At the moment, head-look in the game's non-VR mode is accomplished by rotating the camera view-point around a fixed point representing the centre of the player character's head. This is effective enough, but it has the side-effect of making the game world appear to be a flat image projected on to a big sphere around the player. In real life, moving your head (or even your eyes!) effectively moves your viewpoint a small distance in the corresponding direction, because your head doesn't pivot around the pupil of either eye. The parallax from this movement acts as a subtle but noticeable depth cue. Close one eye and try it out!
Implementing this effect in the game (using the same system that moves the player's viewpoint in response to ship movement) would greatly improve the sense of scale and depth in in-ship views, and help address some of the comments about ship cockpits seeming very small from the player perspective compared to the vanity camera. Panning the view would result in parallax between the player's body/chair and the cockpit furniture, and between the cockpit furniture and the star backdrop.
The distances involved are very small on the game scale so I don't know how practical this is, but given that it's already done in VR as a natural consequence of following the player's head movements, I am optimistic.
Implementing this effect in the game (using the same system that moves the player's viewpoint in response to ship movement) would greatly improve the sense of scale and depth in in-ship views, and help address some of the comments about ship cockpits seeming very small from the player perspective compared to the vanity camera. Panning the view would result in parallax between the player's body/chair and the cockpit furniture, and between the cockpit furniture and the star backdrop.
The distances involved are very small on the game scale so I don't know how practical this is, but given that it's already done in VR as a natural consequence of following the player's head movements, I am optimistic.
