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Comment by jameskilton | Hacker News Reader

I invert (Clair Obscur most recently) because I'm controlling the camera. If I want to look to the left, the camera has to move to the right. I can't play third-person any other way and I have tried!

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Oh man... I've never read anyone perceiving third-person movement controls this way before and you just blew my mind.

But you are the camera!

GP is talking about third person perspective games. "You" (the character you're playing) aren't the camera. You are the character the camera points to.

The camera is hovering somewhere above/behind the player character. To move the field of view left while keeping the player centered in the FOV, the camera has to translate/orbit right.

In a 3rd person perspective game, I am controlling a character that I can see with my eyes. I'm not the character.

Yes. I clarified that "you" meant something different from the usual meaning in the comment you're replying to.

Are you making a joke? I feel like I'm being whooshed.

You each view the world differently, and neither of you are right or wrong. I had to learn spherical astronomy to get the East/West flips on basic up-facing first-person charts correct, and I have to invert differently for first- and third-person views in video games. Not to mention the nightmare of how camera independent axes controls sometimes swap “left” and “right” rotation on the Q and E keys because game designers assume that their mental model of CW and CCW inputs is universal across all players and each game has a coin flip chance of being different from the next. It most definitely is not! (Do you slew the camera from the direction, or do you pivot the camera to the direction?)

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