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- enforcerpsu, on 10/12/2007, -3/+133If you are like me, you are used to the way flight sims play. That is why whenever I play FPS shooters on the a console I have to use inverted controls. It feels like a flight sim. I don't think its how immersed in the game I am.
Now when it comes to a pointing device...such as the wiimote or a mouse I use "normal". Because where I point is where I want to go. Seems completely natural to me. - Istario, on 10/12/2007, -1/+59You pretty much described me exactly. I think the main reason for inverted controls (definitely for me) was due to flight sims like TIE Fighter. That seems like such an obvious answer that I'm surprised it isn't in the article although it is mentioned in the comments. Not every little action needs to be psychoanalyzed.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+44I wonder why the controls for scrolling windows on a computer desktop couldn't be inverted.
Think about it. You have a scroll bar, with arrows pointing up and down, and a page of text on the screen. What happens to the page of text when you press DOWN? The page actually moves UP, revealing more text below.
This is the same exact principle behind inverted controls in FPS games. When you're pressing DOWN, what you're actually doing is making the game world shift UP (I hope you can visualize what I'm trying to describe).
I actually didn't start thinking about this until I was talking to someone who has never used a computer. I was showing her a document that she asked me to type for her. She stood over my shoulder and started asking me to "Go UP." Naturally, I clicked the up-arrow on the scroll bar. She reacted with surprise, saying, "No no, I said go UP." I didn't understand what she was talking about until she started gesturing with her hands that she wanted me to *move the page* upwards in order to scroll *down*. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+40There are 3rd party controllers for the 360 (The Gamestop brand ones) that have an "invert" switch on the back. It's a nice backup in case a game decides to exclude such a simple feature.
- Thuktun, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25I think you've headshotted the nail.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23Software2:
Not only does Microsoft mandate the inclusion of such an option inside the game, but it also hard-coded this option directly into the Xbox 360 dashboard. If you look in your console's settings menu, you can set this (and other control defaults) there and all games published for the system must obey to meet Microsoft's publishing requirements -- just like they must follow certain specific rules when the Guide button is pressed, etc. - Cl1mh4224rd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19I use inverted for flight sims, because that's the way planes are controlled. It's natural. I use regular for everything else, especially FPS's. I'm pointing the gun where I want to shoot and, damnit, it better move in that direction.
My friend uses inverted mouse controls for FPS's. On the rare occasions I'm playing on his system, my first reaction is *always*, "What the ***** is wrong with your mouse?" - Lord_oftheTrons, on 10/12/2007, -12/+26It drives me nuts when I can't have inverted controls. The worst was a ghost recon game for PS2. In the multiplayer mode, you either both had to be inverted, or both normal. What a horrible design flaw.
I am just wired to play any game even using a mouse inverted. My first 3D game was Chuck Yeager flight sim for a 286 so maybe thats why I am so used to it. - Gryffydd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16One important point with regards to computer FPS games in particular, is that the crosshairs of your gun behaves the same way as your mouse point in any application. That's why for many people, when using a mouse won't use inverted controls, but when using a joystick they will.
- dorianh49, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13@ cramd: Your character must be pretty paranoid of stuff in the sky, if he looks up no matter how you try to control him.
- Future2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I always use inverted controls. I will admit it gets very confusing when I have to digg someone down.
- cramd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12I have always thought of my mouse/controller as gripping the head of the character in the game. If I pull his head back (down on the mouse/controller) he looks up, and if I push the head forward (up on mouse/controller) he looks up.
- bromac, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I used to play Counterstrike and Halo on my friends machines. It was always a mix of inversion settings. I just taught myself how to use both eventually.
