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Idea: Wavy mouse or motion mouse (or something)

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Jasong222:
Hey all,

Hope this is the right place for this.  Previous post got moved around a bit and I forgot where I posted it first.  I did a donation code once before and it went pretty well! 

Anyway- this is a fun one.  Summary-  Long ago, for the Apple Macintosh system 7, there was a simple little app that made the mouse cursor point in the direction you were moving it.  Now I found this app very very neat and played with it all the time.  Looking to recreate it for windows 10 (+).

I'm not sure if it's possible, of course.  Depends on what Windows will let you do with the cursor.

How to describe the motion?    It's actually kinda hard to describe or possibly visualize.

Take a piece of paper, ideally one you cut out into the shape of a cursor.  Make it large, using maybe a half sheet or a full sheet of paper.  Or at least just take half a sheet.  Put it on some very smooth surface where you have a lot of room to move.

Take your finger, or the eraser side of a pencil and put it on the very tip of the arrow, or on the very edge of a corner of the paper.  That corner is the tip of the arrow.  Now move the arrow around your surface.  See how the arrow 'follows' your movement?  How it keeps turning to point in the direction you're moving?  THAT'S all this cursor program did. 

Another way to visualize it is to watch this video of the old video game Time Pilot.  But imagine that the ship is actually moving, not the background, of course: https://youtu.be/cNv0_wY5jp8

That's as best as I can describe the mechanics- the force is applied at the very tip of the arrow, and the rest of the arrow body behaves like normal physics would.

I constantly found myself doing loops on my way to 'ok' buttons, or min/maxing windows, etc.  It was honestly fun.  And this was a long time ago so I was a lot younger then, lol....


Is this possible in Windows?  Anything else like it?  Anyone interested in coding it?

Thanks!


(Previous DC project was 'enfolder', by vic, found here:  https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=51554.msg446282#msg446282)

publicdomain:
Anyone interested in coding it?
-Jasong222 (November 24, 2021, 01:24 PM)
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Hi Jason, I'm in! :Thmbsup:

This is 100% doable via "hide & overlay" (taking over the cursor), traditional API hooks and a little math in between :)

"JCursor" repo is open: https://github.com/publicdomain/jcursor

Description: "Makes the cursor point to the current movement direction".

...If you're around after Christmas, please do "ping" for me to extend some love to it 💖. Chances are it's a 2021 release.

Cheers!

kunkel321:
Yeah, seems like a clever idea. 

Jasong222:

Hi Jason, I'm in! :Thmbsup:

This is 100% doable via "hide & overlay" (taking over the cursor), traditional API hooks and a little math in between :)

...If you're around after Christmas, please do "ping" for me to extend some love to it 💖. Chances are it's a 2021 release.
-publicdomain (December 11, 2021, 01:05 PM)
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Great- will do!  I'm traveling myself and have limited time before the  holidays.  Enjoy them and stay safe!  Talk to you then-

-J

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