   3rd Person Shooter
  Im currently well underway in my 3rd person shooter project,The question i have is does the "camera" look at the player from behind. Or does the camera look at the crosshair from behind the player lol??I hvnt really played many games, but love programming :)Cheers, Nick   
  should look at the crosshairs from behind the player, check out max payne 1 and 2, and the hitman series   ;  Generally the camera is looking at the back of the model. The cross hairs are usually controlled by the mouse. If the crosshairs go too far round on an axis then it turns the model which in turn rotates the camera.It depends on your implementation- if you want the camera to move with the cross hairs then you do it that way and move the model with the crosshairs. Or do it the other way round.There is a slight difference between the two- theres a delay on the movement of the camera in the first example but there is always movement with the camera whenever the mouse is moved on the second example. Although essentially they are the same.   ;  If i was going to play it i'd want it to follow the crosshairs.   ;  As always, when faced with two (or more) ways of doing something, try both and see for yourself what works best. Your imagination is great, but nothing beats actual hands on interaction to see how well something works. This applies to just about everything, from control schemes (keys used, mouse usage and so on) to the best way to push triangles to your graphics card...   ;  cameras can be annoying, but a good camera should work perfectly.you basically want to pass as much information about the current scene around the player to the camera such as viewing volumes.Also if theres some monsters fighting you for instance, you will want the camera to focus on them, rather than just forwards.If you have a scene graph, you can treat the camera like an object and query for general objects within the players radius and the bsp/general space in the room which the camera can move about in - you don't want to face or wall or be viewing from behind a wall.   ;  If you're really serious with your 3rd person shooter you should really spent some time playing Max Payne 1 and/or 2 their camera movement and player control is just grate and after playing them you will know how to do it :)   