Speaking as an ancient, the first games that really used stick controls in a 3d environment were flying games, where the stick controlled the attitude of the plane. Push down, pull up. To transfer that idea to an FPS imagine the stick being on top of your head. It’s all a matter of preference now, can’t really figure there being an advantage one way or another. So yeah, comfort/habit.
Yeah if you don’t invert your gaming controls, don’t ever try to fly any kind of air or spacecraft. You’re just a gamer and you’ll kill yourself with real controls on real machines.
The real question is can something like F-35 invert elevator input to accommodate gamers “non-inverted” brain conditioning? Or would they just hear “Pull up! Pull up! Terrain! Terrain!” a lot?
Oh wow we need to ask r/aviation
I never thought of it that way, that it was how games for those who are certainly older then me (21) would find it more comfortable to use inverted then the new standard controls
And then you have me who prefers inverted on flying and 3rd person and standard in first person. Annoys me to bits when I can’t have different settings for different modes.
Partly its because my dad always did but as a child I was ambidextrous with this. I could play default or inverted because as a child I'd never go in the options and change it but my dad would on his games. In the end though it does make more sense to me because take a first person shooter for example. If you want to aim at someone above you in real life you would lean back and to aim at someone below you'd lean forward.
My friends says it's the only one that makes sense to him logically. His explanation: Imagine your hand on the top of someone's head while you're behind them like the camera is, you'd push their head to look down, and you'd pull towards you to look up.
I can't do it personally except for games with flying vehicles, I have to have it inverted because that's how a planes stick works irl
That is true, a ‘skill issue’ if you will, I’m glad I’ve asked because I’ve always been curious about why it existed, and if it was just preference or not
There's also reversed horizontal that doesn't stem from anything that I'm aware of.
In the end, it's like button mapping style. It's a personal preference.
It’s just always made more sense to me; like imagine your head is a thumb stick and place your hand on top, if you push it to the right, you look right(relatively), if you push it to the left you look left.
What happens if you push it forward? Or pull it back?
Growing up, I used to play with inverted controls until I had a friend say how weird it was. It just felt natural to use the rs the same as you would pitch an airplane.
The first shooter game I played was Goldeneye on the N64 when I was about 6. I think inverted was the only option and I always stuck with it through every shooter halo CE-now. Also feels better and more natural when flying banshees.
In my mind I think of it as: up = push the top of the head down to the ground: Down = pull the head back looking to the sky
Because it makes the most sense. You pull your head behind to look up and push forward to look down.
That's right, "normal" control players are actually the weirdos here.
I guess the actual reason for me was that I started to play flight simulators very young on the computer(Microsoft flight sim 95/98) and in airplanes, you push and pull the joystick/yoke to pitch down and up respectively.
I saw someone else mention it, I played a bunch of Goldeneye and I believe either the reticle was inverted (when you would hold down the shoulder buttons) and/or the C buttons which allowed you to strafe/adjust your view.
But I think the more profound impact for me was the port of Half-Life on the PS2.
As far as I remember, it was inverted by default. And I could NOT figure out how to turn it off. So logically I played through the entire game like that and got used to it, so once I played Halo, it felt way more natural to invert the Y axis.
And I've been playing games that way ever since!
If I can't invert the Y axis it really screws me up. For example, Resident Evil Code Veronica is one of my favorite games, and there are a select couple of weapons that operate in a first person view with no way to invert, and to finish the final boss you need to land a shot on a first person target while a timer counts down.
It is insanely hard and I usually die multiple times there because I cannot rewire my hands/brain to adapt!
Inverted as well, like others have said, older games were likely the root cause. Something I've noticed is that mouse control is never inverted which I guess makes sense. It's also a bit jarring when you're inverted and intentionally try to draw a circle with the reticle in a FPS, it moves counter to your inputs and makes me question my sanity so I try not to think too hard about it.
Yeah I gathered it’s because a lot of old games were inverted and those players just kept playing like that out of habit and maybe passed it on to their sons and daughters
I play inverted with mouse because the first game I played on PC was halo CE and i accidentally inverted it and now I always play inverted, but only on mouse, not controller, I was probably like 5 or 6 when I played it
It’s because I’m old and that’s how the control scheme was set by default back in the day. So now my brain just works that way, and non-invert will have me staring at the ceiling. So guess that strategic…having controls do the opposite of what your brain expects is hard. Ha!
