So I had been kinda idly wondering why there wasnt a "look behind" function or a "free look". I know mouselook exists but unless you are boosting looking around changes the ships orientation.

After reading Deathspores suggestion about individual cameras for the turrets I was spurred on to do a little searching and found this thread https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/16901

The idea of a quick "check your six" button or free look seems to have been suggested a few times and you (Inc.) seemed to be in favour of the idea. There was some opposition from the some of the community though, understandable if you like your targets being kinda blind when youre chasing them down.

When I was playing in VR I had the freedom to look around which would be true of the situation you were describing in the thead I linked, where the view is fed to the pilot via the ships sensors etc. and not an actual window in the hull. Even then some sort of rear view camera inset into the hud somewhere would have been uselful.

Outside of VR its kinda absurd that I cant reverse my ship and look behind me at the same time. With mouselook on anytime you look behind, your ship tries to steer itself to point the other way.

Anyway, with the other suggestion on multiple views and the previous suggestion that you seemed in favour of, I thought I would open the discussion again here rather on Deathspores thread. As although the two are closely related I felt this would be of the interest of all players and not just capship owners.

+1 to rear view mirror, especially if we change the game to be allowed to dock with station only in reverse mode.

Yeah, the rear-view-mirror is something I've always thought would be useful. I will give a warning that it's a little bit of a performance tradeoff, and potentially down the road it could be a little controversial, because it's something that faster devices might be able to do, and slower devices might not.

Basically, one of the first optimizations of any rendering engine is "frustrum culling", the process of not-bothering-to-render all the "stuff" that is outside the main camera view. This means that, instead of rendering everything in the entire scene around you (behind you, etc), you render only the stuff that's close to the camera. This can be a pretty huge optimization.. the really fancy AAA graphics you see in the latest games would be totally unplayable without this.

Some might say "oh, VO runs on a potato anyway, what difference does it make", but while it may not matter much now (other than maybe on VR, which is pretty sensitive), it will probably have a greater impact before long. We're a bit overdue for an asset and renderer/shader update that will likely make the game a bit "heavier" on the GPU. We had started working on that about a year ago, but was sidelined by the anti-cheat stuff and some other projects.

So, anyway, this is probably not something that'll ever be the "default", but I think it'd be an interesting option. And a toggle-able thing that give you a "quick glance behind" could also be pretty useful, and that would not have much framerate impact (as long as it replaced the entire forward view).

Sort of a tangential idea here, but why not allow the camera to track your target? This would irrevocably alter every aspect of combat, but I can't think of a modern space combat sim that doesn't have this function. VO being a skill based sim wouldn't change, but the skills needed would change dramatically. I think camera-based target tracking would make single combats more variable, and less disorienting, especially at very close ranges.

Do you mean like in a "selected target" window?

I assume you don't mean the "main camera" of the scene, your overall HUD/cockpit view. If that were solely focused on your target, and not the flight perspective of your ship, that would be.. extremely disorienting.

Lots of games do "selected target" views, but they mostly are useful for making sure you have the correct target selected, or if your target is destroyed by a homing missile (which is why modern fighter jets use it, since they rarely engage in "gun" combat anymore).

Selected Target status-screens don't tell you "exactly where" something is, relative to your current orientation (we already do that, to the extent of a HUD's capability, with the leadoff target).

A fixed "rear view mirror", while a bit conceptually archaic, does give that instant "situational awareness" information: you train to know exactly where the objects are in the mirror, relative to your ship's orientation, until your subconscious learns it, and then you just react automatically.

Any view that is "auto-tracking", and is therefore an unpredictable angle, is a mixed bag in a fast-paced combat application. It's useful for some things (mentioned above), but not for orientation situational awareness, which is, I think, the main point of this thread.

I must admit that on second thought, my idea wasn't entirely well reasoned on my part. Most space-sims that do fullscreen camera lock don't rely on high speed erratic movement.

A toggleable rearview or an inset rearview, or perhaps a set of toggleable views to aft, port, and starboard, would be a better and more easily implemented and employed system that benefits everyone.

The main viewport being able to lock to a target would be incredibly useful when making videos, though 😁

but as for actually important and useful functionality, yeah, any high-end combat would find that feature as a difficulty increaser, or no change.

For a 'backup camera', as a toggle or press-to-hold to just rotate the camera around, I'd throw that in my "low priority wants"; denser scrap/asteroid debris fields and the internals of derelicts make for wonderful combat and event locations, but it can be difficult to fight in when there's no way to tell if you're about to back up against an object and disorient yourself. As the universe becomes more 'crowded' by dynamic objects, having more visibility of these as you maneuver will be great.