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Horizon Mouse

A scroll wheel only rolls. Horizon replaces it with one puck that turns, tilts and slides, so 3D and video work stays on the mouse.

Horizon Model 11, a low semi-gloss black mouse with a brushed aluminium puck ring and a matte face, close up on a light felt desk mat in daylight, with a monitor stand, pencils and the edge of a keyboard behind.

Model 11 at real size, rendered in Blender for this site. A render, not a photograph.

Solo concept. I designed it: the sketches, the CAD, the demo and every decision on this page. AI tools helped with research, the Blender renders of my CAD and the print files.

  1. ConceptFeb 2025Done
  2. BehaviourDesigned, untestedIn progress
  3. FitSizingIn progress
  4. Printed modelNextNext
  5. Working puckLaterNext
5 min read
The problem
In Blender and Premiere, orbit, pan and frame steps take a held button, the keyboard or a second device.
The bet
Move those jobs onto one puck on the mouse, one motion each, so your hand stays put.
Where it stands
Designed and sized on paper. A print and a five-person test come next.

Try the puck

Scroll over the puck to turn. Drag the face to slide. Drag the ring past its guard to tilt. Click to press.

Line 12 of 40

A simulation built from my renders. No working puck exists yet.

Left and Right arrows turn one click. Up and Down slide. Hold Shift with an arrow to tilt. Enter presses.

The mouse hand does the most work, and the wheel can’t help

  • Blender

    Orbit is a middle-button drag. Pan adds Shift.

  • Premiere Pro

    Frame steps and shuttle live on the keyboard.

  • A second device

    $179 to $199.99, and it takes your other hand.

The mouse hand already carries the load. In 3D and video work you move the view constantly. In a 1998 survey of CAD operators working five or more hours a day, 49% of those who always moused with one hand had hand or wrist symptoms on that side within a year. On the other side, 13% did. It measured symptoms, not navigation.

The pain is real but modest. Of 38 forum posts found by AI research, 9 describe it, 5 love their second device and 6 want more navigation under one hand. 18 push back, and none asks for a puck.

Horizon doesn’t ask the hand to do more. It shrinks the clumsy work: the held button, the reach for the keyboard and the second device each become a small finger move on the puck. In my estimate of two common tasks, Horizon cuts the trips to the keyboard from 2 to 0, at about the same speed.

What forum users say

“For me it was more about comfort and to get away from constantly scrolling a mouse wheel all day every day!”

“Literally can’t use any other mouse because that thumb scroll is so crucial for navigating a timeline”

Pushback

“keyboard navigation is just faster”

Self-selected posts: a signal, not a measure.

One puck, one motion per job

On day one, turning does what your wheel did.

Turn

Stays where you leave it

A click every 15°, 24 per turn. Each click is one frame or one zoom step, and it stays where you leave it.

Rendered in Blender
Premiere Pro
Blender
Zoom, a step per click
Premiere
Step a frame per click
Everyday
Scroll up and down, like a wheel
Learned
Day one

Starting values, to test on a working build.

The hard part: a turn must never become a tilt. A finger turning the ring can also push it sideways, the same worry that made me cut the joystick.

So three layers keep them apart:

  • A firm push first. Tilt starts only past a spring set well above the sideways push of a turning finger.
  • A flat centre. Small wobbles near level do nothing.
  • Turning wins. While the ring turns, and for 0.15 s after each click, tilt is ignored. Turning itself never waits.

How should one puck do several jobs?

One motion per job: turn, tilt, slide, press

Not chosen

  • A thumb joystick, in my first design (2025)

    Used with the scroll and the touch face, it could slip into joystick moves by mistake.

Cost I accepted

Speed control takes longer to learn. The firm push is untested.

A low shell, so a fingertip reaches the puck

I drew the shape first, in 2025, before anything under the puck.

How should the shell sit under the hand?

Low and flat, for the fingertip

Not chosen

  • A rounder shell

    Sideways scrolling strains more: note 1 on my sketch.

  • A taller, upright shell

    I wrote in 2025 that flatter is better for “wrist movement and finger reach”.

Cost I accepted

More forearm twist than an upright mouse: 42° against 28° in one study.

Ink sketch sheet with front, top and perspective views, a scroll-wheel detail with X, Y and Z axes, and handwritten notes on shell angles.
  1. A rounder shell: “horizontal scroll becomes more straining”.
  2. A lower angle: “natural wrist position”.
The shell decision, in my notes.My sketch, Feb 2025
Left: Model 11 in my 2025 KeyShot render. Right: Models 9 and 11, rendered for this site.My KeyShot render, and Blender

My first puck was too small

Scaled to a real mouse, it’s 16.9 mm across, a 14.4 mm face inside its ring. A fingertip covers most of it, so there’s no room to slide.

