@the clown: aren't you making a 3ps too? is it an over the shoulder view? if so, you using a cover system? or you have some other method of optimizing player visibility?

I'm still twisting it between over the shoulder and behind the back, but I prefer over the shoulder.
Cover system planned, but not implemented yet. I will do it as I described, as soon as the player steps near to a wall, he'll switch to cover, as soon as the player steps back, he'll turn out.
I also will switch the position of the crosshair from player's right to his left if a key is pressed; I can't imagine a way to do this without keypressing.

tracing ahead i guess but it would cause side effects...u would have to have a slower paced game too

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I cant remember what RPG game it was, but I found it worked/felt really good,
was a third-person camera that hovered behind you, and its distance from you
was adjustable by mouse-wheel. No clicking, kind of.
But the important thing is that if you zoomed in close enough, it would switch
to first-person view. Zoom out and it would switch back to third-person view.
It felt smooth and easy. And no "reaching for the keyboard" clicks either.

Mind you, the game DIDNT have crosshairs, and projectile weapons forced
fisrt-person view whilst "aiming", so I dont know how the "feel" would carry
to a First-Person-SHOOTER. The game was some First-Person-Hack&Slash game.

Hope this helps.

oh, well i took some ideas listed here and implemented them, i also decided that i would use bigger guns, MUCH bigger guns... i was researching fps's and realized that i paid alot of attention to how the weapons animations looked and how it felt while aiming and reloading, a GUN game is about the GUNS.. and i will try to keep that focus, most third person shooters, the guns are actual scale so there it means nothing to the player.. if you look in my vid, i try to exaggerate this.. i hope i get the formula right but the game is already addicting, if it weren't then I'd stop working at it, i just need help with AI... in my opinion, if you develop a game, you should play it for atleast 2 hours non-stop, why? you get to see whats annoying and if you're having fun, my next project will be more simple though but i'm not aiming for casual games

Don't forget to give the player some kind of sackcart to carry all these BIG weapons...

Maybe a motorbike trailer attached to his behind....

anyone else has opinions on this thread?

When it comes to realism, 1st ps is more 'real' than 3rd ps. It gives me feel that I'm the character I'm playing, wether its a shooter or RPG or even survival game(the one I'm working now, more like Penumbra I guess). I like the feel that I see trough the character's eye, more if I can see his/her body part like hands and feet(like FEAR series or Operation Flashpoint series)

But when we talk about fun, I'll choose 3rd person of course. Especially when the character we play is a female :p. And he/she has a whole load of move, good one I guess...

And I dont like games that give us option to switch between 1st person and 3rd person view.