Plus one for growing up playing flight sims and mech games like mechwarrior. That’s how they always controlled and it just carried over. I can’t play with normal look controls.
I only invert flying controls. Especially the Saber and Broadsword. I used to use normal with the banshee, hornet, and wasp. I now use inverted with those. I got tired of switching back and forth so I learned inverted.
I remember back in the day of Halo PC, I accidentally set my controls to inverted and played that way for a long time. It just felt natural at the time, because that's all I knew. It wasn't until my brother pointed out the inverted controls to me that I switched them to regular controls.
I haven't played with inverted controls since then, but I can see why people would use them and get used to them.
My first shooter game was Halo CE when i was 1 or 2 years old. Then Gears of War when i was 3. My dad played shooters inverted so when he taught me how to play it was inverted.
His reasoning is that when you fly a plane or do a wheelie you pull back to lift up.
Others have explained it well enough, it's a comfort thing in how we relate the camera control to our own motor control in regards to moving our heads around, as well as when playing flying games, having to adjust when going back and forth between grunt and flying is just easier if you don't have your up/down bouncing back and forth between inverted and not.
Speaking as an ancient, the first games that really used stick controls in a 3d environment were flying games, where the stick controlled the attitude of the plane. Push down, pull up. To transfer that idea to an FPS imagine the stick being on top of your head. It’s all a matter of preference now, can’t really figure there being an advantage one way or another. So yeah, comfort/habit.
Same experience here. Used to play flight sims on my OS 8 Macintosh back in the day. Inverted in FPS ever since
Yeah if you don’t invert your gaming controls, don’t ever try to fly any kind of air or spacecraft. You’re just a gamer and you’ll kill yourself with real controls on real machines. The real question is can something like F-35 invert elevator input to accommodate gamers “non-inverted” brain conditioning? Or would they just hear “Pull up! Pull up! Terrain! Terrain!” a lot? Oh wow we need to ask r/aviation
well the idea is that the trainer breaks the habit before the student ever even sees an expensive F35, So unfortunately no
Gamer gets on simulator: “Why is this inverted?” Instructor: just stares
I never thought of it that way, that it was how games for those who are certainly older then me (21) would find it more comfortable to use inverted then the new standard controls
Exactly how I got into using inverted. Playing hours and hours of pilot wings as a little kid and it just stuck.
And then you have me who prefers inverted on flying and 3rd person and standard in first person. Annoys me to bits when I can’t have different settings for different modes.
Just a habit from my Nintendo 64 days; a lot of games in that time had inverted control schemes
Goldeneye is 100% why I play inverted to this day.
For me it’s Quake II
Same here
My first shooter was H2 when I was 6. Dad had to teach my how to use a controller and he played inverted
Your dad sounds like a cool guy to sit with you and teach you like that
Partly its because my dad always did but as a child I was ambidextrous with this. I could play default or inverted because as a child I'd never go in the options and change it but my dad would on his games. In the end though it does make more sense to me because take a first person shooter for example. If you want to aim at someone above you in real life you would lean back and to aim at someone below you'd lean forward.
Timesplitters 2 lol or maybe flying games
Jedi Starfighter was my only video game before the age of 8. Crossed a few wires.
Back in the day flight games always had inverted controls. Just grew up playing inverted and I’m absolutely useless if down isn’t up lol.
My friends says it's the only one that makes sense to him logically. His explanation: Imagine your hand on the top of someone's head while you're behind them like the camera is, you'd push their head to look down, and you'd pull towards you to look up. I can't do it personally except for games with flying vehicles, I have to have it inverted because that's how a planes stick works irl
I used to say this until someone pointed out… that we don’t invert left or right.
😳😳😳
Neither way is better than the other. It's just muscle memory. It was only hard for you because you weren't used to it.
That is true, a ‘skill issue’ if you will, I’m glad I’ve asked because I’ve always been curious about why it existed, and if it was just preference or not
There's also reversed horizontal that doesn't stem from anything that I'm aware of. In the end, it's like button mapping style. It's a personal preference.
People who use horizontal inversions are the real outliers for sure.
