I clicked it, so you don’t have to:
After testing random people with various computer programs that asked them to rotate objects, they found that some people were able to complete the tasks better with inverted/non inverted controls, despite the fact that they had claimed to prefer the opposite. The researchers claim that some people’s brains are just wired to perform better one way or the other despite how they originally learned.
Makes sense. Some controls work better when inverted.
I always use inverted when flying but anything ground based is non inverted.
As someone who uses scissor lifts a lot, I wish the manufacturers standardized on one way. Some have you push the joystick forward to descend, others will raise the platform when doing the same. I’ve damn near smashed some things in the ceiling going the wrong way for a second.
I count myself lucky to have only used a scissor lift from one manufacturer and I still have to check the control panel every time. And even then I screw it up sometimes.
that seems like an actual safety concern that should have been regulated long ago, wtf
Well that’s nice for dynamic people like you, but for dolts like me it will just mess me up trying to switch back and forth.
You people would have an aneurysm if you saw what I did with the rest of the controls to maintain consistency.
Most games have seperate controls for each transport type and of the ones I have played flying controls come as inverted.
Not even sure what counts as inverted for flying, push the stick forwards = dive, pull it back = climb. Pretty sure that is normal for flight sims though because that is how you fly a plane. Space sims end up going with the same kind of input usually.
I always use inverted.
I first played flying simulators as a kid, and inverted makes a ton of sense. 3D shooters weren’t really a thing yet, so when they became a thing, I kept using inverted controls and it was comfortable.
I can switch, but it takes some getting used to, and my error rate is higher.
That said, when I use a mouse, I want up (forward) to go up, and down (backward) to go down, so the inverted controls are only for controllers w/ joysticks.
100%. Exactly the same.
Invert Y-axis gang unite!
Make Y-axis INVERTED Default Again
Also hate “natural” scroll on PC.
With a mouse, yes. With a trackpad? No
Nope. Down to go down, up to go up. Always.
The explanation I’ve heard for your trackpad argument is that the trackpad is “grabbing” the page or whatever, but I’ve never made that connection. Trackpad gestures to me are equivalent to the scrollwheel, they’re just a different way of interfacing with it. The only thing that “grabs” the page is my finger when it’s on a touch screen.
Yeah and trackpads are basically remote touchscreens
They’re not though. A trackpad processes relative inputs, while a touchscreen processes absolute inputs. If I touch the corner of my trackpad, it doesn’t produce a click on the corresponding corner of the screen like a touchscreen would. Likewise a touch and slide doesn’t drag stuff, it moves the cursor relative to where it was.
It’s much more similar to a mouse. In fact, if you just imagine your finger is a mouse, you’ve just described all of the functions of a touchpad except gestures, and gestures are just replacements for the buttons (two tap for right click, two finger slide for scroll wheel, etc).
I used to play inverted then started gaming on pc. Now when I use a controller its like neither is good for me - my brain will sometimes think inverted and other times non-inverted mid play session
I find that for me this happens especially often in 3rd person camera control. And I think it has to do with the distance between the camera and the controlled actor.
Think driving a car, and the camera moving up close to the car when you’re under something like a bridge which would otherwise clip the camera. At that point my preference for camera controll switches from ‘orbit object’ mode to ‘aim’ mode so to say.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, that screws me up too. For first person games, joystick forward to look down makes intuitive sense to me, because I’m controlling the axis of the head (comes from airplane sims). For third person games, now I’m controlling the camera, and it’s not so clear.
Seriously, on older games pushing up to look forward was the default. It was only later that they decided to call it inverted.
I just don’t get why anyone would use non-inverted. Why would I tilt my head forward to look up?
I think the core of this dispute is the intuition of each person of what exactly they’re moving and how they’re moving it.
Like I have never once considered, until just now by reading your comment, that the stick could controlling my characters head. I’ve always intuitively thought that I’m controlling “the point in space that my character is looking at.”
Changing this makes one way make more sense than the other. Like, despite my preference for non inversion, I would fully concede that if I were to imagine the stick controlling the head directly that inversion makes plenty of sense.
Yup. I started w/ flight sims, so the controller controlling the airplane made sense. When I transitioned to FPS games, the controller controlling the head made logical sense. I’m not the character, I’m controlling the character, so why shouldn’t the character work like a plane?
Well, put your hand on your head like you would a mouse. If you push forward what happens? You look down. There’s no “correct” way here.
Invert Y-axis gang!
There’s fewer and fewer people who use inverted controls, I’ve found. Makes sense, I’m old and it just became muscle memory for me after playing Goldeneye til my thumbs bled back in the day. It’s more of a pain in the ass now, since non-inverted seems to be the norm and I always have to hunt to change it any time I fire up a game with camera controls.
For me it’s from flying remote control airplanes and it has a name - Mode 2.
