Third-person view

Third person view is a viewpoint from outside of the player in which the camera does not film/capture/pan from the player's eye level, but instead films/captures/pans from behind the player at an angle of 0.0 degrees and from the front of the player at 180.0 degrees (Y axis) when the mouse is leveled with the ground. Third person view can be activated by pressing F5. Pressing F5 once, twice, and three times gives you the vantage point from behind the player, in front of the player, and at normal eye level, respectively. The feature was introduced in Indev versions. It can be used for viewing the player, making videos, and other uses.

The keys, , , , , , , , , and are used  as a debugging feature called "deadmau5 camera" (in the code) to manipulate the view and are normally disabled. Pressing freezes the view while pressing two functionally connected keys at the same time (example:  + ) reverts the view back to normal (but  +  doesn't work). Also, if the Player were to go in a 1*2*1 hole and press and, then the player can see underground structures. As of 1.2.1, the sides of the player's head may be shown when rotating the view. This debugging feature doesn't actually help much, and was only added for deadmau5.

History
When Indev 0.31 was introduced, Notch made the new inventory, and when it was open, you could not see the player, just a black square. this was changed in Indev February 18, so that the player can be seen there.

In Alpha 1.0.14, pressing gave you a strange camera position in third person, where the camera would be off-centre by one block to the left; this was later fixed in Alpha 1.0.15.

In the Halloween Update (Alpha 1.2.0) a new feature was added, where holding down hides the HUD, as well as meaning that pressing  and then holding  would move the view to the front of the player and hide the HUD. This feature was removed in Beta 1.3, but was reimplemented in Minecraft 1.1.0.

As of Minecraft 1.0, pressing twice switches the camera to a face view, pressing  three times switches it back into first person view.

The debugging view manipulation feature was accidentally enabled in 1.9pre5 and 12w08a, and was disabled in subsequent updates, 1.9pre6 (and a future update).

Trivia

 * A third person face view can be seen while the player's inventory is open.

Gallery
Screenshots of third person.