Could it be that horses have a defective walkcycle in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and a strange camera pushback behaviour tries to disadvantageously hide the problem? (e.g. Roach mount - it actually seems somebody applied an additional camera workaround which badly conceales the defective walkcycle behaviour)
It looks like the main issue here is a somewhat broken animation sequence - it plays when horses move at WALK_SPEED or SLOW_SPEED tempo and it seems -specifically for these two- the additional horse camera behaviour in this case was only installed with the goal to at least conceal the issue while you sit on Roach's horseback by starting a timed camera pushback move rather than fixing this specific walking animation for all horses.
I don't see that it serves any other useful purpose compared to other intended camera behaviours in the game that are used for player, Roach etc.
Although the visible result with this "workaround" helps with Geralt mounted on Roach, it still can't fully conceal the animation issue - and the unavoidable downside effect is the recurring permanent game world lag.
You normally press CTRL key to toggle between 3 different speed modes(also affects analogue stick horse speed control behaviour): TROT_SPEED, WALK_SPEED, SLOW_SPEED - the last two share the same movement cycle/animation sequence, playback speed between them differs.
The broken walkcycle reminds me of a defective animation whereby the "root bone" position of a rigged model animation sequence was accidently altered at a specific moment in the timeline by moving it to a backwards spot in the virtual space.
This issue generally ruins the experience of slow Roach travelling (because of these permanent camera pushback jumps) or
watching other cavalrymen on their horses (or Roach if walking alone).
° video footage 1080p MP4 duration 16 seconds - (download 88 MB) °
First scene of my recently created video(downloadable right above) shows -with Geralt mounted on Roach- the recurring abrupt camera move behaviour (you could look at the surroundings - the green bush, tree, mill, grass etc. while you hide the horse with your hand or close one of your eyes to better see the camera behaviour). So what we simply notice in the first scene of the video without thinking to much about the how:
A stuttering environment phase when the rear right leg of Roach reaches a specific spot in the walkcycle.
Last scene of the video doesn't involve the camera pushback anymore and now we see that the stronger environment stutter behaviour stopped - instead we can easily see this time that Roach's position changes abruptly at the exact same moment in the walkcycle(let's watch the leg again). Last scene shows how this specific horse animation looks for Roach without the attempt to conceal the ptroblem with a camera backwards jump(for this scene I enabled a small test mod that stops the additional horse camera behaviour for WALK_SPEED / SLOW_SPEED only).
It looks like the main issue here is a somewhat broken animation sequence - it plays when horses move at WALK_SPEED or SLOW_SPEED tempo and it seems -specifically for these two- the additional horse camera behaviour in this case was only installed with the goal to at least conceal the issue while you sit on Roach's horseback by starting a timed camera pushback move rather than fixing this specific walking animation for all horses.
I don't see that it serves any other useful purpose compared to other intended camera behaviours in the game that are used for player, Roach etc.
Although the visible result with this "workaround" helps with Geralt mounted on Roach, it still can't fully conceal the animation issue - and the unavoidable downside effect is the recurring permanent game world lag.
You normally press CTRL key to toggle between 3 different speed modes(also affects analogue stick horse speed control behaviour): TROT_SPEED, WALK_SPEED, SLOW_SPEED - the last two share the same movement cycle/animation sequence, playback speed between them differs.
The broken walkcycle reminds me of a defective animation whereby the "root bone" position of a rigged model animation sequence was accidently altered at a specific moment in the timeline by moving it to a backwards spot in the virtual space.
This issue generally ruins the experience of slow Roach travelling (because of these permanent camera pushback jumps) or
watching other cavalrymen on their horses (or Roach if walking alone).
° video footage 1080p MP4 duration 16 seconds - (download 88 MB) °
First scene of my recently created video(downloadable right above) shows -with Geralt mounted on Roach- the recurring abrupt camera move behaviour (you could look at the surroundings - the green bush, tree, mill, grass etc. while you hide the horse with your hand or close one of your eyes to better see the camera behaviour). So what we simply notice in the first scene of the video without thinking to much about the how:
A stuttering environment phase when the rear right leg of Roach reaches a specific spot in the walkcycle.
Last scene of the video doesn't involve the camera pushback anymore and now we see that the stronger environment stutter behaviour stopped - instead we can easily see this time that Roach's position changes abruptly at the exact same moment in the walkcycle(let's watch the leg again). Last scene shows how this specific horse animation looks for Roach without the attempt to conceal the ptroblem with a camera backwards jump(for this scene I enabled a small test mod that stops the additional horse camera behaviour for WALK_SPEED / SLOW_SPEED only).