Overview

• Researchers reported that performance on visual–spatial tasks, especially mental rotation speed and overcoming the Simon effect, best predicts whether players invert the y-axis.
• Participants who were faster on these tasks were less likely to invert, while those who invert tended to be slightly more accurate despite slower responses.
• Self-reported reasons such as first games played, flight-sim experience, console type, or upbringing did not predict inversion preference.
• The team combined a questionnaire with four Zoom-administered behavioral experiments and used machine-learning to evaluate 28 factors tied to control choices.
• The peer-reviewed paper, published in September 2025 as “Why axis inversion? Optimising interactions between users, interfaces, and visual displays in 3D environments,” notes implications for broader human–machine interfaces and encourages players to try the opposite mapping.