Author Topic: External Camera View/Zoom  (Read 1042 times)

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Offline AV8R

  • 28
External Camera View/Zoom

Don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but in both FSO and the Port, when using the external camera view (keypad decimal key) and then setting the Zoom level to a selected distance away from your ship using the keypad "+" or "-" keys, if you exit out of external camera mode by pressing the decimal key again (so your view is back to cockpit view) and then press the decimal key again (for external view), the zoom level goes back to full zoom in, forcing you to reset the zoom level out if you want the view farther away from your ship. I believe this behavior started around the release of v19.

In past versions of FSO (and Retail versions), if you chose external view and set your zoom level a specific distance from your ship and then went back to cockpit view and once again selected external view, the game would remember the previous zoom level and would stay at this level, no matter how many times you exited and entered external camera mode (unless you adjusted the zoom level again during the mission). In other words, whatever zoom level you set last would become the new "default" zoom level every time you toggled between external view and cockpit view.

Is there a reason why the game can no longer remember what the last zoom level was set to when using the external camera view? Were there new features implemented that are incompatible with this previous feature? Or was it removed for being deemed unimportant (or perhaps accidently removed while doing code cleaning)?

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: External Camera View/Zoom
I just tested this with version 21.2.0 RC2 and I got the original behavior, (Distance is retained). What build are you using?

I's possible that this is a bug because it's not happening to me.  :wtf:
My gift from Freespace to Cities Skylines:  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=639891299

 
Re: External Camera View/Zoom
It would be the last of those, when the external camera was refactored to allow exponential movement and get closer to the view object. Being able to get closer meant that switching targets and maintaining the external distance resulted in greater proportional camera distance differences, combined with the fact that it is easier to gain distance with a large view object since the camera speed is exponential, which makes for a strange discontinuity when switching back to a small object.

I don't want to bore you with the technicals, but you're right this is a form of breakage, I hadn't given the positives of it much thought at the time. Since it's exponential it should never take too long to return to a given distance but if you're switching a lot it would be a pain. After the stable releases I will reexamine restoring this behavior.

I just tested this with version 21.2.0 RC2 and I got the original behavior, (Distance is retained). What build are you using?

I's possible that this is a bug because it's not happening to me.  :wtf:
Depending on your actions you may not be triggering an external camera reset, but it is more aggressive in resetting than it was before.