Mouselook like controls during flying, but outside mouselook?

[Noel Loordes]

Related to an older post, but not quite the same: I'd like to be able to use mouse-look style controls while flying, but see my avatar from a 3rd person perspective. So far I was unable to find a viewer that allows such controls.

When walking I can click on my avatar and have camera and movement direction rotate my keeping the left mouse button pressed (though sadly, this seems to ignore mouse sensitivity settings and is entirely too sensitive to even small mouse movement). When flying this BASICALLY works too, but unlike mouse look it doesn't allow changing height by looking upward or downward and flying "forward". Also, keeping the left mouse button pressed at all times and most importantly, having to click exactly the avatar and not even attachments is far from ergonomic.

World of Warcraft would be an example of a more convenient control scheme, that allows to switch between keyboard-centric and mouse-centric controls easily at any time, there by holding down the right mouse key. The important differences to the left-click solution in SL are currently:

 

• It doesn't matter WHERE I hold down the right key. Since SL doesn't make use of "keeping right-mouse down" but only of click/releasing the mouse button, such a control scheme shouldn't cause a conflict. Removing the restriction of where to click makes quick switching between UI interaction with the mouse and mouse-control more seemless.
• Mouse-control affects the direction of flight. 

Is there some viewer that offers such or in any other way alternative controls to flight (and maybe walking)? 

Another issue would be how difficult it is to jump on top of small objects, thanks to physics-simulation in movement such as non-instantaneous acceleration when walking, but I'm pretty sure that server side implementations play a big role there.

[Freya Mokusei]

Hi Noel

Unfortunately your suggested change to right-click behaviour is difficult, WoW of course lacks the level of interaction with the environment that SL has, and the context menu is displayed on mouse-down - not mouse-up - preventing this change. At present, SL only has mouse-up/down timing-detection on left-click. It might be possible to implement such a change in a TPV, but no-one appears inclined to clean up the mess Rod made when he fudged ClickToWalk. If you were thinking of approaching a TPV developer for this, NiranV would likely be your best bet.

Aiming your head 'down' to fly downward is unlikely also, as avatar motion velocities are always calculated in two dimensions (never vertical, vertical is only mapped through physics) only. This would require a server change (action unlikely).

Perhaps a more suitable solution would be to use a vehicle to fly using this method? A 'plane' type vehicle would allow climb/descent by aiming up and down, and also allow greater control over the camera. To prevent hassles/additional mouseclicks, the vehicle could be rezzed from an attachment and your avatar force-sat via RLV, effectively substituting the control change.

Good luck!