Documentation / Controls / Pausing

Pausing

P latches the simulation clock at zero: the flight model, gravity, and the orbit camera all stop, the last frame stays on screen, and a menu opens over it. Pressing P again resumes from exactly where the flight left off, with the time spent paused discarded rather than applied in one jump.

The menu is flown the way the aircraft is. W/S or ↑/↓ move between the entries, wrapping round both ends, and Enter or Space chooses the one under the cursor. Every one of those keys also works a control surface, so a menu on screen takes them before the flight behind it can read them: walking a list never also pitches or rolls the aircraft under it. Every other key is read as it always was, so F2 still takes a picture of a paused world. The mouse works the menu the same way the start screen is worked - the pointer moves the cursor and a click chooses - so a flight paused with a hand on the mouse is resumed with the same hand:

The cursor starts on RESUME every time the menu opens, so resuming is always one key press away from a paused flight. The pause card, like the title screen, lets the mouse through everywhere but its menu, so a click beside the entries falls on the frozen world rather than on the card over it.