The PC FPS Look, Why is it Stuck?

Note: In reference to the characters, imagine that they have a sphere around them with longitudinal and latitudinal lines where the weapon's aim is defined by where it is on the sphere.

If you look at the history of PC First Person Shooter games, you'll find a lot of great diverse games that all have had a positive impact on our lives. If you look at early ones, they had a system of aiming that didn't involved the mouse, but the keyboard. The spectrum of where the gun shot at, the shots automatically hit any enemy that was facing the longitudinal line that intersected the end of the gun. So you could be pointing at a wall, with an enemy directly above you and you could kill him by shooting at the wall where the shots would hit the enemy instead. So basically you had no control of where your gun was pointing vertically, just horizontally.

Then the FPS progressed with "Free Look" which used the mouse to control the gun pointing at a reticle which is where your gun would shoot. Thus your gun could point to any point on that sphere. But instead of the gun being right in front of you in a straight line, the gun was held to the side, with it pseudo resting on your shoulder. That was the standard for the mid to late 90's and early 00's. Guns always were to the side, and the reticle to the middle of the screen.

Then there was a small development called iron sights. This allowed the character to bring up the weapon's sights to eye level, thus allowing you to look down the barrel of the gun simulating a personal aiming with the sights of the weapon. Recently laser-dot scopes have been used as well as the iron sights. But that's it.

PC FPS and FPS's in general have been stuck in free look with or without iron sights for a decade. No new developments have been made in regards to how we look and play in FPS's today.

Now this is where I have my own idea. I propose a 3 look system. Where the first look isn't a look at all. You are in the perspective of the character without the weapon pointing at this imaginary reticle. No one in their right minds would run around shooting from the hip at all in the real world. So you move fluidly with your weapon down by your side. The second sight is the weapon held up straight. Akin to iron sights but instead of looking perfectly down the top through the sights, you are just having it up to face level. Essentially the weapon is point at face level but your eyes aren't up against the sights. This allows you to walk or jog with the weapon semi-aimed allowing movement. Also this is the sight where automatic weapons are fired from since this look compensates for the recoil from a machine gun. The third sight is the iron sight. But because your face is right up against it and/or your aiming down the sights to get in an accurate shot, jaming on the mouse buttong to fire 30 shots isn't so smart. It defeats the purpose of the third sight because no one can keep looking down the sight perfecly unloading a clip at someone. So what would happen is you would only be able squeeze off 1-3 shots depending on the weapon. Not this look is in reference to modern weapons. I have no idea how to incorporate this into possible alien weapons.

So what do you think is the next step in how we look inside FPS's?

I do recommend playing Insurgency or America's Army (both free, INS is a HL2 mod though) They both have aiming quite similar to that, not being able to shoot while running, iron sight cant be accurate for very long, ect.whgresiak

I have played Insurgency but the game style itself is full of holes in many other places. You die way too quickly for the slow pace of the game. The aiming aspect of the game is great but the rest of the game is very questioneable.

I was just curious as to why this look persists.

There are many games that implement a system like you describe. Far Cry, for example, has "from the hip" as default, and gives you the option to sight "down the barrel" sacrificing movement speed and peripheral vision for accuracy, and the option to sprint during which time you can't shoot at all.

Arguments about how games work based on "In real life..." need to be considered with caution. While soliders may not have weapons ready as frequently as a video game, any solider facing 20 to 1 odds (aka video games odds) and not running away is irretrievably stupid. Games are games. While game mechanics can be influenced by "real life" ultimately decisions have to be made based on whats fun, what works in a game.

gr.