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Why do some gamers invert their controls? Scientists now have answers, but they’re not what you think
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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Invert Y-axis gang unite!
Make Y-axis INVERTED Default Again
Seriously, on older games pushing up to look forward was the default. It was only later that they decided to call it inverted.
I just don’t get why anyone would use non-inverted. Why would I tilt my head forward to look up?
I think the core of this dispute is the intuition of each person of what exactly they're moving and how they're moving it.
Like I have never once considered, until just now by reading your comment, that the stick could controlling my characters head. I've always intuitively thought that I'm controlling "the point in space that my character is looking at."
Changing this makes one way make more sense than the other. Like, despite my preference for non inversion, I would fully concede that if I were to imagine the stick controlling the head directly that inversion makes plenty of sense.
Yup. I started w/ flight sims, so the controller controlling the airplane made sense. When I transitioned to FPS games, the controller controlling the head made logical sense. I'm not the character, I'm controlling the character, so why shouldn't the character work like a plane?
Well, put your hand on your head like you would a mouse. If you push forward what happens? You look down. There's no "correct" way here.
Also hate "natural" scroll on PC.
With a mouse, yes. With a trackpad? No
Nope. Down to go down, up to go up. Always.
The explanation I've heard for your trackpad argument is that the trackpad is "grabbing" the page or whatever, but I've never made that connection. Trackpad gestures to me are equivalent to the scrollwheel, they're just a different way of interfacing with it. The only thing that "grabs" the page is my finger when it's on a touch screen.
Yeah and trackpads are basically remote touchscreens
They're not though. A trackpad processes relative inputs, while a touchscreen processes absolute inputs. If I touch the corner of my trackpad, it doesn't produce a click on the corresponding corner of the screen like a touchscreen would. Likewise a touch and slide doesn't drag stuff, it moves the cursor relative to where it was.
It's much more similar to a mouse. In fact, if you just imagine your finger is a mouse, you've just described all of the functions of a touchpad except gestures, and gestures are just replacements for the buttons (two tap for right click, two finger slide for scroll wheel, etc).
I used to play inverted then started gaming on pc. Now when I use a controller its like neither is good for me - my brain will sometimes think inverted and other times non-inverted mid play session
I find that for me this happens especially often in 3rd person camera control. And I think it has to do with the distance between the camera and the controlled actor.
Think driving a car, and the camera moving up close to the car when you're under something like a bridge which would otherwise clip the camera. At that point my preference for camera controll switches from 'orbit object' mode to 'aim' mode so to say.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, that screws me up too. For first person games, joystick forward to look down makes intuitive sense to me, because I'm controlling the axis of the head (comes from airplane sims). For third person games, now I'm controlling the camera, and it's not so clear.
Invert Y-axis gang!
There's fewer and fewer people who use inverted controls, I've found. Makes sense, I'm old and it just became muscle memory for me after playing Goldeneye til my thumbs bled back in the day. It's more of a pain in the ass now, since non-inverted seems to be the norm and I always have to hunt to change it any time I fire up a game with camera controls.
For me it's from flying remote control airplanes and it has a name - Mode 2.
I wish Genshin Impact supported invert :(
Ah, so make things worse — just like MAGA