Is there any reason why it couldn't work if it were implemented like full screen mode (displaying a message telling the user to press escape to reclaim the mouse)?
No problem. I looked it up last week because I thought this was the release that was going to have the new fix for add-on-related memory leaks[1], but it turns out that's not coming until Firefox 15 next month.
Fullscreen also has security issues, more in fact, I believe? And it is not behind a flag. Also, mouse lock is enabled in Chrome in NaCl apps, but not HTML5 ones. So I am not clear on what's going on there.
Yeah, it does exist and is usable in current versions of Chrome if you change the flag for it. I'm not sure if the Chrome version of the API is what the final one will be though, since it seems to differ somewhat from the version documented on MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/API/Pointer_Lock_API
Still it would probably be fairly easy to add support for it to this and replace the annoying click-drag camera movement when possible.
Is there any reason why it couldn't work if it were implemented like full screen mode (displaying a message telling the user to press escape to reclaim the mouse)?
Edit: Actually it looks like this is being worked on after all – http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/pointerlock/raw-file/default/index.htm...