Free Rotation Mode in Aven

[Olly Betts]

On Mon, May 27, 2002 at 06:42:47PM -0400, Lev Bishop wrote:
> On Mon, 27 May 2002, Olly Betts wrote:
> 
> > This sounds like it would be better addressed by fixing tilt-up and
> > tilt-down in aven so that they don't temporarily pause auto-rotation.
> > There's no good reason why it doesn't work the same way.
> 
> My first reaction to this was "there isn't a tilt-up or tilt-down key in
> aven" but having played a bit I see there is, you just need to left
> click somewhere in the graphics area before they'll work (the same thing
> goes for all the keyboard commands actually). A bug, I guess.

Yes, the focus should be set to the cave area by default.  I'll look into it.

> > That would give an effect somewhat like
> > free-rotation mode, but probably with a more natural feel.
> 
> Playing a bit more with free rotation mode I've worked out, I think, that
> it does almost the same thing as pro/e's rotation scheme, the only
> difference being that the left-right rotation sense is reversed compared
> to pro/e. I expect the free-rotation mode would be more natural if you
> flipped the sense, though it then wouldn't match with the way aven works
> in elevation mode.

Turning the mouse upside down doesn't make left-right movement feel more (or
less) natural.  Since it's not a perspective view, you can't actually tell
which way it's moving without looking at the indicator.

I think I know why it feels unnatural to me - if you move the mouse along the
adges of a square, the cave doesn't return to the same view when the mouse
does.  I think that's why it "feels wrong".  And until you realise this, it's
hard to get the horizon level.

> One more thing I just noticed is that pressing the windows key when aven
> is active causes zooming out as well as the usual windows key functions.

Most odd.  I'll take a look.

Cheers,
Olly