[opensource-dev] left and right arrows change to strafing in mouselook

[Jacek Antonelli]

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 2:11 AM, Stickman <stickman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why not just skip a half-way solution and implement full key mapping?

Not to pick on you personally, Stickman, but it peeves me when
somebody suggests that someone else should "just" do something that's
thousands and thousands of times more difficult than the original
proposal. It's not a very helpful attitude to take, and can be really
demotivating to potential contributors. And not just the one with the
original proposal, but also other people who may have been thinking
about contributing but were put off by the unfriendly atmosphere.

Anyway, turning to the idea being proposed...

I can see how an option like that would benefit users who like to use
a first-person view, but don't want to (or can't) use the mouse to
turn. For example, I can picture someone walking through an art
gallery with one hand on the keyboard, a mug of coffee in the other
hand. :-D

My only concern would be "option bloat". The Preferences window is
already pretty crowded and complex, so there's a trade-off to adding
anything more there. If an option is only somewhat useful, or is
useful only to a relatively small percent of users, then it might be
better to put it in the Advanced menu, for example.

I don't use mouselook very often, so I wouldn't be a good person to
weigh the benefit of this particular proposed option versus the added
complexity. But I will point out that the "Input & Camera" preference
panel (in the SL 1.x UI) is not overly crowded, so the cost of putting
a new option there would not be very high. For the SL 2.0 UI, it could
potentially be squeezed in to the "Setup" preference panel, although
it would be a tighter fit.

So, to summarize: I think it's a good idea and you (or someone) should
go for it. :-)

- Jacek