Anyone able to get the SpaceNavigator working on Windows 11?

[FSync]

Hi all,

I'm at a loss, I've tried everything but ever since upgrading to Windows 11 my mouse has stopped functioning.
What I can see in the feedback meter in the Connexion Trainer is that Pan L/R Zoom and Spin are picked up fine, but Tilt, Roll and Pan U/D are not.

This problem does not rely in the hardware, as it functions just fine on any Windows 10 22H2 setup with the latest driver, or my linux installation I can read out that all the sensors are changing values when moving the mouse around, so it's definitely a driver issue.

Seeing how expensive these mice are and I really want to use mine to record EVE Online videos, I was hoping someone was able to find a workaround considering these mice are now out of support.

I'm not going to shell out another 200 dollars to do this.

[FSync]

Hi all,

I'm at a loss, I've tried everything but ever since upgrading to Windows 11 my mouse has stopped functioning.
What I can see in the feedback meter in the Connexion Trainer is that Pan L/R Zoom and Spin are picked up fine, but Tilt, Roll and Pan U/D are not.

This problem does not rely in the hardware, as it functions just fine on any Windows 10 22H2 setup with the latest driver, or my linux installation I can read out that all the sensors are changing values when moving the mouse around, so it's definitely a driver issue.

Seeing how expensive these mice are and I really want to use mine to record EVE Online videos, I was hoping someone was able to find a workaround considering these mice are now out of support.

I'm not going to shell out another 200 dollars to do this.

Few typo mistakes, but, the problem is clearly not in the hardware as I can rule that out by reading the sensors using Linux, also, what is interesting is that Pan U/D works if I press it all the way down.

I've tried about 20 different driver versions and cleaning up all registry data, %appdata% and %localappdata% folders of 3dx while moving from version to version.

[luping]

Why not downgrade Windows 11 to Windows 10? If your Windows operating system licence is a retail FPP(Full Packaged Product).

[FSync]

Why not downgrade Windows 11 to Windows 10? If your Windows operating system licence is a retail FPP(Full Packaged Product).

Because that recovery option is gone, I'm also dependent on DirectX12 on this machine so downgrading it again to just use 1 USB device is kind of far fetched while the problem is seemingly just the driver.

[luping]

Why not downgrade Windows 11 to Windows 10? If your Windows operating system licence is a retail FPP(Full Packaged Product).

Because that recovery option is gone, I'm also dependent on DirectX12 on this machine so downgrading it again to just use 1 USB device is kind of far fetched while the problem is seemingly just the driver.

Then upgrade to SpaceMouse series.

[luping]

I know lots of people are willing to upgrade software and footing the huge licence fees/subscription fees of the commercial software in the range of thousands of USD/Euros, but are unwilling to pay for the hardware upgrade within the range of 150-300 USD.

I appreciate their value of human service behind the software, but why are people so hesitate to upgrade the hardware to accommodate the latest information technology trends?

[FSync]

I know lots of people are willing to upgrade software and footing the huge licence fees/subscription fees of the commercial software in the range of thousands of USD/Euros, but are unwilling to pay for the hardware upgrade within the range of 150-300 USD.

I appreciate their value of human service behind the software, but why are people so hesitate to upgrade the hardware to accommodate the latest information technology trends?

Because it's a fully functional device, why should I spend another 200 dollars on a mouse that does the exact same thing my unit does and it works?

[luping]

I know lots of people are willing to upgrade software and footing the huge licence fees/subscription fees of the commercial software in the range of thousands of USD/Euros, but are unwilling to pay for the hardware upgrade within the range of 150-300 USD.

I appreciate their value of human service behind the software, but why are people so hesitate to upgrade the hardware to accommodate the latest information technology trends?

Because it's a fully functional device, why should I spend another 200 dollars on a mouse that does the exact same thing my unit does and it works?

You didn't realise that the latest 3DxWare driver is the key to accommodate the latest design/engineering software. A significant part of the product price actually comes from the software driver. SpaceNavigator is end of support.

