Motion-Blurred Mouse Pointers? 30
Dean Siren asks: "Now that GUIs are getting prettier, will they also motion blur the mouse cursor? With most monitors running at 70-90 Hz, the mouse looks a tad jumpy if you follow it with your eyes. Such a feature would make the mouse appear smooth even below 70 Hz, and with all the CPU and GPU clock cycles to spare on most PCs, should not slow the system much. Does such a feature exist in any GUI?" I doubt such a feature exists currently, but do you think something like this would be useful?
High Res Instability (Score:1)
Antialiasing and motion blur (Score:1)
As to the sampling rate, the PS/2 mouse protocol has a hard upper limit at 40 samples per second - set by the protocol used on the wire. Polling /dev/mouse more often is therefore pointless.
I don't know about USB mice though.
USB mice are super-smooth (Score:1)
I highly recommend it. It was even auto-detected and configured by my Mandrake 7.2 install!
Re:Just increase the sample rate... (Score:1)
Re:How is this helpful? (Score:1)
I agree, it's not *true* motion blur, it's just how motion blur has generally been done in games, etc.
Re:test (Score:1)
Care about freedom?
Re:test (Score:1)
Care about freedom?
Re:How is this helpful? (Score:1)
What I envision is that when you move the mouse quickly across the screen, instead of seeing 6 simultaneous pointer images in a neat line, the input handler (Windows mouse driver) would blur the image from the last displayed position to the current one. This would be good, IMHO, because something I see at college once in a while is the mouse run up to full speed... when you expect it to go 1/4 of the way across the screen and it slams into the opposite wall, a blur would give a clue as to where the pointer went.
The blur itself need be nothing fancy... just take the average color of the trailing two mouse pixels and smack down a couple polygons of that color from current to last position.
-- LoonXTall
Re:Windows has this feature (Score:1)
Only if you've got an Intellimouse, or maybe a version of Windoze later than 95a. I don't know what the mouse panel looks like in Win98---that box dual-boots to Linux, so it has Logitech's control panel for the 3-button mouse.
-- LoonXTall
Re:How is this helpful? (Score:1)
Leave X out of this. In Windoze (which has more than 5% of the desktop market, in case you didn't notice), there is one "speed" setting; you adjust a slider on the fast-slow continuum. Pointer velocity is directly proportional to mouse velocity, which is rather "intuitive" (having been that way on the Amiga as well, where I learned to mouse, and on Macs, which my school used.)
Anyway, motion-blur would be useful in a public lab where anyone (or, depending on security, anyone with poledit.exe on a floppy) can speed up the mouse to maximum. Our visual hardware creates motion blurs in meatspace, and interprets them better (faster) than 6 separate images of something (mouse trails or high-speed mouse motion). This would make it easier to interpret where the pointer is when the mouse/pointer speed ratio is wrong, as you would see it race across the screen instead of hopping.
-- LoonXTall
Re:How is this helpful? (Score:1)
Don't jump to unfounded conclusions. ... My logitech mouse driver...
Ah. That's not the _vanilla_ mouse control panel. If we're considering nonstandard controls, the MS Intellipoint panel has an actual blur checkbox, but I've never noticed the difference at 60 Hz refresh (which is all I can test it on, since it's in a public lab).
A far as problems on public computers, the next user can simply change the mouse settings to something more reasonable. I just don't see this as a problem that needs solving.
Er... my dad spent _hours_ trying to change the _player names_ in MS Hearts... what are his chances of finding/changing the mouse panel? "My Computer" and "Start" aren't very intuitive places to look.
Besides, what about the raw coolness factor of a motion blur?
-- LoonXTall
already exists (Score:1)
Re:How is this helpful? (Score:1)
Re:How is this helpful? (Score:1)
A far as problems on public computers, the next user can simply change the mouse settings to something more reasonable. I just don't see this as a problem that needs solving.
Sounds useful, but not that important (Score:1)
BUT this isn't a pressing problem for any GUI that I use. Windows has some huge problems, and Gnome needs work too (although they are both very fine products). If this was a simple fix, then I say go for it, knock yourself out if you are a programmer on a GUI, but, if this would take valuable resources away from bug fixes and more important feature requests, then don't do it.
Re:test (Score:1)
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derek brooks
Re:test (Score:1)
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derek brooks
if IIIII were you. (Score:1)
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derek brooks
test (Score:1)
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derek brooks
Windows has this feature (Score:2)
so um... (Score:2)
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
Don't do this under VMware (Score:2)
When I switched to a serial mouse performance was fine, which I put down to the mouse sampling rate being lower. This may have been fixed, but I expect the load would be higher.
In fact, you'd probably get best performance from using serial for the virtual and physical mice.
Re:How is this helpful? (Score:2)
see: http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/graphics/x
for a better description.
Latency, Aliasing, and Blur (Score:2)
Now, I don't know of any studies off-hand about rapid objects moving across the screen (though it seems like a good one for someone to do - hmmmm), but it seems reasonable that the Nyquist freq for things like mouse cursor movement is at least correlated to speed. Which means, the bigger the screen, the faster the acceleration, the more you would need to sample. If you've got a 1000 pixel screen, and acceleration is set to get the mouse from one side to the other in one second, then a sampling rate of 100Hz produces 10 pixel jumps. As mouse cursors are often smaller than 10 pixels (e.g., the I beam), I would not be surprised if people perceived discrete jumps.
This is why you need real motion blur. Real motion blur would treat the samples as points on a presumed-continuous curve. Once you've reconstructed the curve, then go back and take the section of the curve covered by the time interval you are drawing, and draw a polygon covering the entire range of motion. Enhancements would include fades along the length, beyond the range covered by the sample interview. This is computationally a pain in the ass.
The problem is complicated by latency - the more time you spend computing this stuff, the older the mouse position is when you finally draw it. Get too far behind (typically 100 milliseconds) and the user no longer feels in control.
For some related stuff in 3D, focusing on how these problems get even uglier in a distributed environment, see m y paper [brown.edu] on using blur and transparency to give the user added information about latency and such like.
Motion blur is more realistic (Score:2)
In theory, the pixels between the old and new position need a proportion of the mouse image also applied to them, somewhat like a "speed blur". This need only be a subtle amount. This effect is in no way less correct than discrete jumps, and if anything it's technically a more correct representation of what's going on with mouse movement.
Simply increasing the mouse sampling rate will not cure the problem. You would need an infinite rate to fill all positions between jumps (although practically it'd probably be 1000Hz or something).
win2k (Score:2)
How is this helpful? (Score:2)
I'm not sure how a motion blur would affect the "jumpyness" of the cursor.
Are you actually asking for sub-pixel accuracy? That would make more sense in terms of jumpyness. I mean, right now, I can see the cursor "jump" from one pixel to the next, but I find this useful, I often select things by pixel (in graphics editing, etc.).
So, if you want a true motion blur, you basically want mouse trails. Maybe you are asking for one thing (sub-pixel accuracy) and calling it something else.
In any case, I can't see how this would be anything more than another cutesy feature like animated windows and menus. I personally hate these things, and always turn them off. I don't want to wait for my menu to pop out or my window to minimize. It's a waste of my time. I feel lie this would be as well. Even if it's only taking a tiny bit of my resources, I don't want it.
Solution can be a problem. (Score:2)
Serial vs anything else (Score:3)
If you switch to using a PS/2 or USB mouse, you'll be far, far better off. They sample at 25Hz or up (and I gather you can configure the rate, too). The first time you try one you'll be astounded at how smooth it is, and shortly after you'll never be able to use a serial mouse again without wincing.
Just increase the sample rate... (Score:3)