About That New Camera

I generally do not like new things. There are a lot of reasons for this, of course. Part of it is that I tend to operate on “autopilot” a lot. I put my toothbrush in the same place, I put the hamper in the same place, I keep the leftovers I take for lunch in the same place in the refrigerator. This isn’t out of some OCD desire, but rather sheer convenience. When I can predict where things are, I can move faster, spend time thinking about and doing other things, and generally save time.  I use my feet to pick up my dirty clothes while I brush my teeth, for instance, and know exactly the arc and angle I need to toss them for them to land in the hamper. When my toothbrush isn’t where it’s supposed to be, or the hamper was moved, it screws me up.

Yet it’s more than that. Setting things up and getting yourself familiar with a new system takes time. I have a wife, two kids, a full-time job, and gobs of chores I need to do around my house; if I have to give something up, it ends up being my leisure time; I hate that. I loathe new computers for the work it takes to set them up and customize them. I hate new phones because you have to port over your contacts, and the auto-transfer is never 100%.

And, perhaps worst of all, I generally rebel against progress for progress’s sake. I don’t believe new is better, and in fact often times it’s worse; there’s a reason humanity has done things the same way for thousands of years, and “new” tends to be the result of arrogant thinking (“But we’re better than we were!”  No, we’re not.). Invariably, “new” gets pushed a side for traditional again.

And, perhaps most importantly, the first version of software is always riddled with bugs. The first wave of colonists anywhere always gets slaughtered, and the first group of revolutionaries always becomes martyrs. Being first is typically only a good idea in market trading, and even then it’s dicey.

So, with that background, let me say that the new camera is actually a little better than the old one.

I grant you, from what I hear, there were huge problems with the new camera, and most folks didn’t feel there was any need for the old camera to change. I was one of them, and I still am. While it’s possible the new carrier fighter squadrons will require it, as of now, the old camera worked perfectly well.

Folks complained about it being impossible to do a 5° dscan with it. They complained about the way it moved when you were orbiting or traveling. Those are all legitimate concerns, and they made me turn the new camera off after only one try.  If it’s not functional, it’s not useful.

The March patch included a host of adjustments to the new camera.  Courteously, one of those adjustments was the automatic turning back on of the new camera on all clients. CCP had been talking about eliminating the old camera entirely within a month or so, and I believed this was that day.

My verdict? The new camera can be made to work exactly like the old camera, but with the added benefit of a much faster snap-to when you select a new item. Previously, when I would click on a gate and do a 5° dscan, I’d have to wait a few seconds while the camera rolled around gradually; that’s gone, and my camera now points in the right direction almost instantly. That’s a huge benefit to PvP hunters.

For those of you who are, like me, less adventurous and want to make the camera work like the old one. First, hit escape and go to the “Display & Graphics” tab, then deselect everything under “Camera Settings”.  Uncheck it all.

But you still have one more thing to do.  Go into your shortcuts. By default, your “Toggle Tracking” shortcut has been changed to “Navigation / Tracking Camera: Toggle point camera to selected item”. This is incorrect; to allow you to set up auto-tracking when you click on an item in the overview, you want to clear that shortcut and instead map it to “Combat / Toggle Auto Tracking”. This will give you the same functionality as before, where you can focus the camera on whatever you select.

And when you do that, the camera is more responsive, yet functions the same way as before.

User Interface (UI) changes can be tricky; one wrong move, and players can be turned off to a game completely. I know that if the new camera stayed in its buggy state, I’d have quite possibly left – I want to struggle with other players, not with the client itself. Great respect to CCP for listening to the players’ complaints and accommodating them in a way that still allows them to do whatever they claim can only be done with the new camera.