This is an intentional change to try to bring Mac trackpad mechanics back in line with the base system expectations (that the trackpad has momentum when swiping).
It does require a slight adjustment, but you can still have precise camera control as long as you stop moving your fingers before lifting them. Could you give using the camera with momentum a shot and let me know how it feels after you’ve had some time to adjust?
Also if you dislike momentum in general it’s something you can disable for the whole system in the system settings. The setting to search for is “Use Inertia When Scrolling”.
Search for “Use Inertia When Scrolling” in the system settings, however consider giving the inertia scrolling a shot first. As things stand there’s no way to disable it for Roblox only.
Also, for anyone feeling it being “unusable”, could you:
Post what your “Scroll Speed” setting was set to? (this is found in the same popup as “Use Inertia When Scrolling”, in the Trackpad Options)
Try changing that scroll speed setting to something lower and let me know how it feels that way? (to check whether it’s the inertia or the sensitivity that’s the root of the issue)
Sure thing, I’ll leave the scrolling inertia on and see if halting movement before lifting off the trackpad becomes more intuitive over time. Is there a particular time period you feel we should adjust by, and shall I just update this thread by after that time with the feedback?
I’m thinking give it a couple of days? For something as central as camera control I would expect it to feel a bit awkward at first when changed.
I can say that at least personally, after having working for some time with the inertia enabled, turning it off again feels like running into a brick wall and is definitely worse to me.
I’d expect my camera to remain in the position it was when I stop the touch swipe input to move camera on my trackpad, just like how it did previously.
It also appears to be rotating my character (the same behaviour as Shift Lock) with the camera movement which is unexpected and also personally ruining my experience using a trackpad across multiple games. It is very common among trackpad users to be looking in different directions to that which they are walking without the character moving too much. This feels like I’ve been forced into having Shift Lock enabled constantly with my camera movements.
I prefer the old way, if anything, this update should not be overriding the Default (classic) camera movement and instead it should be its own new setting in the camera mode option.
Also, everyone I have spoken with does not like this update
I’ve tried other settings (on my laptop and in roblox) but it feels like the momentum is always crazy high or the precise movements become super slow.
Roblox implemented this change before but it was removed (I think May 2024). I had tried it back then and also and never got used to it or liked it even remotely at any point.
Inertia is also part of the base system expectations for mobile devices (swiping), is ROBLOX planning to add swiping momentum for mobile camera controls? Momentum is only good for things like scrolling through long websites or texts and other things that have scroll bars. This is no better than giving momentum to the mouse pointer would be imo (imagine trying to press buttons like that). I’m sure you could get used to that too but it leads to a loss of precision and ur brain needing to work extra hard to be precise, and if you turned it off at that point you’d also think it feels like running into a brick wall (why did the pointer stop!?). I’ve never wanted to make a mouse pointer movement or camera movement that is imprecise so it definitely feels out of whack and like a huge loss of control to have either of those things shifted to momentum based.
There are a lot of game’s that require precision like obbies which is what the game I’m working on right now is and it feels so much harder to play through the obby without randomly walking off cliffs and not being able to make the jumps properly.
I’m still willing to give it a couple days but I’m almost certain I won’t get used to this. I think at the very least players should be given options so they can choose which they prefer!
Could you give a bit more detail on exactly what you’re describing?
Shift lock still works, and WASD is still relative to the camera direction (with A/D strafing). I’m not seeing what behavior is different? (nor would I expect there to be a difference given the underlying change)
There should be a slider (in-game settings) to adjust how fast the velocity of the camera decreases, else it might feel too high or too low for some users. Adjusting it for all apps isn’t very user-friendly
I’m going to be blunt and say that having the inertia for in-game camera movement lasting around a full second only serves to hinder Roblox game play experience across the board. That might be acceptable for application frames such as web browsers but gamers generally expect more precise control over this kind of stuff without having to go out of their way to modify how the rest of their system works, even if mac users may not be considered “actual gamers”.
Is this how it works for Windows clients currently (i.e. camera interia lasting a full second after input ends)? Was there a heads up for this sent to mac users that I missed? Suddenly rolling out a feature unannounced is one thing, but it’s not a good look when many users are immediately mistaking as a bug instead of an improvement
Maybe this is some sort of Effect where I’ve been tricked into thinking the behaviour wasnt present, however it certainly didnt feel as bad/wasnt as noticeable as this beforehand
If you disable inertia globally in the system settings I’m very confident it will be identical to the behavior you had before so you should be able to double check that way.
You remember correctly. It’s actually the exact same change, but last time it was rolled back very quickly due to user reports of “it’s broken” and not root caused. Which we now did and found that it’s working as intended (and the original breakage reports were just users who had their trackpad scroll speed setting set to max) so I’m seeing how it goes to give it a proper try this time.
Context: The goal is to work the Mac input stack back into a good place. Currently Mac Studio and Mac Client behave completely different behavior due to a long chain of questionable decisions. I’m trying to get Mac Client and Mac Studio back to a simple place of unity as a starting point. Not disabling momentum makes that a much simpler starting point if possible because we need do momentum scrolling for Studio functionality at least and probably some other things and they work through the same tech stack. If it doesn’t work out I’ll have to find a more complicated path.
Regarding a heads up, it’s a bit hard to describe ahead of time what it feels like, and it also can’t be a Studio beta because the problem that prompted the whole thing in the first place is Studio having different diverged behavior.
It feels a lot slower when the inertia is disabled globally. I also want to be able to scroll normally on websites and other applications using inertia and don’t want to have to keep enabling and disabling the setting every time I play a Roblox game
I think studio trackpad camera control is more important than inertia scrolling in-game, I don’t think inertia scrolling has any place in games if i’m honest
Yes, but things get complicated because you also test your games in Studio and want the same behavior for testing vs playing in Mac Client. But if I’m testing and I scroll the output window, should the gameplay not have inertia but the output window have inertia? Etc. Everything respecting the system inertia makes things much simpler. But is only viable if it’s okay for Client gameplay, which is what I’m trying to judge at the moment.
Yes, I think this is how it should work. Frames that are scrollable in a way similar to browser functionality could have inertia scrolling enabled, where as gameplay camera movement I believe should not - or at least it should be customizable and not forced
I think, considering the feedback given here, that’s just a straight yes question. Camera control and a box you can scroll in are very different. Especially in competitive games, camera precision is neccecary.
Also worth noting that a lot (if not most) of the Roblox experiences have been developed with the previous camera functionality as its baseline, some having their own custom or forked solutions. This can make the experience feel very odd especially having used the previous functionality for years. One of my current projects feels almost unplayable right now with this new functionality enabled.