Test pucks at true scale, rendered from my print files in the hero’s finishes. Not yet printed.Blender, Oct 2026

My CAD had no real size, so I scaled it to my benchmark, the 124.9 mm MX Master 3S. Of the test pucks, only 32 and 36 mm leave a 20 mm finger 5 mm to slide. A small motor under the ring, like the open-source SmartKnob, would let each app set its own clicks. It is 32 mm wide, so it needs a 36 mm puck.

That leaves about 4.5 mm a side, too little for a button. So the clicks don’t sit beside the puck. They run back from it, where the shell is widest. The puck sits in a notch between them, where a wheel sits today. The print will show if the reach is comfortable.

Index fingers run 13 to 20 mm wide. A puck leaves the widest finger 5 mm to slide when its face is at least 25 mm. As drawn puck: 14.4 mm face. 24 mm puck: 20 mm face. 28 mm puck: 24 mm face. 32 mm puck: 28 mm face, enough to slide. 36 mm puck: 32 mm face, enough to slide.Index fingers, 13 to 20 mm+ 5 mm to slideAs drawn14.424 mm2028 mm2432 mm2836 mm32
Each puck’s face, the part inside its ring, against index fingers 13 to 20 mm wide at the last joint (Royal Australian Navy survey). The 5 mm to slide is my target.

What would prove me wrong

Nothing is tested yet. Each claim I can test has a pass mark, set before any test.

ClaimStatusPass if
People read the map without a manualNot tested4 of 5 guess turn and slide, 3 of 5 guess tilt
A turn never becomes a tiltNeeds a working build20 people turn 100 times each: at most 1 accidental tilt per 1,000 clicks, and 19 of 20 deliberate tilts, even right after a turn, work first try
No reach for the keyboardNeeds a working build4 of 5 finish the Blender task without it
It fits real handsPrint next4 of 5 pick the same puck, with 5 mm to slide

What I learned

I designed the outside first, and the puck paid for it. Now I size the moving parts before the shell.

Next

  1. Now

    The print, then five hands

    Print it. Then five people guess the motions and pick a size, against the marks above.

  2. Later

    A working build

    Real clicks and a guarded tilt, to test what a print can’t.

The shape was the easy part. The real test is whether a hand reaches for the puck without being told how.

Sources

Show every sourceLess

The research behind this page, with each source and how sure it is: studies, makers' pages, measurements from my CAD, and what people told me. Design values I set myself are marked as targets.

Research findings

  • "Orbit is a middle-button drag. Pan adds Shift." Blender manual, 3D Viewport navigation.
  • "49% ... against 13%." Jensen and others, Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, 1998, 149 CAD operators: "For the CAD operators who always used the same hand to operate the mouse, the 12-month prevalence of symptoms from this hand or wrist ... 49%"; in the other hand or wrist, 13%. A survey from 1998, not a study of navigation.
  • "A firm push first." Primax, US patent 8,564,537, a tilt-wheel mouse: tilting needs a force "greater than the first elastic force", and rotation and swing "do not occur simultaneously". A patent, with no force values.
  • "A flat centre." Balakrishnan and others, The Rockin’Mouse, CHI 1997: a "flat spot" lets the device control "only two degrees of freedom even while sensing four".
  • "Turning wins." 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Pro manual, Dominant: "restricts the pan, zoom or, rotations to a single axis." The 0.15 s is my design value.
  • "Speed control takes longer to learn." Zhai, 1998: "Rate control is an acquired skill."
  • "42° against 28°" and "4.2 against 3.4 seconds." Quemelo and Vieira, 2013, 16 people, a standard against a vertical mouse.
  • "13 to 20 mm wide at the last joint." Index finger breadth, women’s 5th to men’s 95th percentile, Royal Australian Navy survey (DST-Group-TR-3564). It is joint width, not fingertip pad width.
  • "The motor is 32 mm across." Scott Bezek, SmartKnob README: a "32mm rotor".
  • The press, "about the thickness of a US penny" (in the motion rows). The US Mint lists the one-cent coin at 1.52 mm thick.

