Revert Back To Version 0.4.3 Camera Angles

[Deus Siddis]

VS 0.5 has made graphical improvements in leaps and bounds beyond the 0.4 series, especially with respect to the planets and new ship models.

But the camera angles and positions through which we observe all that beauty seems to have taken a bit of a step down in a few areas, which also affects one's ability to fly and fight:

1) Chase View: This no longer allows you to see your entire ship (the bottom is cut off) unless you zoom very far out to the point where your ship is too small to be clearly seen.

This makes evading multi-directional fire and docking in enclosed bays much more difficult.

2) Target View: This is now in a first person cockpit view, rather than the old and superior 3rd person view which allowed you to see both the target and your own ship.

The old perspective made it possible for you to see how your ship was oriented relative to your target, allowing you to adjust your course accordingly so as to pursue, evade or both. It was also an excellent view for docking.

[loki1950]

Have you trolled through vegastrike.config there may be a few variables there that you could tweak to your satisfaction.


Enjoy the Choice

[Deus Siddis]

Have you trolled through vegastrike.config there may be a few variables there that you could tweak to your satisfaction.

That's possible, but it'd be greatly better if the defaults for cameras were just brought back to how they worked in 0.4.3 for 0.5.1

Then everyone can benefit from knowing better where in 3D space their ship is (including the bottom half of it) and what it is doing relative to a reference point of their choice (like an enemy they are fighting or a station they are docking at).

[safemode]

I personally think target view and such should be disabled in vegastrike, available only to mods that enable it for compatibility with things like remaking WC and such.

Target view makes no sense. Perhaps a zoom view allowing you to zoom in on what your ship is facing from some distance away. That would be cool and believeable and useful.

Chase view i agree, the angle is a bit wrong, and the chased ship should be more centered on the screen. Or give the user the ability to move the chase camera across a plane behind the ship as well as zoom close or far away.

[Deus Siddis]

I personally think target view and such should be disabled in vegastrike, available only to mods that enable it for compatibility with things like remaking WC and such.
Target view makes no sense. Perhaps a zoom view allowing you to zoom in on what your ship is facing from some distance away. That would be cool and believeable and useful.

By target view I meant the view you get when you press "7" and then it focuses on your target from inside your ship. We really need a third person perspective (like that used by the chase view) for this view in particular.

I did not mean view "8" which also looks at the target, but up close and with the camera viewing from the direction of the sun (I think). This view really is useless as far as gamplay goes, though it could be made useful if the camera was giving you a close up of the target vessel looking from the direction of your ship, rather than the sun. Then this would help you get an idea for what your opponent is doing at 20km, like those tricky nicanders that let you pursue them for hundreds of kms only to turn at the last second and surprise you with a high speed attack run.

Sorry for any confusion on this, I should have been more clear about which view I meant.

Chase view i agree, the angle is a bit wrong, and the chased ship should be more centered on the screen.

Exactly.

Or give the user the ability to move the chase camera across a plane behind the ship as well as zoom close or far away.

Just vertical movement would be fine too.

[klauss]

Weird. I find view 7 (target view from inside the cockpit) much more useful - and pretty. When I have to combat, I usually target the enemy and play all the time in target view (until I kill the enemy of course).

[ace123]

I think Ctrl-0 does more what you want--it shows the target from the perspective of your ship, but outside (so doesn't show the cockpit).

It should really replace the "7" view which somehow looks like your cockpit but moves so that it faces the target, which is really weird.

There's a variable in graphics called shove_variable_down... you might have to add this yourself:
<var name="shove_camera_down" value=".3"/>
Unfortunately I don't know either the range of values (maybe it should be 10, or maybe .1).

Also, you can look for the last line in the "hud" section, which has this variable:
<var name="draw_unit_on_chasecam" value="true"/>
If you set that to "false", your unit will actually be invisible in the chasecam... probably not what you want however.

[klauss]

What is currently bound to view 7 (target view), has a proper name of "padlock view" - it's emulating your head and eyes tracking the target. It's pretty standard in flight simulators. It's much more "natural" when there's a 3D virtual cockpit than with the current hud-like one.

Flight sim fans will always expect to have such a view, I wouldn't route it out of view keys in favor of the other one. (flight sim fans don't like external views - they're surreal)

[safemode]

without crosshairs and such, i dont see how it's very useful to a pilot trying to shoot at something.

the chase view changes i was talking about would be like having a perpendicular plane to a ray going through the center rear of the ship. You would be able to move the camera over the X and Y axis to a arbitrary degree along this plane. In addition, you can zoom in and out . This would allow you to see slighly under, left, right, and above as well as directly behind.


In addition to that, It would be cool to have a 3rd person camera view from a distance containing the target and the player within the field of view. this camera would move around to keep the player and the target within the center of view at all times automatically. Kind of like a Commander view during battles and such.



And yea, target view is very weird without a cockpit to block seeing directly behind you and such when some ships wouldn't allow such a view. And without crosshairs, I find it more annoying and disoriented than functional. You spend most of your time watching the radar to see if you're pointed toward the target still.

[Deus Siddis]

Weird. I find view 7 (target view from inside the cockpit) much more useful - and pretty. When I have to combat, I usually target the enemy and play all the time in target view (until I kill the enemy of course).

For me at least, it is just difficult to tell where my ship is heading in the new 7 view.

I think Ctrl-0 does more what you want--it shows the target from the perspective of your ship, but outside (so doesn't show the cockpit).

Ah yes, thank you. That's exactly what I was talking about.

It should really replace the "7" view which somehow looks like your cockpit but moves so that it faces the target, which is really weird.

That'd make it alot easier to reach during combat. Maybe 0.5.0's 7 view could get bumped over to 8 or CTR-0

There's a variable in graphics called shove_variable_down... you might have to add this yourself:
<var name="shove_camera_down" value=".3"/>
Unfortunately I don't know either the range of values (maybe it should be 10, or maybe .1).

Awesome, this can fix it.
After playing around with some of the ships (Gawain, Lancelot, Admonisher and Pacifier) I've found that a value of .1 or .15 works well for this. I'll experiment with some more ships and values.