Now I have no problems playing both, except for maybe a couple minutes at the beginning of a match if I just switched up and I have to get used to it again...but it comes pretty quickly. - BGFeltenink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8ilyag
Actually you're not correct either, at least not entirely. This is what is meant by it being a matter of perception. You see the game world as moving, many others see the cross-hairs as representing where they look. That they remain fixed in the center of the screen is irrelevant because the perception is that the avatar's "eyes" or "gun" is pointing where the cross-hairs are. So really, you're both right. Hence why the option is usually there. - iluvatar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I can't use inverted on a mouse, but for a console FPS I need to invert the Y axis.
- Jassman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I have to use inverted. All those years of Goldeneye on the N64 formed the habit in me. Still, inverted seems to make more logical sense.
- b33b3s, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9One of my friends tried to explain it to me once, he envisions it as how he moves the butt of the gun.
- Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15I can never use an inverted control scheme, it just doesn't feel natural
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Have you ever been in a cockpit before? When you push away (not up) from you with the flight stick, you pitch down..Dive! Dive! When you pull it towards you, you pitch up, Climb! Climb!
I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but everything you wrote is flat out wrong. - zolaar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@Drexle:
If you refine the analogy to include the fact that in flight, to tilt the stick to the left causes the plane to roll left (and thus begin pointing your aircraft leftward), you'll see that your assumption isn't exactly fair. - MotionAesthetic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6This is why the article is wrong... it ignores the left/right aspect. I hadn't thought of that either, and it could be why I find that inverted seems unnatural for anything but a flight sim.
- benitojuarez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4flight sims are the only games i use inverted controls on since its how aircraft operate irl. you dont aim at someones feet if you want to shoot them in the head, that concept is hard to wrap my head around.
- MegatonSamurai, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7It's depends if it's 3rd or 1st person for me. In 1st person I invert only vertical. When I move my mouse left I feel like I'm moving my head to the left, when I pull back I feel like I'm moving my head back and hence looking upwards. In 3rd person I invert both ways, that way it feels like I'm moving the camera (left moves the camera left, and my view to the right etc).
This way seems to make the most sense to me but I seem to be in the minority. - CitizenKamb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4How about the X-Axis though? Especially in 3rd person games with a free camera. It annoys me to no end when there's no way to switch the inversion there, and there often isn't because the X-Axis doesn't get nearly as much press as the Y.
I think of it as if I'm controlling the swing of the camera. Lets say the camera is directly behind my character. When I press Left, I want the camera to swing left. Now it's behind the left shoulder of my character, and we see more of what's to the character's right.
This is how the camera control works in Zelda and a bunch of other games... but too often you get the other way. Metal Arms and Lost Planet (at least the demo) had it the "wrong" way, and as far as I could tell there was no way to switch. - Skeuomorph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Interesting, I have the same glitch. In R6:Vegas, I play inverted, and am perfectly happy up to 6x scope. But at 12x scope, I feel like I'm trying to move the reticle instead of my head, so I get it wrong. I suppose this confirms the article's novel idea -- 12x scope is too far "forward" to fit the "moving your head" metaphor.
The ultimate "moving your head" control system was using the Space Orb in the game Descent, offering six axes of movement in a single intuitive control. Anyone have Space Orb drivers for Vista or OS X? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'd like to see more mention on left-right as well. This arises as an issue for me particularly in 3rd-person 'chase camera' games, including most modern RPGs. Basically, the distinction is whether hitting left will turn the camera to the left about your character, or hitting left would make your character look to the left.
- sathias, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I've always thought of it as normal is like you are controlling your eyes, inverted is like you are controlling your head. Pretty similar to what they describe in the article I guess.
Another point which is worth noting is that in Duke3D you could only use inverted controls. Since it was one of the first FPS games with the ability to look up and down, many FPS players learnt to use Inverted by default. - Phaedruss, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5If the game is configured correctly and the sensor bar placed properly, you should be able to point at your target on the TV and have it register correctly.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Honestly, it was Goldeneye 64 back in '97 that converted me to inverted controls, I've been playing all FPSs, console and PC, since playing that game.
- masterthiefster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@ilyag:
Actually, it does make sense, once you understand the mentality behind it.
