Inverted or Non Inverted?

[R00k]

Hey mom im not inverted!!! Yet, I am an outtie

[PapaSmurf]

No, inverted means if you pull the mouse towards you, you look up, and if you push the mouse away from you look down. For most people "up" would be best defined as radially outward from the center of the earth. So push/pulling your mouse (typically a motion that is orthagonal to the radius vector) moves the cursor on your desktop up/down, respectively.

[golden_boy]

If I'm using a mouse as a control to move around a pointer (arrow, crosshair, etc.) I expect it to control like a mouse. Up is up and down is down.

This logic is faulty, because the arrow pointer on a desktop is a two-dimensional thing. Your desktop doesn't have depth like an FPS does. So the desktop pointer and the crosshair are two different things.

There is a simple test:

Hold your mouse with a straight arm, lift your elbow from the table. Now move your head and shoulders way back, so you almost look straight up. Notice what your mouse does. Now move head and shoulders forward, as if you look down into a canyon. Your mouse will move away from your body, accordingly.

"Inverted" is the normal, intuitive way (for a 3D environment.) "Non-inverted" is coming from the Windows (or whatever) desktop norm, which is being translated to the crosshair. Non-inverted users probably perceive the game screen like their desktop wallpaper, and the crosshair like the pointer. i.e. they perceive the game screen as a two-dimensonal interface to the three-dimensional game world. As if the crosshair was moving on a window pane behind which the monsters are.

Inverted users probably subconsciously think they are Quakeguy, and have to pull their head back to look upward. Following that theory, a non-inverted user would never experience the game the same way as an inverted user. The inverted guy is INSIDE the game. The non-inverted user is behind the mental window pane.

An inverted user would probably be more shocked if someone suddenly touched him, because the game for him is almost like an out-of-body experience especially with headphones. A normal user, in comparison, controls the game from more of a distance ("desktop" point-and-click method.)

Interestingly enough, I have zero problems to switch from Quake ("inverted") to a browser ("non-inverted"). Apparently my subconscious notices the difference immediately. The browser is like a newspaper, which is totally two-dimensional. I switch Quake->browser and back a lot, and it never even occured to me that I switched mouse direction. As far as I'm concerned, I don't... in Quake I move the mouse back and forth, in the browser I move it up and down. Completely different things.

To me, the Quake window is like a rectangular hole in the LCD, with a small room glued to the back of the panel which I'm sucked into. ^^

Same with pictures in newspapers or on websites - they are windows to a three-dimensional room behind the two-dimensional page. It's a small miracle when you turn the page and there's nothing there. Like TV is for some kids, they think the people are actually inside the box. Those kids are little inverted mouse users.

:d

[PapaSmurf]

golden_boy, I agree with pretty much everything you said; however, I wanted to comment on your exercise where you would have us hold the mouse out in front with a straight arm. You are correct in saying that when you tilt your upper body to look up the mouse moves towards you, but in addition to moving towards you, it also moves up towards the ceiling. And this is where the inverted and non-inverted motions come from.

Pitching your torso up translates into two motions for your hand (if it is held rigid and straight away from your body): up towards the ceiling, and back towards your body. The back towards your body motion is something that translates directly to the moving the mouse (ie, pull the mouse back towards your body). The up towards the celing motion, however, is something you cannot do with the mouse (you don't lift the mouse off the table towards the ceiling to look up). But, in the desktop environment pushing the mouse away from you translates to moving the cursor up, so there is your up motion.

[spooker]

nice thought, nice writing, nice drama,

i don't think in all actuality it makes much difference. Like pappy hints at, in your experiment the mouse does not get closer to you at all, so the similarity to moving the mouse towards you is not that great

[Phenom]

I've tried to go non-inverted but i just can't do it. it just feels more natural to have it inverted.

it's like scrollbars in desktop apps--you pull down on the scrollbar and the content goes up...

But you are still "scrolling down the page" by pulling the scrollbar down. If you want to get to the TOP of a page you push the scrollbar up

When I play first person shooters, I base myself on the most important thing that matters, my crosshairs and dealing with X rotation its my belief that if you want to look down in a 3D game you pull the mouse towards you, to look up you push it away (Based on 3 dimensional rotation of X).

Exceptions for this would be flight simulators, which should be played with a joystick and holds completely different control mechanisms.

[Grim]

I first started playing flight sims. When you pull back on the stick, (or mouse), you pull the nose up. When you push forward on the stick, (or mouse) you dive.

I've centered my gaming by the use of the "invert" method. I have no choice... I'm ruined.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Sniper is right on the money.....

Inverted axis in flight sim's is great,but in FPS be it PC or Console just seems ridiculous!

[Stung]

It is PURELY subjective. Purely.