Logitech SpacePilot 3D Mouse

I was getting tired of the curvy, ergonomic shape of today’s mice and went looking for some interesting concept. What better place to look for weird concepts than Logitech’s garden? Weird, but pretty handy, I rekon. Check out what they came up with.

Dubbed the SpacePilot 3D Mouse, this interesting piece of hardware reminds me of a gizmo placed in the cockpit of a spaceship (something like a “Push in case of emergency” button that triggers some atomic devastation weapon). Snap out of that! Right, where was I? Yes, this mouse concept integrates the Natural 3D navigation system. We’re talking about some serious sensing stuff here that makes the SpacePilot 3D mouse a virtual extension of your body. It’s also based on the SpaceNavigator concept, presented a while ago here.

Logitech assures us that using the SpacePilot is highly intuitive and totally natural. Push, pull, and rotate the control cap to simultaneously adjust altitude, speed, and direction on the fly—without stopping to press keys or choose commands. Radical flying, Swiss dudes!

What other miracles can it perform? Well, it’s not a divine instrument of justice but it can dynamically map functions to those special keys you see in the upper part, putting the commands you need at your fingertips. Even more so, it’s got an LCD panel, which lets you see which functions are currently assigned to the six programmable soft-buttons at the top of the pad.
Here are some more features:

o 6 degrees-of-freedom optical sensor
o 21 programmable function keys
o Dedicated function keys for view, keyboard modifiers
o Application detection
o Weight: 1.875 lb. (0.85 kg)

Kind of cool, but what about the price? $399.99? C’mon Logitech, what, do you think we are starship captains and money were abolished hundreds of years ago?