Chrome Smooth Scrolling

[Peter V]

Hi All,

I've been a Space mouse user for a little over a year, and I love it. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, without it I would physically not be able to do my work. I easily would recommend it to any 3D designer. My only regret is that I didn't get the Enterprise version right away .

I've recently tried using my Space mouse Pro Wireless in Google Chrome for scrolling, as after a full day of online research, my regular mouse wrist was starting to get painful.

I got it to work but the scrolling works is pretty "Chunky". What I mean by that is that there is a certain dead zone where there will be no scrolling, then at a certain activation point, a number of lines will scroll. The number is related to the "Choose how many lines to scroll each time"-setting in the Windows 10 Mouse setting panel, soI can set the lines to scroll to a lower number. But that will make scrolling a lot slower. It will also affect scrolling with the regular mouse.
This is a very different feel than, for example, using the Space Mouse in Rhino or AutoCAD. Which subjectively I prefer a lot more

Is this the 'chunky' behavior intended? Or is there a way to set Space Mouse scrolling in chrome to be much more like like in Rhino or AutoCAD:
Smooth scrolling, depending on how far the Space Mouse is activated in one of the 6 dimensions of movement?

Best,
Peter

[jwick]

Hi Peter,

You can scale the 3D mouse axis in our GUI when Chrome is in focus to make it scroll faster.
If the Speed slider on the main page doesn't make it go fast enough, there's an additional slider on the Advanced Settings page which will further scale it.

[Peter V]

Hi jwick,

Good tip,
When i set the Scroll settings in windows to scroll 1 line at a time, and increase the speed in the 3Dconnexion settings, I get a smooth scroll that does feel like it's accelerating some with increased pitch of the control knob.

It does mean the regular mouse scroll is very slow, is there a way that could make both work at a reasonable speed?

Best

[jwick]

The problem is that n-lines per tick is an operating system setting. It isn't per device. Possibly your 2D mouse also has a way of scaling up.

You can adjust the 3D mouse quite a bit, deadzone, acceleration ramp, linear scaling, but it can't control the OS mousewheel behavior.

[Peter V]

Thanks jwick that's very helpful.

- I tried with registry key updates, but those require a user sign in/out, so that's not really an option.
- my mouse software (Logitech G Suite) doesn't have the settings, so that one is out.

so far I'm managing with having the Mouse settings window in the background on a separate window, but it's not ideal.

I guess my next best option is to find a shortcut to change the values on the OS side, and switch them on the fly when i switch between devices.

I will post here when I find something, but if people have suggestions I'll gladly take them

[Peter V]

I see, Thanks for the help jwick.

i've been trying to see if there is a quick way to adjust the scroll speed in Windows 10, but I couldn't find any.
A registry update with a shortcut requires a user login/logout, which is not practical to change speeds on the fly.

At this point I just have the scroll-settings window open in the background, which is doable but not ideal.

just out of interest, how do you change deadzone, acceleration ramp and linear scaling for the 3D mouse? in my 3D connexion settings I only have speed up or down.

Best

[jwick]

You get no help from the GUI, but you can dig into your Chrome.xml file.

Copy the <Settings> element from AppDefCfg_S80.xml:
<ResponseCurve> is the acceleration 1.0 is linear, 2.0 is quadratic etc.

You can modify the Device entries to add Input.Deadband and Output.Scale:

Code: Select all

      <AxisBank Default="true">
        <ID>Default</ID>
        <Name>STR_DEFAULT_BANK</Name>
        <Axis>
          <Enabled>true</Enabled>
          <Input>
            <ActionID>HIDMultiAxis_Rx</ActionID>
            <Min>-512</Min>
            <Max>511</Max>
            <Deadband>50</Deadband>
          </Input>
          <Output>
            <ActionID>HIDMouse_Wheel</ActionID>
            <Scale>5</Scale>
          </Output>
        </Axis>
      </AxisBank>

[Phil999]

thank you for the tip. Smooth scrolling with 3Dx devices and the OS wheel settings has always been a bit tricky.

[GzarJH]

I found that I have a similar problem, and wish the spacemouse would smooth scroll websites...The only workaround that I use is to rather turn to the CADMouse and use the dedicated middle button (click one or hold down) and then move the mouse up or down to scroll...saves the finger on the scroll wheel.

[luping]

I found that I have a similar problem, and wish the spacemouse would smooth scroll websites...The only workaround that I use is to rather turn to the CADMouse and use the dedicated middle button (click one or hold down) and then move the mouse up or down to scroll...saves the finger on the scroll wheel.

Try Microsoft Edge for smooth scrolling, much better than Chrome.

[mhoopes]

In MS Edge (Chromium), here's what's gotten me the best results. Note that I have a 2160px vres; not sure if that matters, but the extension below has a lot of knobs to turn, so I'm sure any res will have good options.

• Disable Smooth Scrolling flag: edge://flags/

• Add Chrome Extension Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... jnkfcgfkhb

• Configure the extension Mouse Wheel settings: Step Size = 200, Acceleration Sensitivity = 100

When using the extension, the Windows scroll settings don't seem to affect Edge. Tweaking the Deadband in AppData\Roaming\3Dconnexion\3DxWare\Cfg\msedge.xml (when adding jwick's code) also seems to have no discernable effect when using the extension.

I still get a little "jumpiness" at minimum Rx input; don't know if that's from my personal visual motor feedback hysteresis, or the device control.

[mhoopes]

The "jumpiness" is a factor of the controls - when I slowed down the overall scale in msedge.xml, I saw that behavior at max Rx input.

[mhoopes]

One last comment for today: the "jumpiness" can be adjusted by the extension Smoothness(Forepart). So far, this is working well.