Orbiter tilt keyboard mode
Is it not possible to use keyboard mode for x and y tilt of the orbiter module? I can see a lot of scenarios where this would be a huge help, such as zooming in and out in various directions in music software. Anyone know how to get this working?
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No idea how to do it, but allowing us to turn it into the SHIFT or OPT key would also be a huge help. The tilt isn't intuitive to me, but if I could use it as a SHIFT button, it would give me two dial functions—such as turning the dial for brush size and holding the tilt/SHIFT button while turning for brush feather.
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Hi, today I got my monogram tools and I want to use it in Cubase 11. All works fine, I think it´s like Josiah Spence said, the x and y tilt of the Orbiter module needs the Keyboard mode or at least Left, Right, Up and Down functions with an individual sensitiv to have more options. It´s all very useful but the Orbiter it´s not at the moment. If someone knows more about the integration to Cubase, please let me know.
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Thanks for the feedback guys. I'd like to better understand how you'd expect the keyboard mode implementation to work:
Assuming there's a key assignable to each direction (down, up, left, right), what do you expect to happen if you press off-axis—say up and to the right or down and to the left, for example?
And what do you expect to happen if you hold constant pressure on the disc or vary the pressure—does the key hold as well, does it repeat, etc?
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Andy, thanks for the response.
I'm not really sure how practical it would be to get very granular with in between directions like up/right on the orbiter. It seems like it would make it harder to accurately press a single direction every time. I'd personally be pretty happy with being able to assign buttons to the four cardinal directions. That way I could do things like map them to my arrow keys.
I would think that holding constant pressure would continuously trigger the key. That way, in a simple example, I could use my down arrow key to scroll down through a webpage. Or (ultimate wishlist) it would be cool if users could choose between single keypress and continuous keypress.
Thanks again for your response.
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Thanks Josiah! A lot of your thoughts mirror both our ideas and concerns internally. I agree it's not feasible to distinguish between more than up/down/left/right — this would be the main difference or shortcoming versus an integration where we can get very accurate cartesian or polar readouts from Orbiter.
If treating it like a D-pad or arrow keys is the desired behaviour, that makes it easier to guarantee a good user experience.
For now this is being tracked with a few other feature requests for Orbiter. I'll update the thread here with the opportunity for anyone interested to beta test if this feature gets into development.
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I've made many profiles over the last two weeks, particularly for apps outside the built-in integrations, and this would be my number one feature request.
Arrow keys like a D-pad would be the main use, and they should repeat when held, like dials do.
My argument would be that the orbiter is often used for navigation, but in most apps you have more than one axis. In Logic you need to move forward and back in time, but also up and down tracks. In Mac apps you need to move between tabs or lists, but also up and down them.
I've been trying to do this with 3rd party apps, by converting Joystick or MIDI signals to key presses. I'd even go as far to as request Faders be given a form of Keyboard Mode, simply because it makes any module so versatile.
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This would be a tremendous help.
Use case: For window and desktop navigation/arranging, I use hotkeys to snap windows to different corners/sides, thirds, sixths, etc. If I could use the tilt function of the orbital for this purpose (up = [hotkey], up right = [hotkey], right = [hotkey], etc.), it would be quite convenient.
Regarding earlier, "what about off-axis?" question, I'd just map the areas corresponding to 22.5 degrees off in either direction to constitute hit.
I'm assuming there would nearly never be an "exactly wrong"--exactly 22.5 degrees off--from one of the eight options. If that happens, pick a default and go with it.
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