no matter how the ship turns, though, without equipment, a pilot would black out after about 6 Gs; even with equipment, the pilot would just about be crushed at 20 or more Gs. So if the game is going to have any violent maneuvers at all, you have to be lenient on the realism.

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I agree that it's far more comfortable to roll then pull up to turn(which was what SL always made you do, since the Yaw was screwy), but with a mouse I just couldn't get used to the motions.

Say you mapped roll to the mouse's X-axis. Now when you move the mouse to the left or right you roll instead of yawing. But would you be able to map it so that the mouse cursor stays centered? Because otherwise, your aim is going to get messed up by it. This mouse flight system is designed around turning your ship to point wherever your guns are aiming. Thus, aiming at an enemy on the side of the screen will turn you over and over, instead of aiming your nose toward the enemy.

And if you map it to the keyboard, the auto-level will get in your way, and you'll constantly be turning that off so you can roll. The control with keyboard is also not as precise, so you will overcompensate every single time.

I repeat myself: You need to have a joystick to use roll effectively. And FL is not too friendly to joysticks.

Reaper: $200,000,000.
Rockets: $100,000
The look on that pilot's face when you launch a full pod of screamers up his tailpipe: priceless

eek! my english isn't that good But I actualy understood enough of that to see your point. I didn't mean that barrel rolling shouldn't be included, but rather that it does not need to be justified with any realistic reason. What I mean is that there doesn't need to be an explanation as to why the ship needs to barrel roll. I hope that made sense

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to Thorkild:

Yah, Cowboy Bebop rocks! Their hypergates (analogues to the trade lanes in FL I guess) are nicely done too.

to Maswastage:

In a sci-fi game I believe lenience and realism can co-exist to minimize the amount of suspension of disbelief required. In that respect, there is nothing wrong with preferring to have a ship roll-and-pull to turn rather than yaw-to-turn.

Not to mention the aforementioned advantages of the barrel-roll maneuver in spoiling gun attacks.

to Nukeit:

Well, therein lies the question. Maybe just a purely mouse-driven interface has limitations, and in hindsight perhaps the FL developers should have included a joystick option to satisfy all tastes. Anyway, the joystick-vs-mouse thing has been debated to death already so I'll zip my lip on that subject..

Uh, I don't have the experience of some of you with the sims but aren't roll + pull maneuvers much slower? It sort of makes sense that space combat and pilot manuevers would need to be faster without atmospheric drag and gravity slowing fighters down.

Even a kick up the pants is a step forwards...

I would love to remap the a and d keys to rolling. I use the side thrusters once in a blue moon to line up to a dock on a space station. Why would I use side thrust in combat, when I can turn and burn at full speed? I've already got my thrusters mapped to w and engine disable mapped to s -- I never use the regular engines.

It doesn't need to affect the mouse control at all, it would only put more control into the hands of the pilot.