a second mouse to be able to use 2 hands

Started by Bruno Kestemont

Bruno Kestemont Lv 1

The paper here

http://www.fdg2014.org/papers/fdg2014_wip_09.pdf

and the discussion here

https://fold.it/portal/node/2003201 (on virtual reality)

inspired me an intermediate proposal in order to deal with the frustration not to be able to use my 2 hands in order to design the protein: adding a second mouse for the left hand.

THE difficult moves that I cannot do with the available tools (freezing, drag and drop, bands etc) are the following:

-Case 1: the end of a sheet is not straight. I can freeze the adjacent segment then try to alternatively push or pull, turning, push and pull etc. Or cut, steer, uncut (but then i'll have to solve a lot of ideality problems). With a left mouse, I could freeze the adjacent segment, then turn everything to front to me and "tweak" using my 2 hands/mouse's, like with a steering wheel. Of course, it's not 3D like in VR, but with the other available tools, may be it could help?

-Case 2: a band in space to a guide (ED). With current tools, I have to put a band in space, then turn the protein and adjust the band progressively, in a minimum of 3 moves (in x, y, z directions). Doing this, I often have problems like the band sticking to another segment, or not seeing well when another part of the protein comes in front of my view. With a left mouse, I could keep and move the end of the band with one mouse and turn the protein with the second one.

-Case 3: binding 2 sheets or segments. Now I can band them (freeze what I want to keep fixed) and wiggle all (or wiggle backbone with low CI). With 2 mouse's, I could simply freeze what I don't want to move, then move the two sides with my 2 hands.

Alternatives

Alternatives might be possible (all suggestions are welcome):

-a key to "lock" the first mouse position ? Imagine I "lock" the first mouse moving the band, and I use the mouse again to turn the protein). Then when done I can "unlock" my first mouse position with the same key.

AminoZuur1 Lv 1

Hallo,
I am an mechanical engineer. The designer program I use is Inventor. The additional hardware I use is a spacemouse/3d mouse. I think it is very useful playing Foldit because Foldit is very similar to the way I work with Inventor. When I am playing Foldit my left hand is searching my spacemouse :)

Best regards,

AminoZuur1

Formula350 Lv 1

You already CAN lock a segment in space! (Can also can pull Frozen sections/segments in Selection Interface, so long as both ends of what is selected, are not frozen.)

To lock segments, you need to enable "Show backbone pin" in the View Options menu.
Then find the Blue-sphere (by default, located on the Final residue of your sequence chain), click and drag it to the segment you want to not move, and release the click. Then right-click to "Lock" the pin.

Now that segment is Pinned to that point in space and no amount of bands can move it.

CAVEATS - There are times when it won't quite do what one wants, and can be a little frustrating. (as far as I know, these are unique to Selection Interface, though)
Some examples:
-The Pin is 100% ignored if it is on a segment within a Selection. So wiggling and pulling are not impacted as one might want, even when the pin is locked. Jflat told me that this is because it actually wasn't designed for this, which was unfortunate for me to hear heh
-On puzzles, like the Linker, where our protein is in the middle, that causes there to be no usable Backbone Pin :\ The only way to gain one is by cutting the HIGHEST numbered residue away from the Locked segments. There is a limit of 1 pin per sequence, and placing a cut artificially creates another 'chain', thereby granting a temporary pin.
-The Pin while UNlocked will function sort of light a boat anchor that is not heavy enough to anchor the boat. In that the segment it is applied to can still move in space, but everything pivots around it. This can be problematic when the View option is disabled and you're trying to pull on a section and it won't move like you expect! lol That's because the pin is there. Using Selection will sort of make it ignore the pin, but if you're trying to move the part that's actually cut, then you sometimes can run into more resistance.


That being said, overall, while I don't see myself using 2 mice, I DO genuinely like the idea and potential that it would bring!! Which who knows, it could very well be something I gravitate to later on (if I ever get a surface on my left side that I could even use a second mouse on…)

I can see exactly the same helpful uses as you've presented. Being able to Pull two parts of the protein in different directions, instead of having to use a Str10 BiS on a segment. Having "two hands" would certainly make working on pre-folded proteins found in nature (with lots of loops) a LOT easier, or even Prediction puzzles for that matter. :)

With so many laptops these days coming with 10-point Touchscreens, there's certainly a lot of computers out there that ALREADY posses the ability to use this. The problem I see right now, which might not really be one at all (based on Amino's reply), is how the OS (Windows, in my case) would handle it. I know you can certainly have 2 mice connected AND working at the same time; however, they share the same cursor! :( So the OS would need a way to individually register each mouse AND display two unique cursors for each (the other's cursor obviously facing the other direction for ease of differentiating them) – or somehow for Foldit to, which I imagine to do that, would require a custom HID Driver… a non-trivial task no doubt.


Either way, +1 from me :)