[Taristin]

I recommend not touching it. It makes things too wonky.

[Chris B. Yond]

Well, there is a thread here where some guy explained how to calculate the "perfect" FOV based on the size of the screen and your distance from it. I am actually pretty happy with the result (-fov .589 in my case).

[Axem]

The problem I found with small fov is that lower lods are very apparent since everything is super zoomed in.

[sfried]

Well, there is a thread here where some guy explained how to calculate the "perfect" FOV based on the size of the screen and your distance from it. I am actually pretty happy with the result (-fov .589 in my case).

What's the equation?

[Herra Tohtori]

Well, if

D = horizontal diameter of your screen

s = distance from eyes to screen

alpha = actual angle of the screen


tan alpha =2 * D / ( 2 * s )

alpha = 2 * arctan ( D / [ 2 * s ] )


The actual -fov *.*** number is announced in radians, so if you count in degrees, you still have to convert it from degrees to radians. That's easy.

Pi =~ 3.1415926535...

360 deg = 2 * Pi  radians

1 deg = Pi / 180 radians

X deg = X * Pi / 180 radians


Umm, anyway... if your calculator can be set to count in radians, you get the result directly by

2 * tan^-1 ( D / [ 2 * s ] )

If your calculator doesn't do trigonometric functions, use, say, google calculator. Type

2*atan([insert display width] / [ 2 * {insert your eyes' distance from screen} ]

in Google and let them do the calculations. Put the resulting number into the -fov flag.

[MrBig101]

^^ Ugh, trigonometry class all over again  .

[sfried]

Well, if

D = horizontal diameter of your screen

s = distance from eyes to screen

alpha = actual angle of the screen


tan alpha =2 * D / ( 2 * s )

alpha = 2 * arctan ( D / [ 2 * s ] )


The actual -fov *.*** number is announced in radians, so if you count in degrees, you still have to convert it from degrees to radians. That's easy.

Pi =~ 3.1415926535...

360 deg = 2 * Pi  radians

1 deg = Pi / 180 radians

X deg = X * Pi / 180 radians


Umm, anyway... if your calculator can be set to count in radians, you get the result directly by

2 * tan^-1 ( D / [ 2 * s ] )

If your calculator doesn't do trigonometric functions, use, say, google calculator. Type

2*atan([insert display width] / [ 2 * {insert your eyes' distance from screen} ]

in Google and let them do the calculations. Put the resulting number into the -fov flag.

Is the distance in centimeters, or inches?

Say my screen is 12.1 inches, and I'm usually 9-10 inches away from the screen... -fov .672?

[Zacam]

Doesn't matter what the distance is messured in, so long as all messurements are in the same format. So don't do "D" in inches and "s" in centimeters.

12.1 inches? You don't mean 21.1 inches, do you? Or is this a laptop? Please tell me it's a laptop, because a 12" desktop monitor would just be wrong.

[Kaboodles]

Well, if

D = horizontal diameter of your screen

s = distance from eyes to screen

alpha = actual angle of the screen


tan alpha =2 * D / ( 2 * s )

alpha = 2 * arctan ( D / [ 2 * s ] )


The actual -fov *.*** number is announced in radians, so if you count in degrees, you still have to convert it from degrees to radians. That's easy.

Pi =~ 3.1415926535...

360 deg = 2 * Pi  radians

1 deg = Pi / 180 radians

X deg = X * Pi / 180 radians


Umm, anyway... if your calculator can be set to count in radians, you get the result directly by

2 * tan^-1 ( D / [ 2 * s ] )

If your calculator doesn't do trigonometric functions, use, say, google calculator. Type

2*atan([insert display width] / [ 2 * {insert your eyes' distance from screen} ]

in Google and let them do the calculations. Put the resulting number into the -fov flag.

What about widescreens?  My laptop's screen resolution is 1280 x 768.  Selecting that resolution on the launcher leaves me with weird bugs with targeting and ships at the edge of my screen.   The targeting brackets around a ship moves off the ship whenever my reticle is away from it, but it moves back around the ship when my reticle is centered off it.  Suns and subspace node indicators also move wonky whenever i move around, and ships disappear from view at the edge of the screen.

[sfried]

12.1 inches? You don't mean 21.1 inches, do you? Or is this a laptop? Please tell me it's a laptop, because a 12" desktop monitor would just be wrong.

It's a Tablet PC, so yeah, a laptop.

[S-99]

my brother still uses a 14 inch for interfacing with his server. it only does 640x480, but in 32bit.

[Mars]

...but in 32bit.

Wow... that's gettin pretty fancy

[S-99]

I think it's the smallest type of crt monitor i've seen in my life for a computer. What's even more horrible is when i wanted to play my gamecube at a friends house. I had one of those really old miniature carry around black and white tv's wired up to a vcr to hook up the gamecube to play. Now with tv out on your computer, you could be going on with a 4inch crt

[ShivanSpS]

Which spectacular, some ships like the Aeolus and the Triton, are toooo shinny... Im some cases they looks like "transparent", no because a missing texture, its because its reflecting the background soo much.

[S-99]

they should make a flag setting letting you control how much nebulas and stars reflect off of ships. Just control that intensity like with the other flags

[Herra Tohtori]

Which spectacular, some ships like the Aeolus and the Triton, are toooo shinny... Im some cases they looks like "transparent", no because a missing texture, its because its reflecting the background soo much.

I would rather say the reason is Alpha Environment mapping. Some textures still have full alpha channel, and if -alpha_env argument is used in command line, it results in that the full alpha channel becomes reflective like a mirror.

Specular lighting doesn't have (too) much to do with that. Some ships just have textures that are a bit out-dated.

Of course there might be something else wrong if you don't use alpha_env...

[Taristin]

Its not supposed to be flag controlled, its supposed to be controlled by the alpha-layer of the shinemap.
If those ships are too reflective, there's either a problem with the shine-maps, or the build is reading something incorrectly. (And I doubt the latter.)
Perhaps there was an error or somesuch whilst converting the maps from its native, created format into DDS?

[Shade]

That's not specular, that's envmapping. Specular deals with lighting only, not with actual reflections.

[Flaser]

Those ships either hadn't recieved proper environment maps or you're not using the latest up to date files in the Media Vp-s.

[Vasudan Admiral]

It's the shinemaps alpha channels - I was unaware of env mapping when I made the maps, so obviously didn't take them into account. It has since been fixed for DaBrain's upcomming media VP release.