My space navigator is slowing down 3ds MAX

[andrewe1]

Hello,

Been using my space navigator for quite a while now and Ive discovered that its making my 3ds max interface REALLY slow... I thought my scenes were just heavy but we have identical machines in the studio, and when I noticed that the same scenes were not as slow on a coworker's workstation, I uninstalled my space navigator because that was the only difference between machines.

And wow...what a difference did it make, here I was blaming 3ds MAX for the sluggishness but it was my space navigator.

This really bums me out because i've been using it for almost 5 years now and I had never had any problem with it.

I was running 3ds max 2014 SP2, windows 8.1, 3dxware 10.1.4. Standard Space Navigator.

PC Specs:

i7 hexa-core
32gb ram
770 GTX

Latest drivers.


Any ideas?

Thanks

[UtaSH]

Hello andrewe1,

would you please check if you see the same delay with our latest driver - 3DxWare 10.2.1. You will find it on our download site.

Do you see a delay with other software, too if you are using the 3D mouse?

Can you see an unusual increase of CPU usage?

[andrewe1]

I saw an improvement with the new driver but after a while it starts slowing down again. I don't see any unsusual CPU activity.

It's really odd and after 2 years of working at my current studio with my own spacenavigator, I have realized that most of the scenes were not unworkable as I previously suspected, it was my spacenavigator all along.

This really bums me out since I can't navigate without my spacenavigator in heavy scenes, I've been using it for almost 5 years and have purchased 3 of them.

I don't use any other 3D software package so I wouldn't be able to tell you if the problem was only in Max.

Another annoying thing that I noticed that only happens with the SpaceNavigator, is that when a scene is really heavy, I will start moving my spacenavigator and around 2-3 seconds later the viewport will start to move. If I move the viewport with my mouse it will start moving instantly.

I appreciate the support but I don't have a lot of time to troubleshoot this, I will just have to learn to navigate without my space navigator.

Regards

[Jonas_Thomas]

I Have the exact same problem as Andrewe1.

As hes says, this is very annoying because if you have a bussiness, you don't have much time to solve this problem.

The latest driver (10.2) also improved things a little bit for me, but the problem is far from gone.

I am working with 3ds Max 2013. When I use the native navigation tools (Alt + Middle mouse button, etc.) there is no problem at all. When I use my Spacemouse Pro, I have a lot of trouble with selecting objects and using the material picking pippet. I also have a lot more lag then normal when navigating in heavy scenes. Sometimes the viewport only moves 4 seconds after I touched the Spacemouse Pro.

Do you have a solution for this please?

Thanks in advance,
Pieter

[Jonas_Thomas]

I installed the older driver (3.18) and the problem stays the same for some reason. Although the problem wasn't there before I upgraded to version 10 of the driver.

[Jonas_Thomas]

No reaction except some spam??

[AlienGhostship]

This precise issue also happens in Maya running three gtx titans with qualified drivers from nvidia. Rotating/Tumbling scenes with upwards of 7 million polygons (smithsonian mri scans and such), the scene is completely fluid in Viewport 2.0 until the space navigator is plugged back in (Using it, my Wacom, or mouse makes no difference). The scene will lag for about 5-7 seconds, then tumble like a champ. The second the space mouse is unplugged, there is absolutely ZERO lag before the scene responds. Once it does in either case, 180+ fps across 3 monitors is like second nature.

One theory I have is that when the space pilot driver/software tries to determine the center of the selected or main object around which to center its rotation, it may not just use Maya's/Max's bounding box as a reference point. Instead it may try to find the geometric center of whatever polys are in the scene, then once found, release control to the user and honor the movement request. The more polys in the scene, the longer it takes to calculate the center, and, thus, the increasing lag before the smooth tumbling resumes. There may be a limit set in the software that tells it to stop trying after a certain threshold is met, which is why the delay is always relatively the same after a couple million polys are thrown at it.

This makes using the navigator pretty much pointless beyond simple single models. The same happens as well with heavy nurbs scenes, yet unplugged, its back to fluid movement. Let the investigation begin!

[AlienGhostship]

[SOLVED]
I am using space pilot pro with 3dxWare 10.2.0 and 3DxWinCore 17.2.0.11011, but the solution presumably works on other current versions:

In the advanced settings (Making sure your upper left corner says 3ds MAX/Maya/etc., not Firefox or something. (it will change as you bring focus to other applications)):
1. Unde Rotation Center , uncheck "auto"
"Hide" rotation center

Maya is back to all its Viewport 2.0 glory!

Please let me know if this solves the MAx issues as well. I will open a separate topic for Maya

[AlienGhostship]

"Hide" rotation center is actually not required. I looke dinto all three settings and they have no effect. Only the "Auto" being unchecked is required to solve the problem.

Thanks!

[lextorlex]

as it was told by Autodesk the problem is that 3dconnexoin searching center of rotation is software based not hardware as I understood and switching "Autocenter" off helps on complex scenes.

[Jonas_Thomas]

Turning off the "auto" center option in the settings certainly didn't help for me when it comes to selecting objects in the secene.