Turn Off Instructor Snap-back when Using Free Look

Suggestions Gameplay
1
[Would you like to see this in-game?]
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

The Problem:

Right now, if you fly with Mouse Aim and hold down your Free Look button to look around, the Instructor acts incredibly janky if you try to fly the plane with your keyboard (WASD) at the same time.

The game basically locks your manual keyboard controls behind a stupid camera-angle check. After doing some testing, here is exactly how it breaks:

  • The Snap-Back: If you hold free look and try to fly with your keyboard, the Instructor aggressively fights you. Even if you pull a maximum-rate hard maneuver, the second you let go of the keyboard keys, the Instructor violently snaps the plane right back to the heading you were on before you pressed free look.
  • The “Off-Screen” Glitch: The only way to get the keyboard to actually override the Instructor and stop the snap-back is to flick your camera so far away that your original flight reticle completely leaves your screen. Once the reticle is totally culled off-screen, the game finally “unlocks” your keyboard controls, and it actually works normally until you let go of free look.

This makes zero sense. If I’m looking slightly to the left or right to keep tabs on a teammate or an enemy, I can’t do minor evasive weaves or adjust my flight path because the plane constantly fights me. I shouldn’t be forced to wildly flick my camera 180 degrees away just to get my WASD keys to work properly.

The Suggestion:

Add a simple toggle in Options > Air Battle Settings:

“Disable Mouse Aim tracking during Free Look” (Yes / No)

How it should work:

  • If set to YES: The exact millisecond you hold down your Free Look button, the Instructor stops trying to steer the plane toward where your mouse was. Your keyboard (WASD) gets 100% direct control over the plane with absolutely zero Instructor fight or snap-back, no matter where your camera is pointing. When you let go of Free Look, the mouse aim reticle just centers back onto wherever the nose of the plane is currently pointing.
  • If set to NO: Keeps the current broken default behavior for anyone who actually likes it.

Why this needs to happen:

  1. It’s annoying and inconsistent: Actual plane control shouldn’t depend on whether my camera is turned 30 degrees or 90 degrees. A player looking slightly to the side should have the exact same keyboard responsiveness as someone looking straight behind.
  2. Better defensive flying: This would let mouse-aim players smoothly tap rolling keys, weave, and actually dodge incoming fire while keeping their eyes on the enemy, without the game constantly trying to override their inputs.
5 Likes
2

+9999999999999999 this pisses me off so much I literally quit playing planes due to it. I’m all for this

3

+1

There already is a mechanic in-game for this that they could re-use for this purpose as well. In the controls settings you can change control mode to “view” which makes the plane and controls behave exactly like described in your suggestion. It would be great if that mechanic was an optional setting that temporarily activates during free look.

If you want a bandaid solution (that sort of works but is more cumbersome than what you describe) you can set your simplified controls to the “view” option and use the “toggle control mode” key bind to switch between the mouse aim and simplified controls (view).

(i would personally also at the same time like to see an option for making the freelook itself toggleable, give the players and option to have free look be either hold or a toggle with two different key bind options. Now with the addition of the new short/long/double press key binds you could have hold free look bound to the standard short press “C” and toggle free look bound to the double tap “2xC”, that way you would have the option to not have to hold a key down the entire time).

1 Like
4

Not a bad idea, I’m fairly sure this function is responsible for more than a few wing rips on some of the planes with more fragile wings.

5

a great suggestion
its pretty annoying to flick my camera constantly.

they should also make this an option for all other sights/cameras too.
having to fight my plane trying to constantly correct to a arbitrary angle while trying to keep the laser on a target while manuvering is pretty difficult.

btw this option already exist for bomb & gunner cameras:
“Autopilot for gunner and bomb sight modes”

6

Idd like to see this for helicopters too. In Gunner view using wasdeq will partially move the instructor cursor.

Ie hovering and heading 0, press and hold E to rotate 10 degres, the cursor will adjust to 5-6 (roughly) degres, so letting go of E will make the helicopter jerk back to the cursor. This is quite jarring when trying to do small adjustments in Gunner view.

It should behave like you said and adjust the cursor to the manually input direction

7

This would be such a big QOL feature in just a simple change hope gaijin see this +1

8

This is the biggest drawback for me when it comes to air sim. Dogfights are more me fighting the camera than anything else.