Perhaps we could use some sort of toggle for a mouselook that is not bound to the nose? In case someone wants to just look behind them or even just to the side without turning their ship. At present, you can do this while using Turbo; it'd be nice to be able to do it on command without locking your ship in a single velocity vector.

If you fly in physics mode your velocity vector stays constant regardless of which direction your ship is facing.
Arcade mode is really an automatic compensating mechanism that sits on top of the physics mode. It automatically adjusts your thrust to keep your speed constant and your velocity always headed to where you're facing.
In physics mode you have to make the compensations yourself to change direction.

I understand the difference between physics and arcade. My intent was to have my nose itself stay in one direction while turning my view, the way you can do so while using Turbo.

I've spent a bit of time using newtonion flight models, so I'm quite familiar with vector of velocity, nose direction, and where my face is pointed out the window. It's the latter I want more control over. :)

Yeah, we were going to add a 'look' command to be able to just look around without changing the orientation of your ship. It was just left at the bottom of our to-do list.

But what's the point? If turning your nose makes to difference at all to your velocity then what would be the difference between turning your ship and turning your head?

If you are turboing there is no difference. However if you are just flying around or being chased, you would probably want to quickly glance behind yourself without changing your course. It's just a personal preference.

Firing direction, and latency in re-orienting the ship where you want to fire. If I could disengage the link between my cursor and orientation, then when I realize a target is in the -other- direction, I could snap my pointer back to actual orientation, then aim more quickly than if I was having my nose traverse more distance.
Theoretically, anyway. Depends on the implementation.

Well, more buttons to press is always good. I guess.

This would be an awesome feature!