Hold an open book in front of you. Now look down the page. Is the page moving up to meet your eyes (the "camera")? Of course not! The page itself is static, it is only your view of the page that is moving. And so it is that scrollbars move your view down the virtual page, the page does NOT come up to meet you.
I have also tutored people who misunderstood which arrow does what, but once I used the book analogy they had no further problems. - BillDoE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I use normal controls for everything except Flight games. Inverted control is natural for flight.
- LiquidPenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@enforcerpsu
"If you are like me, you are used to the way flight sims play. That is why whenever I play FPS shooters on the a console I have to use inverted controls. It feels like a flight sim. I don't think its how immersed in the game I am."
Exactly. The article writer needs to do more research. People like you and I prefer the inverted controls because we learned how to manipulate the environment though flight sims. If you've ever play Star Raiders, you'll understand how screwed up the controls can get.
But I digress, the push forward == up/pull back == down came about because some developers were referencing their controls in relation to the screen. If you place the monitor horizontally (say on the floor) and hold the joystick in the same relative direction. Then the control scheme makes sense. It's especially obvious when you encounter someone who have never played using an inverted scheme, they'll perceive the controls as parallel to the screen when the options to change their controls come up. - UglieJosh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I use invert for some FPS games and regular for others but I use invert most often. For 3rd person shooters I always use normal axis controls.
The Wii definitely fixes this for me as I always prefer normal controls. On the other hand, it is a lot harder to keep your gun centered with a Wiimote than a controller. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9gryffydd:
That's actually not true at all. In the vast majority of games, the crosshairs never move. They're stuck to the center of the screen. It's the world that's moving on the screen, not the crosshair. This fact is the reason that some people find inverted controls more natural. - payndz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@cornersheep
"If you push up on an airplane control stick, the plane should go up. If you push down on the stick, it should make the plane go down. I don't understand why anyone would design it any different way."
You've obviously never flown a plane. The joystick isn't positioned to provide a direct analogue to 'up' or 'down' - rather, pushing forward ('up') tilts the nose down, and back ('down') raises it. If you sit in an aircraft cockpit, it feels absolutely, 100% instinctively 'right' to push forward to descend - which is the reason why nobody has ever had a "Hay guyz!" moment and proposed switching it around. - b04155, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If I play with the controls inverted or not depends on the type of game I'm playing.
- vermin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Why are people trying to analyze this so much. If you learn to play with inverted mouse then you'll prefer that. It's just how you learn.
- masterthiefster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3For my part I use inverted y axes for flight sims and normal controls (on both x and y axes, if available) for FPSes and RPGs, regardless of whether I'm controlling it with a mouse, gamepad, joystiq or whatever else. Since my first free camera game was on a PC (Jedi Knight, I believe) I've always been used to it this way, and, in the PC market, it's still by far the standard. PC games that by default invert one or both axes are often criticised for it.
When it comes to console games, I'm always irritated when a game like Tomb Raider Legend or Dragon Quest doesn't have a setting to turn my character with a "locked" third person view (such as is standard on a PC) but instead swings the camera, making it feel wrong. In some games this means you have to turn "twice", once to turn your character (left analog) and once to turn your camera (right analog) as the delayed auto-rotation of the camera often doesn't keep up with the speed of your movements. Before the advent of dual analogs, games that used the "push once to turn, push and hold to walk that direction" system with an automated camera were even worse.
Some of these games don't let you change the way the camera turns and/or locks, even in their PC ports. This is also my annoyance with the PC port of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is made artificially harder than III and Vice City by removing strafing (at least as far as I could find) and instead opting for console-style turning. Even worse, the crosshair is only enabled when you hit a button, further reeking of console-ness. - dsitvarin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've always owned either a crappy pc or a mac, so my aiming training comes from games on consoles. That said, it always feels natural to control them inverted, like a flight sim. I guess I imagine a stick coming out of the back of the character's head, and I control from that... weird. If I aim with a mouse it's gotta be normal, because it's just like point/click with any other program.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What an uninformative and incomplete article. I'll try and add some interesting thoughts.
