly. Is this intended? 
> My first impression was that it makes the application actually more 
> complicated. InstantPlayer has changed the behavior towards a rotated 
> output (applying the axisRotation) within the last week (dailybuilds 
> only – this is experimental and can be reverted), while bs contact 
> seems to ignore the axisRotation field (it was added in a later version 
> of the spec?). 
> 

There might be a case for a LineSensor node. For a LineSensor, the axisRotation or axisVector would/could be parallel to the desired axis of motion in the local coordinate system, rather than perpendicular to it as with the PlaneSensor. It would/could still use Z=0 plane internally for sensing motion, but map/project that 2D motion onto the projection of the axisVector, something like a dot product in Z=0 plane between the drag vector and the axisVector. 
Then the conundrum would be when you are looking straight down the axisVector - something that's more intuitively acceptable to users, and like that seen in three.js.
-Doug

> 
> 2.) With the PlaneSensor component, there is an obvious drawback 
> when implementing such axis-aligned transformation handles: 
> Since the sensor tracks motion on a plane, we get in trouble when we 
> have a viewing direction that is perpendicular to the plane normal. For 
> the attached example, you can see the problem if you look into the 
> direction of the x-Axis and trigger the y-Axis’ handle – in that case, 
> the viewing direction will be perpendicular to the Z=0 plane used by 
> the PlaneSensor, and you will get random transformation results. 
> 
> 
> 
> Especially the second point seems to be caused by us using the 
> PlaneSensor for things for which it was not originally intended. 
> 
> However, I wasn’t able to find any other X3D-conformant way to declare 
> such common translation handles. Do you have any idea how X3D could 
> provide something like that? Is there maybe already a proposal for X3D 
> 4.0, which solves this problem? 
>