I have an 3d asteriods clone I've been working on in my free time (and it's taking forever), but I have the flying completely newtonian, and its hard at first. I sort of trained myself in 3 steps, by going through 3 different control modes:

1. 'Descent-style': 6 DOF. Moving the mouse/ pushing a rotation key, rotates the ship. Stop moving the mouse or let go of the key to stop rotating. Mouse movement directly controls rotation, just like in any other FPS. Holding a movement key moves the ship, letting go stops.

2. 'Descent-style' rotation with linear inertia: Moving the mouse rotates the ship as in Descent, but pressing a movement key is like a real thruster. Thrust forward and you move forever until you counterthrust. If you thrust forward, and rotate 180 degrees, from your point of view you are now moving backwards. This is how traditional 2D asteroids is played, and seems the most intuitive interface for an asteroids clone. But aiming and orienting yourself is just like any other FPS, so playing isn't that difficult.

3. Full linear and rotational interial: Pressing a rotation key begins rotation, which doesn't stop until there's a counter rotation key pressed. X Y and Z rotations can all be combined. Using a mouse, a gentle nudge to the left starts rotation. You keep rotating while the mouse is still, until you nudge the mouse to the right. It takes practice and is hard to control, but is 100% realistic, and provides a very smooth rotation in the game. People tend to move the mouse in 'jerks' , that doesn't work in this move, all rotations and thrusts are very smooth. It is very fluid and dizzying; the first time since playing Descent that I've felt any kind of motion sickness from a game!

Mode #3 is difficult to fly, but you can build the other modes out of 'mode 3', to make play more realistic For instance:

'Mode 2' controls with full 'mode 3' physics: Moving the mouse to the left tells the 'ships flight computer' to begin rotating to the left. A small thrust is applied and that's it. When the user moves the mouse to the left a little faster, there's more thrust. When the user stops moving the mouse, or a mouse movement is applied to the right, a counterthrust is fired. In effect, a change in velocity of the mouse control (mouse acceleration) IS the thrust control for the ship. Accelerating the mouse accelerates the ship in a way similar to, but not exactly, the same as if the user was directly controlling the rotation of the ship with the mouse. There is also some automatic dampening; for example, whenever the user is NOT moving the mouse, the ships computer knows the rotation of the ship and counter-thrust to slow the rotation. What you get is intuitive controls BUT its limited to physics, so sometimes the ship lags behind the mouse a little bit. The dizzying aspect of fluid rotations is still there.


Back to my game It's an asteroids clone with a sort of realistic simulation of space physics. But in real asteroid fields, asteroids are very far apart. That's super boring. If adding realism makes a game more boring, don't do it.

Agreed Luckless, sensors are a big factor. In space there's a lot of room for someone's ship signature to mis your ship, or just be so attentuated by distance that you miss it. Plus things like stars and planets can play havoc, blocking your signals, bending them gravitationally, or overwhelming them with other sources of radiation.

If you want to have Newtonian flight mechanics, and this is mainly a trading game with large ships, then how about you design combat in a way which does not revolve around careful maneuvering or evasion? Sensors, weapons and other devices don't have to be physically accurate just because the flight model is.