I wish Genshin Impact supported invert :(
Ah, so make things worse — just like MAGA
Obligatory:
I’ve never seen this diagram before but this is exactly how I explain it to people, loudly and drunkenly at the bar when it comes up with my friends.
When you push the back of the head to the left, why doesn’t it look to the right and vice versa?
Some games let you invert the x-axis too, probably due to this sort of mental logic.
Like many people only the y axis makes sense to me because I learned it from flight games. I can do either but for some reason always prefer to come back to y invert.
Think of it like the stick of a plane.
Why is it so hard to understand that some people have played flight simulator games and have simply become used to it and don’t want to switch? What makes the other way so right?
When sticks were (mostly) new on consoles in the '90s, it took a while for developers to agree on which direction was up, and I’d bet that some of them using aircraft as a template was a driving factor in those games having what we would consider inverted controls.
This was exactly it for me. I associated joystick movement in 3D with such controls. Now I can switch between either, it’s just a matter of getting used to it.
Why is it so hard to understand that it’s a niche position and won’t ever be default outside flight sims?
Of course the researchers couldn’t be right…so glad you’re here with your big brain ideas.
Fascinating read.
I liked learning about the “Simon effect”, only knew about similar, non-spatial ones (colours)…
And I might give non-inverted controls a try, although being a die-hard inverter.
At least it will be some brain stimulus to keep me from cognitive aging too fast. Like changing the mouse hand from right to left and back again once in a while.
And at best I will become the unbeatable Über-Player, because in truth I am a hidden non-inverter! ;-)Im old school, so I learned on inverted. It took me a while to get used to non once that became default, and I stick with that now.
Although, I’d probably switch it for flying, because “pull up.”
I grew up on it as well. You adapted and had no choice. As soon as they gave us options and it that became standard I never went back.
I use inverted Y-axis because my first game console was an Atari 2600. Lots of games on that system used a flight-based control system where you would pull back to go up. Even when it wasn’t played from a cockpit perspective.
because we learned to play on flight sims
Why do they mean by "inverted controls? I remember that in some SNES games you could literally invert your controls and play with ABXY as if it were your D-Pad, and your D-Pad as yours ABXY buttons.
Usually it refers to joystick directions being reversed (common for flight simulators) or the “Southpaw” control methods on console controllers (designed for lefty users).
I’ve never seen a flight sim with reversed controls. They all work like a real plane joystick from what I’ve seen.
Yeah, that’s inverted controls. Push the joystick up to go down, and down to go up.
No… push forward to go down, pull back to go up.
That’s standard joystick operation, nothing inverted about it.
For airplanes yes, for literally any other application no, that’s inverted.
Yeah but the same principle applies to the camera in a third person game. It’s pivoting around the character - it’s a pitch rotation, same as a plane.
The above principle works for third person, too - if you’re conceptualizing moving a “handle” behind the camera rather than being in the camera itself, it’s inverted.
Not a true sim, but Ace Combat 7 novice controls are non-inverted. I feel like Far Cry 5/6 and definitely Fortnite put the non-inverted pitch control on the planes, which were not the focus of the game. I assumed other plane-including games did the same.
Il-2 Sturmovich for the Xbox 360 didn’t have the correct controls, I messaged the devs and they said they would work on it. Still waiting…
In an fps:
Inverted: push thumbstick forward to look down
Non Inverted: push thumbstick forward to look up
Third person games as well.
And a lot of games won’t let you switch on the go. ClairObscure won’t let you mix aiming over the shoulder and 3rd person camera movements. I’m kind of weird when it comes to camera controls:
In 3rd person view I want the camera to move the way I push the stick
- left moves the camera to the left, showing me what’s right
- right moves the camera to the right, showing me what’s left
- up moves the camera down, showing me what’s up
- down moves the camera up, showing me what’s down
In 1st person view I want it like:
- left to the camera to the right, showing me what’s left
- right moves the camera to the left, showing me what’s right
- up moves the camera down, showing me what’s up
- down moves the camera up, showing me what’s down
But when flying it’s different:
- left moves the plane to the left
- right moves the plane to the right
- up makes the plane descend
- down makes the plane ascend
When I started gaming FPS games didn’t have looking up and down. So the only up and down I was doing was in flight simulator games. I think that’s why I like to invert Y, that behavior carried over to games like Quake that introduced FPS looking up and down.
In the early 90s I used to play nes/SNES/Sega controllers upside down and people used to say I was crazy. Also I’m left handed. I still play that way for those systems but normal for every other system after that generation. N64 kinda forced my hand.
I used to play FPS games with inverted mouse aim.
No idea why I started playing like that, but it felt natural to me.
But my friends and I used to go to internet cafes to play and I had to set the mouse to inverted on every PC I played on and I was either too lazy or got annoyed so I just stopped and changed to playing with regular mouse controls.
I remember seeing this comic years ago explaining why inverted mouse makes sense.