[FSync]

I know lots of people are willing to upgrade software and footing the huge licence fees/subscription fees of the commercial software in the range of thousands of USD/Euros, but are unwilling to pay for the hardware upgrade within the range of 150-300 USD.

I appreciate their value of human service behind the software, but why are people so hesitate to upgrade the hardware to accommodate the latest information technology trends?

Because it's a fully functional device, why should I spend another 200 dollars on a mouse that does the exact same thing my unit does and it works?

You didn't realise that the latest 3DxWare driver is the key to accommodate the latest design/engineering software. A significant part of the product price actually comes from the software driver. SpaceNavigator is end of support.

It's really terrible business practice to just brick devices that are still perfectly functional, not to mention bad for nature too, this is extremely bad from 3dconnexion to be honest.

I understand that you want to entice people to purchase new hardware, but when the newer hardware has nothing new to offer over the older hardware, just plainly breaking it using the software just to get me to purchase a new one in no way in my eyes will ever be a good deal, because how long will the new mouse be "supported", before being made broken again?

Because I can tell that the latest SDK literally broke all functionality for the SpaceNavigator on all windows versions except windows 10 21H* and above somewhere around november 2021 (wild estimate of that release on the SDK, but that's around the time problems started occuring for me and others using this mice until we upgraded to 21H1), WHY would you hardcode an OS build as a hard requirement for a driver while Windows 10 and Windows 11 are not really that different from one another....

[luping]

Because it's a fully functional device, why should I spend another 200 dollars on a mouse that does the exact same thing my unit does and it works?

You didn't realise that the latest 3DxWare driver is the key to accommodate the latest design/engineering software. A significant part of the product price actually comes from the software driver. SpaceNavigator is end of support.

It's really terrible business practice to just brick devices that are still perfectly functional, not to mention bad for nature too, this is extremely bad from 3dconnexion to be honest.

I understand that you want to entice people to purchase new hardware, but when the newer hardware has nothing new to offer over the older hardware, just plainly breaking it using the software just to get me to purchase a new one in no way in my eyes will ever be a good deal, because how long will the new mouse be "supported", before being made broken again?

Because I can tell that the latest SDK literally broke all functionality for the SpaceNavigator on all windows versions except windows 10 21H* and above somewhere around november 2021 (wild estimate of that release on the SDK, but that's around the time problems started occuring for me and others using this mice until we upgraded to 21H1), WHY would you hardcode an OS build as a hard requirement for a driver while Windows 10 and Windows 11 are not really that different from one another....

Simple reason, people are food-consuming animals, you don't get paid once, eat one meal and live for ever. The SpaceNavigator as a hardware had been supported for more than 14 years. Can you give me another example that a computer peripheral manufacturer can provide device driver support up to more than 10 years after one-time payment?

Full disclosure, I'm an end user like you, not in any way affiliated with 3Dconnexion.

[FSync]

Yes I do actually, plenty.

Logitech to name one of them, Thrustmaster with their flightsticks, any device that's older than 10 years old and still works due to the fact the vendor doesn't break the functionality of the device under the pretense it's no longer supported, all the sensors work, the driver actually works on windows too but is seemingly limited by software.

Or, try looking around on fishing trawlers, most of the devices that were installed on fishing vessels and trawlers during the 90's and 00's still have working drivers made today and that hardware is in some cases 30 years old.

Although I do have to emphasize there's a distinction here, there's absolutely no differences between Windows 10 and 11 in terms of hardware functionality, libraries and translations, the driver that's used in Windows 10 should work just fine in Windows 11 due to the lack of differences in between, but due to the way how the software/drivers are written, it's rendered broken because I am not using the windows version the drivers/software is detecting.

So those older devices may no longer be supported on the fishing trawlers/vessel, the drivers still work on Windows 11 or embedded or linux because there's no limiting factors installed on the drivers/software that comes with them.

[luping]

Yes I do actually, plenty.

