Pole Locked Camera

I find this camera the easiest to use, as it actually gives some consistent directionality that you can orient yourself to, as opposed to the regular camera which just changes orientation on a whim leaving you confused. But it breaks down and is basically unusable near the poles. Which is a huge problem if you are given a spawn near the pole.

I'm not sure how it should be fixed but it needs better behaviour near the poles so it is actually usable in a real game situation and not just for toying around with.

Perhaps the pole should simply be excluded from the orientation locking, and the orientation isn't locked until you leave the pole area?

Yeah i known that feel bro
I personally wish a compass in a edge of the Screen, and a button where u can switch pole lock off and on as u wish. So that u dont have to go in the Settings Menu.

You just turn it off while fighting over poles and you the n button align yourself with the poles when you lose direction. Then when the fighting around the poles is done you turn it back on. I have it kotkeyes so it's not an issue.

I remember trying it and finding the same - basically a bit crippling near the poles. Going with pole lock off and pressing the hotkey of n for the quick rotation for your bearings is the way I found works for now.

I'm hoping that the Uber team will have it as a soft rotation towards the axis when its further down the line - it'll hopefully rotate to the lock position but take a second or two to slowly move to that position rather than the whiplash snap with the fighting against it that it is now.

Hopefully all in due time. In Uber we trust and all that ^^

This has been discussed in the Official Camera Feedback Thread. My suggestion was to change pole lock so that instead of always being oriented N-S, it will attempt to orient itself N-S with a maximum rotation speed. As the camera nears the poles, that maximum rotation speed goes to zero.

That means a camera near the equator would still pretty much stay aligned no matter what you do, but cameras near the poles end up either slowly drifting toward a N-S alignment or not moving at all.

There are obviously disadvantages to this. My idea would give the camera a more "cinematic" feel, but you lose full control over it. Trying to give orders while the camera is spinning too fast could get to be just as hard as it is now near the poles. I'm hoping the numbers could be tweaked to avoid that problem, but I don't think we could really know without trying it.

Hmm, the way blender handles this sort of thing is that you are able to go "over the top" so to speak. This does reverse the polarity of the view, but this is fine I think. The polar view is still weird in that you can only rotate it, but you should be able to see more effectively when you don't run into a wall or have your camera suddenly rotated.

Does the pole lock have to be n/s ? Prob be easiest to have n/s or e/w option to lock to. It is a sphere after all.

I think about a solution that automaticaly adjust the "non-pole-lock camera" to have a pole lock
So thats the idea:
There could be a function programmed in the game that automaticly "presses 'n' after a scroll command"
Whenever you pull of a scrollkey (WASD or arrows or middel mouse) the game does this n-thing for you.
But maybe even better -> If there can be several "auto n-commands" while scrolling (every 10ms ?!) to smooth the transition, so that the view isnt jumping or seem to get stuck.

So the camera stays aligned to a fixed direction (NS) but will not stop at the poles so when scrolling up to the northpole the camera should go over it and past it upsidedown over the other side of the planet until i see my base again - like a camera would behave on a flat (lets say) Supreme Commander map.

Not as easy as it sounds. A rotating sphere doesn't have a defined e/w axis to rotate around but not a terrible idea. We've solved this problem in the real world with defined reference points. Since every planet has to have a coordinate system defined in order to render as well as move units around on. It may just me as simple as a U/I display on the planet that shows a coordinate system, probably with a conversion for Lat and Long but it could be as simple as quadrants. I think this would be helpful in coordinating with other players. No more "the enemy is to the left of my base... wait I mean right"

The problem isn't finding out where you are, distinct terrain features are already recognizable. The problem is directionality which is constantly lost with a free camera. You need to be able to think of the enemy and certain featues as being in a particular direction. You can't do that no matter how recognizable the terrain is. Pole lock provides that reference point and works well, the only issue is it breaks down at the pole.

I don't see a hotkey for toggling this.

I thought this was in the vanilla game. I'm using hotbuild2. Try using that, but I'm fairly sure you just missed it.

Try and take a screenshot of it so I can see where exactly I should be seeing it.

I actually think it's just a hotbuild2 thing. You can press N for a one-time adjustment, but I never saw a way to toggle the lock in the unmodded game.

Ok, then. I'm 100% for that this togge be put into vanilla game. It makes orientation in the game muc less confusing when you cna disable the pole lock and reenable it on demand.

It'd be nice if it just replaced the current "n" functionality actually.

I like to use n, but I might never use pole lock even if they gave us a toggle.

With a toggle, it would be pretty easy to automatically detect that the camera is near a pole and disable pole lock until the camera moves away.

If it snaps to the pole view automatically that would be annoying. When you are pressing it manually then you know exactly when you can expect the view to flip.

I also really wish it never snapped. Ideally the camera would glide more smoothly between orientations so that your brain has time to adjust.

No that would be even more annoying as you are trying to move the camera while it is moving off its own accord.