The X-Wing games had a button you could push that would lock your head-look to your target. As someone who doesn’t have VR (and playing on Xbox, have no near-future hope of playing with VR) this would be a very useful feature.
Head look target lock... good idea?
- Thread starter Metal Angel
- Start date
If I recall correctly a padlock option was discussed during alpha but decided against. I think the reasoning was that it was too much of an advantage
Hm... I could see that. Seems like it could still be implemented to some extent though. Like maybe it would break lock if your target went outside your normal field of view. Otherwise I don’t see how it could be anymore of an advantage than VR. I haven’t tried VR (or track IR for that matter) but I can imagine that would be a huge advantage over people without it.
knowing where your opponent is should be a basic skill to be assumed. you would have no problem knowing irl, as in vr, but on a 2d projection you have to construct the 3d space in your mind with far fewer clues. some people do that intuitively, others can have more trouble with it. so a monitor can be anything from a minor to a major disadvantage. (then again with a monitor you can use a tracking device, which can make looking behind you (180º) a breeze. try that in vr 
)
still, knowing where the target is and looking at it are different things. why would you want to do that? you want to train your hardpoints on it, not admire the paintjob. also, odds are your target is obscured by your own ship anyway.
so the only advantage this feature would give would be help those having trouble with spatial orientation from 2d clues. so it's not really op, just fair. my .5c.
)still, knowing where the target is and looking at it are different things. why would you want to do that? you want to train your hardpoints on it, not admire the paintjob. also, odds are your target is obscured by your own ship anyway.
so the only advantage this feature would give would be help those having trouble with spatial orientation from 2d clues. so it's not really op, just fair. my .5c.
I don't understand that point of view, is using VR or TrackIR "too much of an advantage" too?
Almost any serious flight sim will have a "padlock" or "target track" toggle where you can toggle your view between straight ahead, free-look and target-lock modes. Elite, however, not being anything remotely reassembling a "serious" flight sim does not have any such feature and presumably never will. The devs probably haven't even played enough flight sims to know what this feature does, much less to actually implement it.
Keep in mind we're talking about a game made by devs who, when repeatedly asked for a third fire button, consider mashing buttons to switch weapons a "challenge" rather than poor UI design. One of the devs literally referred to the limitation of only having two fire buttons to a "Street Fighter combo" and felt that is was a way of "balancing" ships with larger numbers of weapon types. The suggestion here was that it would be too much of an "advantage" to give the players a third button as if mashing buttons in a clumsy attempt to change weapons was some sort of "feature" and not poor game design. Then, these same devs inexplicably decided to finally give more than 2 fire buttons but only for multicrew gunners, who often don't even require it, and have still left ship pilots at the helm limited to 2 fire buttons.
Really given the responses (or rather lack of response) that the community has gotten from the devs on these issues I would expect that this is as good as the gameplay is going to get. I would really not be expecting any improvements here because they are trivial to actually implement and if the devs actually wanted to implement them we would have seen them by now. I recommend a good HOTAS setup in order to deal with the poor UI and gameplay design flaws we simply have to accept if we are playing the game. In fact I'm even tempted to get voice attack and maybe even an IR headtracker at some point so I can circumvent some of these issues entirely.
Yet they like to make a big deal about their VR support. Interesting decision there. Honestly I think the problem is that many of the devs either don't play their own game enough or don't have enough of an actual flight sim background to be good at making a flight sim. Really there are so many basic features that were standard for flight sim games in the 1990's that are not implemented in Elite and I can't understand why they never implemented them or why they are still missing 3.5 years after the game launched.
Last edited:
It might be the cause of more than one ship-shaped crater on an asteroid?
You can use Opentrack with the FreePIE IMU on Android phones (there are similar apps available for iPhones) to do some wireless headtracking. It's by no means a perfect solution (a great deal depends on the quality of the motion sensors on your phone), but once it's set up it gives you a lot more awareness.
With all that said, the 3D radar actually gives you sufficient information. It's a really nice concept and implementation.
You can use Opentrack with the FreePIE IMU on Android phones (there are similar apps available for iPhones) to do some wireless headtracking. It's by no means a perfect solution (a great deal depends on the quality of the motion sensors on your phone), but once it's set up it gives you a lot more awareness.
With all that said, the 3D radar actually gives you sufficient information. It's a really nice concept and implementation.
Interesting, the thought had occurred to me as well. In the 90s it seemed every good sim (Falcon etc) had a padlock view. And some terrible ones. But i suspect I actually wouldnt use it, using edtracker or similar is much more natural, and padlocking can actually be really confusing, I'd want to be able to quickly check my hud/pips etc. Of course padlock views came before trackir and other head tracking so it made more sense at the time.
I suppose it would be nice to have but I suspect not that useful.
I suppose it would be nice to have but I suspect not that useful.
It really staggers me that the Devs aren't hanging on your every word, desperate to implement every suggestion that you make as quickly as possible. I mean, you always ask so nicely ...
It's largely a feature that's given way to Head Tracking hardware. I used to use it quite a bit both in Falcon4 and European Air War, but now days head trackers fulfill that function quite nicely.
[video=youtube;-vX5Fw4C9Po]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vX5Fw4C9Po[/video]
[video=youtube;PDQzpia9ElU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDQzpia9ElU[/video]
Last edited:
FWIW, I have the mouse-look button on my throttle and then one of the hats on my joystick doubles as a head-look control.