Logitech to name one of them, Thrustmaster with their flightsticks, any device that's older than 10 years old and still works due to the fact the vendor doesn't break the functionality of the device under the pretense it's no longer supported, all the sensors work, the driver actually works on windows too but is seemingly limited by software.

Or, try looking around on fishing trawlers, most of the devices that were installed on fishing vessels and trawlers during the 90's and 00's still have working drivers made today and that hardware is in some cases 30 years old.

Although I do have to emphasize there's a distinction here, there's absolutely no differences between Windows 10 and 11 in terms of hardware functionality, libraries and translations, the driver that's used in Windows 10 should work just fine in Windows 11 due to the lack of differences in between, but due to the way how the software/drivers are written, it's rendered broken because I am not using the windows version the drivers/software is detecting.

So those older devices may no longer be supported on the fishing trawlers/vessel, the drivers still work on Windows 11 or embedded or linux because there's no limiting factors installed on the drivers/software that comes with them.

3Dconnexion was previously a subsidiary of Logitech, but not anymore since 2011.

Try to find a Thrustmaster flightstick model that's released more than 10 years ago that have driver(software) for the latest windows 11.

I don't think fishing trawler manufacturer belongs to computer peripheral manufacturers.

[jwick]

The SpaceNavigator fine works on Windows 11.

It is greyed out in the GUI to indicate it is no longer "officially supported". Most importantly it is not tested anymore. Though some of us still use it--in fact I was using one last week. It could break. Fair warning. But it is not currently broken.

And if it was broken, neither the buttons nor the cap would work.

If it starts to become unreliable, from user reports, we may remove it all together. So far that has not happened.

In any case, you should be able to run older driver builds that did support the device for quite some time. We have those archived on our web site.
It is very rare that Microsoft changes the environment so much that old drivers won't run on the new O/S. Microsoft is quite good at that. But they are getting more strict when it comes to kernel drivers. I can see them causing our older drivers to not work. If you are an Apple user, you are probably familiar with this policy. Microsoft is much better about it.

On the other hand, we can't do anything about the range of devices ISVs support. Some ISVs do not use our SDK so they are not insulated from device changes. They only support what they have tested, but the problem tends to be in not supporting new devices, rather than dropping old devices. I forget what EVE Online is using. We were talking to them about updating their support a few months back, which means they are definitely not using the latest SDK.

If EVE Online does not support your device you need to ask them about it.

OTOH, if you have installed and uninstalled 20 times, you may have messed up the installation. One way or the other, that just means some of the wrong files are in place and that can be fixed.

First off, let's establish if the known software is working. Do our demos work? E.g., the jet and cube3d demos which are by default in:
%ProgramFiles%\3Dconnexion\3DxWare\3DxWinCore\jet.exe and Cube3d.exe.

By working, I mean, do you have all 6 DOF and do the buttons bring up our GUI and reset the view.
If only some of that works, more than likely you have some cfg file issues.

Report back on that, please.

While you are at it, run the diagnostic program that collects 3D mouse related information about your system. To do this, hold down the shift key and Right Click on the 3Dx systray icon -> Run Diagnostics. If it says Logging is not enabled (in bright red), exit it and select Write Log file in the 3Dx systray menu, then restart the driver (Windows Start menu). After that, Run Diagnostics again. Check Include Registry entries, and dump files then Collect System Information. This takes a while. When it is done, it will open a Windows Explorer window to the file it created. That file will be big. PM a link to it (OneDriver, etc) to me.

[luping]

As for Apple's hardware & software compatibility practices over the past 10+ years, people at Apple are hell bent on chasing the most profitable customers that have higher willingness to pay and accept market-skimming pricing tactic of their products and subscription fees. In order to maximise the profits by capturing the consumer surplus. As a result of such aggressive profit-chasing approach, third-party software backward compatibility is not a high-priority consideration for Apple when it comes to operating system upgrade.

pricing.jpg (12.58 KiB) Viewed 4612 times

[mhoopes]

The SpaceNavigator is working for me in Windows 11 in the trainer module and elsewhere.