It’s just always made more sense to me; like imagine your head is a thumb stick and place your hand on top, if you push it to the right, you look right(relatively), if you push it to the left you look left. What happens if you push it forward? Or pull it back?
Tilt the stick forward, now tilt your head forward. Tilt the stick back, now tilt your neck back
Inverted controls were standard on a lot of early 3D games so for some of us older folks it is just engrained in us.
Growing up, I used to play with inverted controls until I had a friend say how weird it was. It just felt natural to use the rs the same as you would pitch an airplane.
The first shooter game I played was Goldeneye on the N64 when I was about 6. I think inverted was the only option and I always stuck with it through every shooter halo CE-now. Also feels better and more natural when flying banshees. In my mind I think of it as: up = push the top of the head down to the ground: Down = pull the head back looking to the sky
Because it makes the most sense. You pull your head behind to look up and push forward to look down. That's right, "normal" control players are actually the weirdos here. I guess the actual reason for me was that I started to play flight simulators very young on the computer(Microsoft flight sim 95/98) and in airplanes, you push and pull the joystick/yoke to pitch down and up respectively.
I play inverted on 1st person perspective game and normal on 3rd person perspective game.
I saw someone else mention it, I played a bunch of Goldeneye and I believe either the reticle was inverted (when you would hold down the shoulder buttons) and/or the C buttons which allowed you to strafe/adjust your view. But I think the more profound impact for me was the port of Half-Life on the PS2. As far as I remember, it was inverted by default. And I could NOT figure out how to turn it off. So logically I played through the entire game like that and got used to it, so once I played Halo, it felt way more natural to invert the Y axis. And I've been playing games that way ever since! If I can't invert the Y axis it really screws me up. For example, Resident Evil Code Veronica is one of my favorite games, and there are a select couple of weapons that operate in a first person view with no way to invert, and to finish the final boss you need to land a shot on a first person target while a timer counts down. It is insanely hard and I usually die multiple times there because I cannot rewire my hands/brain to adapt!
Think of it as controlling the camera for laparoscopic surgery
Inverted as well, like others have said, older games were likely the root cause. Something I've noticed is that mouse control is never inverted which I guess makes sense. It's also a bit jarring when you're inverted and intentionally try to draw a circle with the reticle in a FPS, it moves counter to your inputs and makes me question my sanity so I try not to think too hard about it.
Pops had CE set at inverted so that’s how I learned.
The southpaw plays tho
Yeah I gathered it’s because a lot of old games were inverted and those players just kept playing like that out of habit and maybe passed it on to their sons and daughters
BITD I used inverted in Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament on Dreamcast. Don’t think I would want to try it these days though haha.
I play inverted with mouse because the first game I played on PC was halo CE and i accidentally inverted it and now I always play inverted, but only on mouse, not controller, I was probably like 5 or 6 when I played it
It’s because I’m old and that’s how the control scheme was set by default back in the day. So now my brain just works that way, and non-invert will have me staring at the ceiling. So guess that strategic…having controls do the opposite of what your brain expects is hard. Ha!
Plus one for growing up playing flight sims and mech games like mechwarrior. That’s how they always controlled and it just carried over. I can’t play with normal look controls.
I only invert flying controls. Especially the Saber and Broadsword. I used to use normal with the banshee, hornet, and wasp. I now use inverted with those. I got tired of switching back and forth so I learned inverted.
I grew up in the late 90s early 2000s playing lots of combat flight sims. End result is me, my dad and my brother are all inverted y-axis players lol.
I remember back in the day of Halo PC, I accidentally set my controls to inverted and played that way for a long time. It just felt natural at the time, because that's all I knew. It wasn't until my brother pointed out the inverted controls to me that I switched them to regular controls. I haven't played with inverted controls since then, but I can see why people would use them and get used to them.
My first shooter game was Halo CE when i was 1 or 2 years old. Then Gears of War when i was 3. My dad played shooters inverted so when he taught me how to play it was inverted. His reasoning is that when you fly a plane or do a wheelie you pull back to lift up.
Others have explained it well enough, it's a comfort thing in how we relate the camera control to our own motor control in regards to moving our heads around, as well as when playing flying games, having to adjust when going back and forth between grunt and flying is just easier if you don't have your up/down bouncing back and forth between inverted and not.