SpaceNavigator: Beta Driver for OS X
The SpaceNavigator from 3Dconnexion is a tres cool USB peripheral for navigating in 3 dimensions in certain 3D software. Until now the SpaceNavigtor was Windows only, but 3Dconnexion has announced beta OS X support at Macworld.
Unfortunately, the SpaceNavigtor will only initially support "Google SketchUp 6.0, Autodesk® Maya® 7 and above (with MelScripts available from 3Dconnexion) and auto•des•sys form.Z© 6.1 (must have 3DxMacWare plus the downloadable plug-in from the form.Z Web site). Additional Mac-based 3D applications will be added as the beta program progresses." What is striking is what is missing from that list: the just out of beta, Google Earth 4. As you can see from the Windows videos, with the SpaceNavigtor you can smoothly and continuously "fly" around, instead of grabbing and zooming with a mouse. Hopefully, support will be coming to Google Earth in the near future, so I guess I'll have to wait until then.
The SpaceNavigtor comes in two versions: one at $99 for commercial use and one at $59 for non-commercial use.
[Edit: Fixed spelling of '3Dconnexion']