Market

  • "124.9 mm." Logitech’s MX Master 3S spec sheet: 124.9 x 84.3 x 51 mm.
  • "$179 to $199.99." Makers' US pages, Oct 2026: 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Compact $179.00, Logitech MX Creative Console $199.99.
  • "it takes your other hand." 3Dconnexion describes its setup as "a 3D mouse in your left hand and a conventional mouse in your right hand."

The renders

  • The hero's room is free CC0 assets from Poly Haven. Model 11 is shown at 124.9 mm long, my benchmark's length.

Measured from my CAD

  • "16.9 mm across" and the fit study. Model 11 at 124.9 mm long, a length I chose: the CAD file carries no usable real size. The 1.8 mm wall is assumed.
  • The working numbers. Widths are the top-view outline at each point. The print files set the 2 mm ring.

My estimate

  • The rough time estimate in the appendix: a Keystroke-Level Model of two tasks. Its error is about 21% per task (Card, Moran and Newell, 1980), so neither version is measurably faster.

What forum users say

Read in Oct 2026 by AI research agents: 38 public forum posts. 9 describe the pain, 6 want navigation on the mouse itself, 5 love a second device, and 18 push back. None asks for a puck on a mouse. Reddit threads were read through a public archive. Full list: the research note behind this page.

  • "to get away from constantly scrolling a mouse wheel all day every day." r/Fusion360, 15 Jan 2026 (score 23), on why they use a SpaceMouse.
  • "so crucial for navigating a timeline." r/davinciresolve, 16 Mar 2025 (score 14), on the MX Master’s thumb wheel.
  • "keyboard navigation is just faster." r/blender, 23 Mar 2026.
  • The Rotary Mouse: its maker’s page, rotarymouse.com, Oct 2026: a wheel that "can perform the same function as a jog/shuttle controller".

What people told me

  • In 2025 I asked 35 to 40 people, professors, friends, family and strangers, how they use a mouse. A few said a regular mouse already fits their work. Not recorded.

Design targets, not tested yet

  • The input map, the three layers that keep a turn from becoming a tilt (the gate’s force, the flat centre’s size, the 0.15 s), the spec values marked "to test", and the puck sizes.
  • "On day one, turning it should do what your wheel did." The learning plan.

Appendix

Show the appendixLess

A rough time estimate, before testing.

An estimate, not a measurement. Every saving sits inside the model’s 21% error, and my Horizon times are set equal to the steps they replace. So the claim is no trips to the keyboard at about the same speed, not saved time.
TaskMouse and keyboardHorizonSaved
Blender: orbit to the back, pan right, frame the selection7.85 s, 2 trips6.85 s, 0 trips1.0 s
Premiere: step 10 frames, then play5.70 s, 2 trips4.90 s, 0 trips0.8 s
Premiere, with Shift and the arrow keys4.50 s4.90 sHorizon 0.4 s slower

Card, Moran and Newell (1980), Kieras, and my task models

Why not a vertical mouse?

Keep the mouse people know, and change one part: the wheel

Not chosen

  • A vertical mouse

    It changes how the hand sits, not what the fingers do. Orbit and frame steps still go to the keys. It was also slower in one study: 4.2 seconds per target, against 3.4 for a standard mouse.

Cost I accepted

It doesn’t change wrist posture. That is a vertical mouse’s job.

The working numbers.

Working numberValueWhere it’s measured
Length124.9 mmChosen: the MX Master 3S length
Widest point52 mmTop view
Width at the puck43 mmTop view, where I drew the puck
Width at the motor’s puck45 mmTop view, 3.5 mm further back
Height33 mmSide view
Puck as drawn16.9 mmMy 2025 CAD, at this length
Test pucks24, 28, 32 and 36 mmEach a face inside a 2 mm ring
Smallest puck for the motor36 mmAround a 32 mm motor
Products that already do part of this. Horizon is not the first sideways scroll or the first knob. Its claim is one puck with a motion per job, inside the mouse.
ProductWhat it doesWhat it lacks
Logitech MX Master 3SA thumb wheel for sideways scrollOne sideways axis, even remapped. No tilt or slide.
Logitech MX Creative ConsoleA dial and keypad for creative appsA second device beside the mouse
3Dconnexion SpaceMouseSix axes on one capA second device, for the other hand
Contour ShuttlePRO v2A jog wheel and shuttle ring for videoA second device
SmartKnob (open source)Clicks and end stops set in softwareA knob, not a mouse
Rotary Mouse (crowdfunding, 2026)A clicking dial on top of a mouse, for scroll and jogTurn only. No tilt, no slide, no 3D orbit.

Makers' pages, checked Oct 2026