Ballistic NG - Wipeout fan project

[Xpand]

By the way, what's up with using the Arrow Keys for people who don't have the luxury of using an actual controller? There's a very good reason most PC games since the late 90's use WASD for movement as opposed to the arrow keys.

Not in racing games they don't. Pretty much all racing games I own (goes up to around 2007) still use arrow keys for the basic accelerate-brake-turn scheme.
The reason WASD (or ESDF in the early FPS days) is used for movement in FPS games is because most people use the right hand to control the mouse. The WASD just stuck with people because the most famous FPS game at the time (Quake) used it. Before Quake most FPS games used a combination of WASD/ESDF and arrow keys.

I don't know/remember what scheme BNG is using tbh, but A-W-D to control the left/right airbrake and accelerate, and the arrow keys for pitching/turning is pretty natural to most of us I think.