AS3 Key held down preventing mouse update - actionscript-3

Question

I'm developing a 3D game and I've noticed some odd behaviour when I hold down the movement keys; the game seems to temporarily ignore the mouse position and stops updating which way the player is facing. The game does not freeze - it's just as if it stops paying attention to the position of the mouse.
Here's the code I'm using to get key presses and releases:
public function keyPressed(e:KeyboardEvent):void {
switch (e.keyCode) {
case 32:
_keySpace = true;
break;
case 81:
if (!keyQ) {
keyQ=true;
}
break;
case 69:
if (!keyE) {
keyE=true;
}
break;
case 65:
if (!keyA) {
keyA=true;
}
break;
case 68:
if (!keyD) {
keyD=true;
}
break;
case 87:
if (!keyW) {
keyW=true;
}
break;
case 83:
if (!keyS) {
keyS=true;
}
break;
}
}
public function keyLift(e:KeyboardEvent):void {
if (e.keyCode==32) {
_keySpace = false;
} else if (e.keyCode==81) {
keyQ=false;
} else if (e.keyCode==69) {
keyE=false;
} else if (e.keyCode==65) {
keyA=false;
} else if (e.keyCode==68) {
keyD=false;
} else if (e.keyCode==87) {
keyW=false;
} else if (e.keyCode==83) {
keyS=false;
}
}
And the code to update the mouse position is just an ENTER_FRAME event:
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, enterFrame);
...that triggers the main game loop. Here's the relevant part that uses the mouse position. The mouseX and mouseY properties are used in Player to rotate the view left/right and up/down.
private function enterFrame(e:Event=null):void {
_player.update(mouseX, mouseY);
}
All of that works fine - it's just this problem with holding down the strafing keys; it's as if, once the key starts repeating, the game is taking all its time resolving those events and neglects to update the rotation - even though it's not dependent on a MouseEvent.
Does anyone know how to make Flash ignore repeating keys when the key is held down? Or is there some other problem?
Cheers.

Answer 1

You could check when your key handler was last triggered, and if it's more recently than a certain threshold, ignore it. You could make it a tenth of a second:
private static const KEY_THRESHOLD:int = 100; // 100 ms = 1/10 second
private static var lastPressedAt:int;
public function keyPressed(e:KeyboardEvent):void {
var now:int = new Date().getTime();
if (lastPressedAt > 0 && now - lastPressedAt < KEY_THRESHOLD) {
return;
}
lastPressedAt = now;
// etc...