It's not quite as slick as a proper padlock view but it's handy for stuff like turning onto a USS, jump-point or hostile target.
Regardless of the original reasons for not implementing a proper padlock view, I suspect it probably wouldn't be entirely wise to rely on it in ED.
We already have people howling about cops flying into their laser fire.
With a padlock view in use, I suspect it might end up like bumper-cars in RESs.
It's not quite as slick as a proper padlock view but it's handy for stuff like turning onto a USS, jump-point or hostile target.
Regardless of the original reasons for not implementing a proper padlock view, I suspect it probably wouldn't be entirely wise to rely on it in ED.
We already have people howling about cops flying into their laser fire.
With a padlock view in use, I suspect it might end up like bumper-cars in RESs.
So what's VR? Not enough of an advantage? The ability to quickly look around with your head to find your enemy and observe his heading and position relative to you isn't an advantage that padlock for non-VR players wouldn't be an acceptable counter to?
Just don't make it a toggle. Make it so it's a button you have to hold down, like the padlock in Ace Combat.
Probably wouldn't make much difference.
When advised to apply a bit of situational awareness, the people who complain about FF in RES's will usually say "But, the ships appear so quickly, and fly into your line of fire, that you don't have chance to stop firing!" thus ignoring the issue of that not being what situational awareness is all about, but c'est la vie.
Regardless of the merit of that complaint, it shows that ships can get into your way pretty quickly.
With a padlock view in use, I suspect there'd be a lot more people complaining about incurring murder bounties, rather than negligent-fire bounties, as a result of squishing Vipers accidentally.
FDev's reasons for not implementing a padlock view might not be the best but it's probably resulted in less salt.
That works too. Or if you have the X-56 like I do, you can use one of the mini-sticks to do that. I have one hat that slews the view around and the button above it to re-center the view. There are a lot of different options in control bindings you can choose from. I don't always fly with TrackIR since I move around a lot which moves my computer chair. I have to re-center and re-calibrate when I do. As a result I mostly use it when I'm doing extended combat (like for CGs), or player events since I'm also using my headset with microphone.
In some of my videos folks think I'm using TrackIR when I'm not. You have a lot of control on how you set up the look function. Unfortunately they don't always play well with mouse look as that's a toggle.
Last edited:
Everybody has slightly different "internal wiring" and "firmware" so different solutions work best for different people.
Personally I've found it a lot easier to keep situational awareness without any kind of tracking when playing on a flat screen. I've tried using mouselook and I've tried head-tracking and both of those mess up my situational awareness compared to staying in front view. Moving the head so that the tracker detects it yet keeping my eyes on the screen supplies conflicting data from my head position, my eye tracking and my visual field, which in somebody with relatively highly developed proprioception (The sense of "knowing where your body is without thinking about it" and 38 years of martial arts will develop it some) is sufficient of a jarring effect to act to the detriment of situational awareness in the "simulated 3d space" of the game. It feels like I'm operating a control stick with my nose and takes more concentration to maintain, not less. In other games I've found a padlock view to be not quite as bad but still much less natural, and therefore requiring more conscious thought, than sticking to a view forward.
The few times I've played with any kind of VR kit there was, of course, no such conflicting data rattling around in my brain and that made keeping good SA easier and felt really natural.
So whether or not a padlock view would actually constitute an advantage is probably a very personal thing.
Personally I've found it a lot easier to keep situational awareness without any kind of tracking when playing on a flat screen. I've tried using mouselook and I've tried head-tracking and both of those mess up my situational awareness compared to staying in front view. Moving the head so that the tracker detects it yet keeping my eyes on the screen supplies conflicting data from my head position, my eye tracking and my visual field, which in somebody with relatively highly developed proprioception (The sense of "knowing where your body is without thinking about it" and 38 years of martial arts will develop it some) is sufficient of a jarring effect to act to the detriment of situational awareness in the "simulated 3d space" of the game. It feels like I'm operating a control stick with my nose and takes more concentration to maintain, not less. In other games I've found a padlock view to be not quite as bad but still much less natural, and therefore requiring more conscious thought, than sticking to a view forward.
The few times I've played with any kind of VR kit there was, of course, no such conflicting data rattling around in my brain and that made keeping good SA easier and felt really natural.
So whether or not a padlock view would actually constitute an advantage is probably a very personal thing.
Padlock generally does have more of an advantage over VR, in that unless coded otherwise can track targets through your ship's hull and allows the view to gimbal way outside the limits of the human neck.
Not necessarily true. With VR you can turn around in your seat.
TrackIR is limited to forward-facing only, though, because: 1) you have to face the sensor and 2) you have to still be able to see the screen for it to even matter.
If implemented, I would assume that it would only follow forward-facing targets and return to center if the target went out of your field of view.
Sure, but Opentrack, for instance, lets you control the look through 180° in any direction. You can map the curve so that moving your head 45° turns the look 180°.
Actually, after thinking about it for a sec, you can't do this with TrackIR because the game stops the camera from rotating at a certain point. I don't even have my TrackIR set high enough to do a 180 degree turn but my head motion still gets stopped by the game at a little over 90 degrees.
Are you sure Opentrack can do that in Elite?
Last edited: