Prior to E3, I had received an email from a company attended the expo that was sporting their new product and trying to entice me to visit their booth. Such practice is common place, and you will find your email box flooding with quite a bit of mail from companies that want nothing more then 2 seconds of your time. Companies big and small take part in this annual ritual, from SNK Playmore sporting their newest Metal Slug line up, to Sandio Tech sporting their new 3D mouse!

Sandio Tech is a company based out of San Jose, California, and their main focus is on 3D computer applications, In their email it invited me to come and try out the "Worlds First 6DOF (Six Degrees of Freedom) Mouse". I was a little intrigued about what they were talking about. They mentioned applications for everything, from Windows Vista and Google Earth to Unreal Tournament and Road to Rome!

When we go to E3, we try to hit up every booth available, and so I was pretty sure we were going to pass by this one on our ventures through Kentia Hall. When we arrived, we were met by Michael Hsieh; the Business Development Manager of Sandio Tech. They were more then eager to show us how the mouse moved on a 3D plain, and even inside some previously mentioned games as well!

When I first got my hands on the mouse I wasn't to sure what to think, the movements were a little too quick, and I just couldn't get a handle on it. I was told that the sensitivity can be manipulated, however this is Unreal Tournament we are talking about! Cyril then took the control after I got myself killed, and he got a handle of it quite fast, so I must just suck or something! The mouse was being shown off at a few other stations, and so I got to see a few more applications of the mouse in other programs.

The mouse seems promising, the ability to use real world movements such as pushing up on one side and down on the other to turn is real promising. An SDK is available for developers to take advantage of, but the mouse has its own mapping program, so it should work with your existing games as well. I will certainly be keeping an eye on this technology and see where it goes in the future.