Dual-mouse input possible?

[Tehtsuo]

Hey all, this isn't really related to multiboxing, as I would like it for work to increase my productivity. However, one of the aspects of multiboxing is innovation with input methods, so I thought it'd be a good place to ask. Does anyone know of any kind of tweak, powertool, or application that allows one to plug two mice into a computer and have two cursors on the screen? I know it sounds stupid, but I use my left hand while I multibox so much, I've started to feel like it's not doing it's part at work. A lot of my job functions would benefit from using two cursors (Like resizing/moving windows with two corners)

[Xzin]

You can do it in hardware with 1 wireless mouse and 2 mouse receivers if you intentionally set them to the same frequency (hit the sync button on both receivers then hit the one on the mouse). This does not work with mice that don't need to be sync'd and the further you get away from the receivers, the more out of sync they will become. Keep them a few feet (1 - 2) apart and it should work fairly well. Move the cursor to a corner to resync.

[Djarid]

This should be possible at an application level even if not at the OS level: there is a lot of work on multi-touch interfaces at the moment, how is 2 points of contact any different from 2 mouse positions?

[Xzin]

If you need *TWO* mice, just use a Y-mouse. You still only get 1 cursor though.

[Tehtsuo]

If you need *TWO* mice, just use a Y-mouse. You still only get 1 cursor though.

Heh, I know a lot of ways to have two mice to a system, I could just plug two usb mice in if I wanted that. I've looked into this and aside from one over-hyped driver that's about as useful as a block of cheese in a volcano, there's not a lot of options. The issue is that mouse functions are so integral to the operating system, any attempt to seperate them out to allow for this just ruins usability. Oh well, it was a nifty idea.

[Xzin]

I am *SURE* there is a way to get 2 cursors (or more). The only question is how to do it. It will involve either a hardware hack combined with a new driver or simply software only.

[shockbeta]

I swear I had found something while I was in college regarding having two mice in use at once. We were thinkign about using it in a game environment but never did. I forget the name of the program but a quick google found this.

http://cpnmouse.sourceforge.net/

I'll keep looking to see if I can find anything else on it.

found this as well:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dualmousekeyboa/

[Freddie]

This is an interesting idea. With Windows the cursor is part of the operating system and, so far as I know, the operating system has data structures for only one of them. Therefore to make this work, the double-cursor software would probably have to maintain its own data structures for the two cursors, and every time you moved or clicked a different mouse from the one you had just been using, the software would tell Windows, "Switch the state info for your single cursor to match the appropriate one of my cursors."

Using this approach the double-cursor software could emulate two cursors to some extent but there would almost certainly be some limitations. For example, the operating system would always draw only one cursor, not two. In windowed mode the double-cursor software could probably draw the second cursor itself but this would be very difficult if not impossible in full-screen mode (i.e. DirectX exclusive mode). Another problem is that some of the functions in the OS's cursor API deal with the history of the cursor's location (i.e. the recent path of the mouse). That history would get screwed up because it would intermix the locations of the two cursors. This would make some programs work incorrectly. Also, I don't think there's any way for an application to know which of two mice generated an input, so the double-cursor software would probably have to include a device driver.

Tech stuff aside, I'm curious. Are you sufficiently ambidexterous to target things with both hands? I'm not. I can click buttons with my off hand but I can't position the cursor on click boxes in a reasonable amount of time.

[Maxion]

I know the trackpad on my MacBook Pro lets you use multiple fingers on it, and a tech-savvy friend of mine said it would be possible to use it to control two pointers without much problem, except in the case of the trackpad it might have trouble telling which is which, which wouldn't be an issue with two physical mice. So I'm not sure if it's possible in windows, but it should be possible with the right software for at least mac (prolly windows too, if someone made the software), and if the software doesn't exist, i'm pretty sure my friend could make it if he wanted to.

[Freddie]

I just found out that Windows has an API that apparently lets applications keep track of multiple mice.

http://jstookey.com/arcade/rawmouse/