I have always used the inverted mouse setting, and I can't think of any of my friends that also do. To me, first person shooters feel like flying, so it's only natural to push the mouse forward to look down. People who don't invert are really just pointing and clicking at the part of the screen they want to shoot, or they use the mouse as though the barrel of the gun is resting on the top of it and they are moving it up and down with their mouse. I wonder which setting is actually better, though..
The graph is bugging me. Around 85 people born in 2009 and 35 people born in 2008 do not use mouse inversion... We have 1 and 2 year olds playing first person shooters?
(Born in '83) I think the only reason I use inverted-mouse is because of hours and hours of playing Goldeneye on N64, which by default has the up and down C-buttons look down and up (respectively). So when switching to Counterstrike (probably the first FPS I played with a mouse), inversion felt more natural.
If I'm using a mouse and keyboard, I keep a normal mapping and conceive of my motions as moving the reticle around the environment, much like a cursor.<p>If I'm using a game controller with an analog joystick, I use an inverted mapping. In those cases, I view manipulations of the joystick as analogous to manipulating a camera floating in space: pushing forward pitches the camera forward.
Inverted here. I was born in 1980 and just thought most people did it. Then I noticed more and more that I have the change the default settings in games. Now, when I play with my younger cousins, I have to change their settings. Funny how you don't even notice a little thing like mouse inversion, but it is 'impossible' for me to play without it!
I remember on flight sims when I used a joystick, I never thought of "down" and "up." I thought of "pulling towards me" and "pushing away form me." Since the nose of the plane is a bit lower than my head, it works.<p>For FPSs, I'd use "normal" since I think of the gun moving.
A little more "science" which initially started the discussion on our team: <a href="http://gamepeople.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/down-is-up/" rel="nofollow">http://gamepeople.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/down-is-up/</a>
I invert the Y-axis on everything except the mouse in a first person shooter. When on a console controller for a shooter or any type of flying like game then the controls get inverted.