Orbital Mechanics for Analog Input

Dead Space is everywhere in a GUI. It's wasteful, and ugly, but it does serve a purpose...poorly.

I'm not speaking of visual separation, that is what that is and does what it does. What I'm speaking of is the direct correlation between analog input and visual separation. It's a bad way to do what's being done.

What does input dead space do? It serves as a visualized input tolerance between points of interest, and as an "extra option" for the background space.

Regarding the latter: do we need an ever present, immediately adjacent option for the space itself? Do we rearrange the space as often as we access items within it? In any case, we can still offer this with other systems, perhaps even better by offering distinct "in-between" options.

Now, for the former. Dead space grants a tolerance...but only as consistent as the visual spacing. Closely spaced items have less tolerance than vastly separated items, and this practically never correlates with or respects any need or use. Arguably, you'll need and/or want the same tolerance between every item.

Disassociating the input distance from the visual distance allows a restructure of input that makes far better use of analog input. It allows more options, such as exponential/hierarchal selection modes via Rate Modes in Analog Input.

How could an orbital mechanism work? Two components: Orbits with distance/magnitude, and exit angle, for each item in a GUI space.

The simplest system of orbits would be a single orbit for each item, consisting of each item adjacent to the current highlighted. Analog input with a positive projection/dot product along the exit angle above a threshold increases magnitude. The magnitude should be indicated visually, ideally by a scaling of selection highlighting, perhaps a halo of increasing intensity. Input below a certain threshold results in decay of magnitude to 0; a rate mode that removes travel due to analog "fidget". Direction projecting negatively on exit angle reduces magnitude.

Any number of orbits can exist as "in-between space", that could be selected just as standard empty space in a standard GUI.

The exit angle would be a normalized vector describing the average direction of input. This should be visualized in two parts: the first a discrete pointer towards the object that would be selected as if the current magnitude were sufficient; either with a pointer or a directional defect in the selection highlighting of the current object; and the deflection of the actual average, indicated with a "leaning" of the discrete pointer or a "defect of the defect".