Virtual Cockpits

[Syncop8r]

Why is it that one needs to change the zoom of virtual cockpits to 0.5 to bring them properly into view, which makes the scenery beyond look unnaturally wide-angled?
Maybe its just the freeware aircraft I'm using.

Just venting a little

[slopit12]

QUOTE (Syncop8r @ Jun 29 2010, 11:30 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why is it that one needs to change the zoom of virtual cockpits to 0.5 to bring them properly into view, which makes the scenery beyond look unnaturally wide-angled?
Maybe its just the freeware aircraft I'm using.

Just venting a little

Its a problem for all games that attempt to portray the perspective on the human eye on a flat screen. Basically our eyes offer us a wide-angle view of the world through our peripheral vision, without the need to curve the image and create that zoomed out perspective. How you deal with it, in-game, depends on what you want to emphasize, which often varies anyway: From one perspective, 1x zoom is the most realistic portrayal of the virtual cockpit, since it provides you with the most realistic vision of the details of the gauges and switches ect; however this cuts out all of our peripheral vision, which is very important in experiencing and developing a sense of motion, as well as getting a good perspective of the position of your head.

The other side of the coin, fixes these problems quite well, a 0.30x zoom level (often called fish-eye, although it might as well be called human-eye) provides all that lovely peripheral stuff that a human eye captures, giving a good sense of perspective and motion in the picture; but here the problem is we lose a lot of detail on the flat-screen because we have had to 'bend' the picture to allow all that peripheral detail into it, meaning that the stuff right in front of our 'eyes' seems further away than it really should be. Another issue with this in FS is that the peripheral is just as detailed on the screen as the stuff in the centre of our gaze, and this does not reflect the human reality of the 'blur' in our peripheral vision, there is also the problem of focus; however games are starting to model the nature of human vision better, for example ARMA II offers focus, peripheral and motion blurring.

From this, its no surprise that the default zoom level is around 0.70x, which offers a bit of peripheral and a fair amount of detail.

If you want to bring the VC properly into view using a zoom of 0.50x then get a really wide screen, so that you can stretch out that picture, while still keeping the details acceptable. Or as I have done, get TRACKIR so you can keep the normal zoom levels, but be able to move your head around with ease, inside these increasingly detailed and well modeled VCs.

Thanks for the vent about this, I've been looking for an excuse to ramble on this topic for ages

[Venge]

Ya, get TrackIR so your camera moves to where you look. So you can scan your instruments easily with only a second or two away from looking outside.
I honestly can't say if FSX would be able to hold my interest like it does without TrackIR. In my opinion it is a must have.

[slopit12]

QUOTE (Venge @ Jun 30 2010, 06:54 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ya, get TrackIR so your camera moves to where you look. So you can scan your instruments easily with only a second or two away from looking outside.
I honestly can't say if FSX would be able to hold my interest like it does without TrackIR. In my opinion it is a must have.

Yeah I know! When I use FSX without it, I feel like I'm a robot or something; it doesn't feel human!