[exomarch]

Hi, hard-light! Amazed you are all still around, and very happy to see it!

I'm considering picking up FS2 again from GOG and reinstalling FSOpen. I had one really frustrating problem the last time I played this game, though, and I want to see if it's fixed or fixable/modabe on my end when I play again?

Basically, when I'm playing in first-person in-cockpit mode, the primary lasers that *I* shoot are WAY too big and bright for my eyes. They stream out from the far side of the screen and take up a huge portion of it. It made it actually painful to play Freespace for long, and got in the way of enjoying an otherwise amazing game.

The problem seems to be worse in FSPort than in other mods. One good example I found is in these videos:

The first one is from an FS2 Mission and is of the behavior that I'd like my lasers to do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBC5d5gvM6c  Skip to :40 here. See how when the pilot is shooting the Subach and the shots are these little tiny blue bolts? And they "start/begin to propagate" from the center of the HUD?

Now go to 1:10 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDs8cCxZRvY    In this one, see how the pilot's Prometheus shots are these big fat green bolts, and roughly every fourth shot in the cycle comes from the far side of the screen? That hurts my eyes just looking at it on Youtube.

Is there some easy way to change this behavior? It's literally the only thing preventing me from downloading the game again.

Much thanks, in advance!

-exomarch

[Phantom Hoover]

i'm pretty sure this is being caused by the relative positioning of your viewpoint and the ship's primary firepoints

suggest changing your fov and seeing what effect that has

[AdmiralRalwood]

You could also try lowering your brightness; anything bright enough to hurt your eyes is probably too bright.

[The E]

Now go to 1:10 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDs8cCxZRvY    In this one, see how the pilot's Prometheus shots are these big fat green bolts, and roughly every fourth shot in the cycle comes from the far side of the screen? That hurts my eyes just looking at it on Youtube.

Is there some easy way to change this behavior? It's literally the only thing preventing me from downloading the game again.

There isn't a lot we can do about this. Laser bolts are created based on the positioning of the gunports on the player ship, and rendered according to your framerate; We have no real control over when and where a particular effect is going to spawn (And not rendering laser bolts until they're x units away from the player is not a thing we want to do). You could try playing in third person perspective.

[Mongoose]

If all else fails, you could modify the Prometheus shot graphics to a less-vibrant shade of green, or any color really.