[Request] Rotate camera controls like populous TB

I've just started playing with the beta and the camera controls are a bit of a pain. Without automatic pole lock the orientation messes up over time (have to re-orient with a button). With it scrolling is painful at the poles.

I think left and right to rotate the planet about the camera would work well, with forward and back panning as normal. If you want to pan left and right, edge scroll as normal. With rotation controls you naturally orient the view to whatever makes sense at the time. No control scheme suits everyone, but I think this one and what is in place already would cover most people.

I also found that I wanted to manually pole lock to the extent that I like. However I would like to keep wasd as is and have q and e rotate the view.

Pole lock isn't something that the top players use. Playing on pole lock gets difficult when playing around the poles.

It takes some getting used to and some spacial awareness, but it's very possible, and much better, to play without pole lock on.

I don't play with pole lock, instead I just tap the orient north hotkey from time to time. Camera anchor points are also your best friend.

Without pole lock when I visit the same locale I migth have a different rotation. When this annoys me I would like to compensate to be nearer how it was previously. But I do'nt want to turn pole lock on to accomplish it. I have try out the camera anchors.

There's even a mod for that if you want to visually keep track of which anchors your set.

And it has an orient north button. It's really a great mod, I use it all the time.

Yeah, I'd just like to be able to see the horizon while playing the game, giving commands, etc...

If the current 'debug' camera could zoom, I'd play the whole game in that mode.

Please?

isn't orient north in the game by default? You press 'N' and it turns the camera so that the top faces north

Ctrl + Arrow Keys (or WASD if you've turned that on).

Yeah that was a good addition.

Can you enable us to remap that?

I was asking @UberGaf about that recently and he said they will open up some more camera control to the api. I think we can expect to see that as an option in hotbuild.

I would prefer to hold the middle mouse button to change the camera angle and rotate the camera. I already use WASD for moving the camera around.

I started this thread back when I found it hard to tell what was happening unless the orientation remained static, and before I knew about 'ctrl+arrows'. I suspect many new players are like this. After a while of playing orientation isn't an issue, and doesn't really matter unless someone in a team game says 'look east'.

WASDQE sounds good for 'pan primary rotate secondary', or swap aq and de for a 'rotate primary pan secondary' control scheme.

Yes, middle mouse to rotate and wads/ cursor to move would be nice.

Since there is Ctrl + Arrow Keys, it would be nice if Ctrl + Mouse wheel drag also worked for rotation.

Moving with keyboard doesn't feel really practical in this game. It's all about zooming in and out. That could be improved a bit too, though. It's not quite as nice as in SupCom2.

Huh, even after turning off Mission Control, Ctrl + left/right does nothing (ctrl + up/down zooms though).
Any ideas why?

Edit: this is on a Mac.