I am a player who plays FPS games in “inverted” mode. When playing flight simulators I play in normal mode. This means that when I pull back on the mouse or joystick, my head or plane lifts up. I keep getting flak (flight sim pun) from friends who say I am wrong for playing “inverted” and it is unnatural.
In a flight simulator this mode is not called inverted as this is how real planes actually work. You pull back, the plane pitches up. Natural.
There is no real world control for moving your head with your hands. However, when you consider that you control an avatar in the game, it actually makes perfect sense!
Take some time and stand behind someone else. Ask their permission and then place your right hand on their head. Now control their head, and point their gaze up and down. What movements did you perform? You pulled their head back to look up, just like a joystick, just like you SHOULD be doing when playing with a mouse.
I have thus justified my playing mode as legit and refuse to be told I am wrong. I can rest easy now, as soon as everyone stops calling this mode inverted. It should be called normal. I am normal.
In my opinion you can play like you want, and there is no “right way” of playing regarding controls, unless you use two hands to use the arrow keys on a keyboard(which i have seen). in my case i like playing non-inverted in games and default for flying vehicles, and i will always try to match the settings for battlefield when using vehicles since that is what i am most used to and comfortable with. The way you think is not wrong but i like to think that i am not “controlling” the character, but instead i “am” the character and i would look around as if i would in that situation, not as if i am just controlling someone else.
I play with the Y axis inverted. I think the reason for it is because of X-Wing vs Tie Figher. Played the whole game with an inverted mouse and it’s the first one that I can remember.
I’d be very interested to read others’ preferences.
I’ve been gaming in uninverted mode since +mlook was a thing. However, sometime after I switched to using a Mac for work Apple made inverted Y scrolling the default and I just simply got used to it.
So, for me:
Uninverted axes on the mouse.
Inverted y-axis for scrolling on a Mac (on Windows I still use uninverted scrolling on the mouse wheel)
Lifetime inverted player here. Started with Star Wars: The Arcade on the atari 2600.
One thing I miss about my 360 was the ability to set inverted as a part of your profile, so you don’t have to change it for every single game.
Also, at LANs, my friends are always amazed when I clean up in quake 4 with “and he’s playing inverted!” like its some kind of handicap… (I’ve got other handicaps, but I wouldn’t consider this one of them)
My flight games are played with a stick, and I use Y-axis to yaw and Z-axis to roll, which in itself is a source of disagreement among flight simmers. I blame my Wing Commander / X-Wing days for that. But yeah, with a stick it feels natural that back is up and forward is down.
As for mouse… Years of muscle memory will not disappear overnight. “Normal” it is.
Nah, I grew up playing flight SIMs, anybody played AH-64 Gunship on the Commodore 64? (loaded via audio cassette…BOTH SIDES!)
I think because of that, I play all game inverted.
