After I released this plugin to the marketplace it came to my knowledge that 3D connexion also released their own plugin for UE4 editor (dubbed TDxUnrealEditor). I have no affiliation with 3DConnexion and 3DConnexion of course were not involved in any way during the development of this plugin (SpaceMouse for UE). We had no knowledge about each other's work regarding the Unreal Engine implementation.
TDxUnrealEditor is installed automatically when you install or update the official drivers. Functionality-wise it matches this plugin. When both plugins are installed at the same time the behavior is undefined and I cannot guarantee that both would work as expected. Probably the simultaneous presence of both plugin would cause many interaction glitches. Here's how they compare to each-other:
| TDxUnrealEditor | SpaceMouse for UE | |
|---|---|---|
| Open-Source | ❌ 1 | ✔ |
| Unified 3DxWare features/navigation | ✔ 2 | ❌ |
| Custom navigation scheme for Unreal | ❌ | ✔ |
| Control any 3D viewport in the editor 3 | ✔ | ✔ |
| Supports Windows | ✔ | ✔ |
| Supports Linux | ❌ | ✔ |
| Supports Mac | ✔ | ❌ |
| 3DxWare bindings for Unreal | ✔ | ❌ |
| Button binding through editor preferences | ❌ | ✔ |
| Respect and set camera speed of viewport | ❌ | ✔ |
| Automatic camera speed depending on surroundings | ✔ | ❌ |
| Configurable deadzone and reaction curvature | ❌ 4 | ✔ |
| Control Ortho viewports | ❌ 7 | ✔ |
| Piloting scene cameras and actors | ✔ | ✔ |
| Runtime support for packaged games | ❌ | ✔ 6 |
| Orbitting navigation | ✔ | ✔ |
| Flying navigation | ❌ | ✔ |
| Keep Horizon ("Helicopter" mode) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Save views for recalling later | ✔ | ❌ |
Further differences
| TDxUnrealEditor | SpaceMouse for UE |
|---|---|
| Better orbit/object mode implementation | Orbit/object mode is more barebones |
| Configurable via 3DxWare | Configurable from UE4 Editor Preferences |
| Fit selection to viewport is implemented by 3DConnexion | Uses vanilla Unreal fit to viewport function (F key) |
- This is not a complete list, and it might change with updates
- 1 because of this I couldn't compare implementation differences
- 2 This also allows you to sync your preferences accross multiple applications, SpaceMouse for UE obviously cannot provide or read that.
- 3 Including skeletal and static mesh editors, material preview, niagara editors, or really anything which provides a camera to control
- 4 Not to my knowledge anyway.
- 6 Both via Blueprint and the Input framework
- 7 Last time I've seen it didn't do that.