Immersive Swimming

MaxAstro

Had this thought while swimming around today, and realized that it would massively increase how immersive swimming feels... and also make wrecks and caves a bit more dangerous muahaha. :P

While you are underwater, the camera should be unbounded. That is, if you continue to look up, the camera should continue to rotate upwards until you flip all the way around and come back to facing forwards again. Same thing with down. Additionally: Space and C should move you "up" and "down" relative to your current facing. So if you are looking straight up, holding Space would move you sideways.

This would make it possible, as in real life, to disorient yourself and lose track of what direction is "up" or "down". Also makes the air bladder a bit more useful, since it takes you straight up no matter your facing.

Jamezorg

I imagine that your character rotating up and down would cause motion sickness in some people, but it would be cool if it was an animation (if you continue to drag your mouse down as you're looking up there's an animation that flips you back to facing forward, and like you said, the same with facing down). This does defeat the footer of your post (I would love if we could lose track of which way was up at extreme depths, though it would be hard with the depth tracker at the top of the screen and all), but it does bring a sense of realism to the game.

Having the character move up and down relative to which way you're facing would be quite cool as an option as I definitely see the appeal and I think it would be quite cool, but personally it's not for me. I would love relative assent/decent to be an option for other people who would like this, but I don't.

Jarin

From experience with lots of players in Space Engineers, which has fully unbounded movement outside of a gravity well, I can confirm that it does have a greatly increased danger of player motion sickness. Especially when there's a threat of dropping framerates, like... most areas in Subnautica. It would be interesting, but I think the technical challenges to make it playable might be more than the game can handle right now.

SnailsAttack

I sort of agree with this idea. I'm kinda 50/50 on it. It might make diving scarier and more immersive, but it'd also be extremely annoying and deadly. Maybe it should just be an option.

Higuide

kimon its a common first-person game problem, even most AAA games barely got around to animating proper rotation or movement animation without looking stilted on foot, let alone an entire game takes place underwater with a sea full of nopes by a small company.

losing your orientation already happen in confined spaces for extended periods, this happens more times anyone will admit. irl its a very real danger to divers, some underwater cave systems are banned because of how easy it is to lose track, because by time find a way out they drown.

that already happened enough times to me to end up having to change the color of my vehicles into borderline luminescent neon patterns, to spot it more quickly even with the beacon for cave systems. wrecks carry many extended tanks as absurdly possible

game is already unforgiving in survival mode even more so than Ark; at least in that eventually you can dominate everything in later game alone(me), w/ friends or server filled with A-holes! subnautica? at best you learn to coexist outside of mauling distance as much as possible avoid doing anything unnecessary

MaxAstro

Clearly Hardcore mode should work like this, then. :P