A Joystick is a desk-bound version of actual flight controls. That you pull on the joystick to go "up" is just like in a real plane you pull the flight stick closer to you to gain altitude. So no great revelations on the mysteries of consciousness revealed there...
If you put 1,000 non-flyers in a real cockpit to test if they were going to either pull or push to gain altitude, I suspect nearly all of them would intuitively pull, those that did not, would certainly remember the unpleasant feeling that resulted if they pushed and would not push again a second time.
A mouse is a poor substitute for a flight stick, but the same principles apply..if you pull the mouse closer to you, like a flight stick, up you go (positive pitch to those who know better). Again, no great revelation in mechanics or cognition.
The real test to understanding this concept is how do you explain this in terms of an upside down mouse? I prefer upside down mice, since they stay put and offer other advantages. I guess not many people use them, and that is a shame since they are probably much better than mice for most people.
Maybe if you think of a trackball as a round flight stick? Or draw little eyes on the ball itself and picture the eyes moving up as you pull back on the ball (roll it towards you), as the eyes go up your view goes up. Roll the ball away from you, you look down...do you recall the Space Orb 260? It was a fixed center trackball that worked on all axes and allowed for acceleration based on how far you were pushing or twisting it..it was amazing for space games in its day. - mustanggt1989, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3TIE FIGHTER!!
- canuck21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3someone should submit a poll to diggers: inverted or not
- elhaf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Flight sim, or real flight. I used to fly planes, so I use inverted.
- hockey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I was actually able to "unlearn" my inverted preference.
I played Star Wars Galaxies for about a year and there was no option in that game to invert the mouse. After a few months of playing I got used to it and I noticed that when I played Unreal with an inverted mouse setting it felt weird.
Now I play without the inverted mouse in all my games and I do just fine. - Shuk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For me, I think of it instinctively as holding a real gun. If you want to aim up, your whole body/vision sort of tilts back. For example, to shoot something in the sky with a machine gun, you put your leg back and lean back a bit to point up. To shoot a bug or something, you will crouch forward.
I think its just a matter of whether you see up as "forward" and down as "back" when it comes to aiming (movement is different). - strictnein, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"The first game I ever played was MS Flight Sim (on a Comador 64, oh yeah"
I still have that game. And it's a sin that you spelled Commodore that way. For repentance: go download a 50KB file with a C64's 300 baud modem. - Qazzian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I totally agree with enforcerpsu and Istario.
Used to play Tie Fighter and Doom all the time.
Guess which one had the look up/down feature?
From that day on, if there is no Y axis invert, all I can see is the floor. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Cronyx
Did you just go on a page-long rant trying to convince people that they're doing it wrong? - SPARTACVS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The way I always try to explain inverted to people that think I'm weird is just that if you imagine that the top of your head is the top of the thumbstick, then if you tilted your head back, your vision would move up. It just seems way more natural to me, and I've had it ingrained in my hand-eye coordination even before I played my first dual stick (goldeneye doesn't count) console shooter (halo). My invertedness from using a mouse in Dark Forces/Jedi Knight just sort of carried over when I bought my Xbox 1.
- raindogmx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm about to read the article thus maybe? destroying my theories forever so here it goes: I use inverted controls in FPS because, as many have said, I have the reference of flight simulators. Why do planes and flight simulators work that way? Because when you move the stick or yoke you mean to move the plane, and not the view outside the plane. Imagine a stick placed underneath a model plane, like a gun handle and you'll notice the movement to tilt the model plane upwards tilts the stick or handle backwards. In FPS I think in terms of moving the body and not only the view since in real life I don't bother were the outside view comes from but how are are my body, head and eyes positioned, of course I get an additional view angle by moving the eyes which relates to the "normal" controls but in FPS you're supposed to be moving your whole body, like a plane.
Now to the article. -
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