Ok i have to admit i spend ways more time investigating this issue then its actually worth. it started with me starting in a camera controller but no player character, if i attempt to spawn one in the game gives the error "cant set character for non player with non god controller."
After some more investigation i discovered through asking the games api what controller type i had it responded with "0" which i can only assume is the spectator controller type. changing my controller type to player and spawning a character fixes it.
Please fix this issue as not everyone can be expected to know how to change there controller type and spawn a character in order to be able to play.
Also its rather silly that the mod puts people in to spectator mode and expects them to switch back with all the steps involved to be able to play in the default start scenario which is intended for the average person who just wants to play.

Do you have any other mods also installed at the same time?

a few but none that have ever put me in to spectator mode for any reason, none of them actually can because they dont have the code in them to be capable of changing this.
largely almost all mods i use across different packs are helper mods and popular mods that are known to be compatible.
im very careful to make sure that none of the mods have an impact. at least in my try when i tried it out disabling all mods and only turning this on made no difference to my result.

Hey Spacedestructor, sorry to say but I have not been maintaining this mod for over more than a year now.
I have not encountered the issue you describe, it's very likely that a new Factorio update broke it.
You're more than welcome to upload a fixed version of this mod to the portal.

im currently unable to maintain modpacks other people have created, especially if there are changes that have been done to the mods involved in the pack.
however i can write a simple script that waits a few seconds after starting a new save and then checks on the api what controller type is used and overwrite it with the default one. once i get around to upload this you can feel free to recommend using it if the issue should occur to anyone else and nobody else has picked up the modpack yet.

quick updated, had some free time and wrote a quick mod that adds a command which allows the player to "fix" there controller type.
Also i have to correct one of my earlier statements, while mapping all controller type numbers to there names i found out that controller type 0 is actually the "ghost" controller and not spectator.
(possible indicator for player death maybe caused by a bug?)
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Spacedestructor-Controller-Fix-for-Omni-Island