Talk:Free look

Merging
I disagree that this page should be merged. The article for First-Person Shooters is already really long. Freelook is also relevant to games that are not FPSes. Brighterorange
 * Everything in this article is about FPSs except for the words 'flight simulators', and there isn't really room for expansion. Orange Goblin 21:07, 12 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not really sure why exactly freelook is important enough to rate an entire "article" when a simple definition would suffice. However, I'm also not familiar enough with how wiki works to say how that could best be done. What I am certain of is that adding a whole section or paragraph to FPS for it would be a mistake.
 * If you don't like the article, you could always VfD it, but I don't think it could pass any of the standards for deletion. Normally a merge would be okay with me, but the FPS article is huge. When an article gets really long, it is standard practice to break parts of it out into smaller articles. This concept stands on its own, so it should be its own article. Brighterorange 14:35, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I believe freelook can refer to any amount of mouse looking, from FPSs to flight simulators to 3D map programs. I can freelook in any amount of 3D programs, it's not limited to FPS, or even games.

I think this article should either expand itself as to not sound only game-based or be deleted (considering how FPS-based the article is).--ZombieBite June 28, 2005 17:17 (UTC)

This article should be kept as is. Free look is not unique to first-person shooters. Fredrik | talk 2 July 2005 08:45 (UTC)

First Instance of FPS Free Look?
This article never formally defines "free look", but it clearly ignores anything below 2 axes without saying why. Using the mouse to look around a first person game goes back *at least* as far as Wolfenstein 3D (1992). The fact that you could only left or right was a constrain of those engines, but you certainly were using the mouse to look around, and we called it "mouse look" back in the day (I grew up playing these games in Silicon Valley). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.68.144.10 (talk) 21:23, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

If I remember rightly, the Bethesda Softworks game, Terminator: Future Shock had the first FPS 100% mouse/freelook engine, and the mouse look toggle was only added into DN3D between the demo and the full release; I remember writing a Usenet post in 1996 asking 3DRealms to patch it in :)

Descent also came out a year earlier in 1995, and that had a full 3 axes of free-look.

NoneMoreNegative 11:27, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, there were definitely unrestricted 3D games like descent (with crappier graphics) before 1995. I remember playing one on my Atari ST, even. But I don't think that those kinds of games really count as FPSes. Terminator, which I never played, certainly looks like it would. Brighterorange 14:08, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I seem to remember that mouselook as we currently undertand it only really caught on thanks to Denis 'Thresh' Fong's Quake deathmatching config using mouse to turn/look and keys to strafe (which itself was an evolution from popular Doom deathmatch configurations). Prior to that mouselook existed but was usually a momentary thing dependant on pressing a button (Thresh's config trick was to use a command that made the mouselook button always pressed). After that 'Always Freelook' options started appearing in games from Quake2 and such onwards. I can't confirm any of this, and it might not have been Thresh specifically, but that's how I remember it happening. Anyone know? MuJoCh 08:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds right to me, although I wasn't online at the time. I've read - some people say, in other words - that it wasn't until Hexen II that mouselook really became standard as a control option. Regardless, the demand from pro gamers seems to have been the impetus to getting it changed (there's a blurb in the old Wired article "The Egos at iD" with a story about some pro gamers coming in to the iD offices and demanding that mouselook be implemented).


 * I also added in some information about CyClones. Hope everybody likes it! --Edwin Herdman 06:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Marathon

 * The first major commercial game to incorporate true 3D free look using the mouse and keyboard control scheme was Marathon by Bungie, released in December 1994 for the Apple Macintosh (with an earlier demo release in July 1994).

In reference to the "citation needed", how can one provide a citation for a negative statement? There's no canonical list of major commercial games to cite; there's only the fact that nobody's come up with an earlier example since 2006, which would violate actually seems to be allowed by WP:SELF, so maybe I should add it now. --DocumentN (talk) 23:06, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I laughed so goddamned hard at your "reference". Thank you for that. It appears Ultima Underworld and System Shock preceded Marathon for mouse look. I know I have made claims about Dark Forces which I thought were true and turned out to be false, but honestly, you should never use "nobody's said otherwise on this lone Wikipedia article" as a reference. Especially an article that averages less than a thousand views a month.


 * I think the "how can you cite a negative statement" is a reason to avoid them. Although the potential certainly exists for a usable outside source to empirically state "so-and-so was the first $game to include free look", it is very difficult to find this kind of source, and so claims of this nature should be avoided.

Some guy (talk) 10:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, it turns out I am very stupid and misunderstood a lot of information (though, to make myself feel better, my "source" and some other sites and forum posts used the word "mouselook" when talking about UU and SS). I'm sorry for being an ass. I get carried away. I should probably back off on editing a lot. At least I got 'Ultima Underworld had sloped floors four years before Duke Nukem 3D' out of all of this. Some guy (talk) 12:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Reverted Merge
Free-look is not confined to first-person games. Third-person shooters are only a single example of other games that include free-look. The move was made without consensus and I have restored the page. Some guy (talk) 02:03, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * While I understand the initial rationale for the merge, I think this is a good point. If someone else can come up with a suitable merge target, I might support it. But in the meantime, it probably doesn't belong at the article on first person perspective. Randomran (talk) 02:07, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Duke Nukem 3D
Quake (1996), however, is widely considered to have been the turning point in making free look the standard, in part due to its Internet multiplayer feature, which allowed large numbers of mouse and keyboard players to face each other head-to-head.

Duke Nukem 3D was released before Quake, was simular successful and also had an online multiplayer feature. --MrBurns (talk) 03:40, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * But did it have free look? It's been a while since I played it, but I don't think it did (http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=783&tab=controls) Cunningmunki (talk) 09:17, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It did, but it wasn't the standard configuration. I clearly remember playing (the original DOS version of) Duke Nukem 3D with mouse look though. --KeyJ (talk) 13:24, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Bram Stoker's Dracula
The mention of Bram Stoker's Dracula in this article is incorrect in it's claim that it "featured a system similar to the one in CyClones...". Cyclone's controls allowed the player's view point to be moved via the mouse, which is why it is cited as an early form of mouse-look, whereas Dracula's view point is entirely controlled via the keyboard. The cross-hair in Dracula is controlled via the mouse, but this merely aims the weapon and does not control the view, and was not an original feature of this game. Cunningmunki (talk) 10:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Using a touch screen to free look
Is there any place in the article where there's logical room to fit in a mention that touch screens can also be used for looking around in a video game? In particular, I'm thinking of Metroid Prime Hunters on the Nintendo DS. You move and strafe with the D-pad, shoot with the L button, and look by moving the stylus on the touch (lower) screen. Dogman15 ( talk ) 08:25, 26 September 2021 (UTC)