Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Can we get an option for a proper free camera? In it's current state the camera has Y-axis limits. This creates a set area for what is considered "above" and "below", thus giving the illusion of some sort of pseudo-gravity or force acting on the ship.

Allow us to properly spin the camera around 360 degrees. This would improve the feeling of being in space as you'd feel less restricted.

First step to making EVE space not feel like an underwater simulation.

Not as much as the inherent "up" and "down" do, whether or not the camera were aligned to it.

Stations, planets, asteroid belts, and most other celestials are all oriented on the same vertical axis. Even stargates were aligned to horizontally for the longest time, and only couple of years ago did they develop and implement the idea of having stargates point toward the solar systems they connect to. Ships also adhere to this same horizontal plane. For example, if you stop your ship, it will float back to "horizontal". If you fly at an angle up or down, your ship will always keep its "top" pointing "up".

You can check this easily by flying straight up (or down) and changing your direction back and forth through the vertical axis, and you will see your ship spin a long arc around the vertical axis instead of simply pitching up a little more. See this "Paint" masterpiece for illustration.

Figure 1 (left) shows your initial, a little bit short of going straight up, and in pink the new heading you input, which is a little bit beyond straight up, compared to your initial heading.

Figure 2 (top right) show what you would expect to happen in space. Your ship would simply establish an axis normal to the two headings, and rotate around that axis to achieve the new heading with the least amount of change.

Figure 3 (bottom right) shows what actually happens in EVE. Your ship spins around to point in the correct direction on the horizontal plane, and also pitches up / down as necessary to go in the right direction vertically.

There's simply no "upside-down" in EVE. Everything is right-side up, all the time.

Ergo, based upon the stuff established above, I don't think that simply unlocking the camera would do much to create the "space" feeling you want.

You would have to also re-orient every object and celestial

Besides, you assume that everyone actually wants to play a space game, and not a spaceships-in-jello game, which is what we have now, and is what I want EVE to be.

I don't think having a 360*360 degree (but still "turntable style") camera would be a bad thing, necessarily. I just don't think that the solution you propose is a solution to the problem you describe.