Zoom Setting

[Chris Crawford 49]

I just wanted to know what everyone uses for their VC zoom setting. I usually always stick with about 0.50 or so. Any tips on what would be the most realistic setting?

[mslim 12]

0.40 works for me on my system. It gives my eyes about the right combination of peripheral vision and read-ability of the Sacred Six instruments.

 

Slim

[LHookins 3,102]

I use a zoom setting of 1.5 for most planes, 1.25 on the A2A Cub. I use TrackIR to look around. This is the zoom setting where the interior of the plane looks the most natural on my monitor, and the runway looks almost as big as it does landing in a real C172.

 

Note that control and the +/- keys will allow zooming by small increments, as you can't get 1.25 normally.

 

Hook

[simmerhead 885]

It all depends on aircraft and your monitor. I use TrackIR and a 40" LCD TV as a monitor. For airliners I like 0.5-0.7. For smaller aircraft I'll might go lower, and for fighter jets I always fly at 0.3 to get the best possible sense of speed.

 

Generally, zoom towards the wide end and speed will feel increase as the wide angle of view exaggerates distances, zoom towards the longer end and speed will feel slower as you compress the distance.

 

What is most important to me is to find the sweet spot between a wide angle and life sized cockpit gauges.

[Gazzareth 808]

I use 0.6 on pretty much everything, normally let's you see outside and the instruments without the fisheye effect. I also think the "world" looks better at that zoom level...

 

G

[Ponk 51]

Always 0.6 but 0.5 with the NGX to view the HGS.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Hate the fisheye look so I use .75 on all a/c. Plus I hate the flying from the back seat look that you see in a lot of screen shots with low zoom levels less than .70.

 

The other day the moon was out during the day, about 12 o'clock high, so I fired up FSX with the moon in the same position in the sky to check and see if it looked relatively the same size in the sim. After zooming in and out, I found .75 made the moon look no larger or smaller than in real life so I settled on that. It was a good point of reference to compare real vs sim.

 

Four bad things I found using very low zoom levels like .70 or less are:

 

1. Fisheye look. I hate that.

2. Seeing to much of the VC even when moving view point closer to the main panel. In real life the front panel isnt all visible without looking around.

3. Poorer FPS when the field of view is wider and the sim has to render more objects.

4. Some FSDT scenery objects fail to render at all or render properly with zoom levels less than .70.

 

[Chris Crawford 49]

Thanks for the replies guys! I think I'm starting to get used to .75. It does make everything seem a bit more realistic, it's just more of a task to look around the cockpit . I really need to get TrackIR!

[Rations 102]

The WIDEVIEWASPECT FSX.cfg setting also makes a significant difference. With it disabled, I use 0.30 zoom in the VC. With it enabled, I use 0.53 zoom in the VC. I use a 27" monitor.

[JSkorna 137]

.75 most of the time.

[BilboBaggins 82]

I'm learning to enjoy 1.0 or more after squinting at the Carenado SR 22 PFD and MFD at 1920x1200 LCD resolution (24").

 

I zoomed out to .60 at first with my A2A Simulations WW2 planes, just to get familiar with them, but now that I have routines and habits and feel in control of them, I enjoy them more zoomed in, too.

[Johan_Dees 84]

The correct zoom setting for your monitor is important to judge distances.

See the tutorials at calclassic.com for how to set properly.

[LHookins 3,102]

The correct zoom setting for your monitor is important to judge distances.

See the tutorials at calclassic.com for how to set properly.

 

I just read that, or tried to. It appears to be talking about use of correct zoom for 2D panels only, but explains it in terms of latitude/longitude?? For the rest of us, VC means the 3D cockpit, not the 2D panels, and I doubt anyone cares about LAT/LON when trying to determine Field of View for a given zoom level and monitor size and viewing distance. When you're approaching a ridge, you don't know your aircraft LAT/LON or necessarily the ridge LAT/LON, you only care about the distance from your aircraft and the height of the ridge compared to your own altitude.

 

If anyone can make sense out of the tutorial (It's the text file, btw), care to give us a translation?

 

It's all pretty moot anyway, because people are going to adjust their zoom level to what looks right to them. They'll learn to judge distances based on their preferred zoom. If you're trying to make this as close to a real life experience as possible, so you can learn to judge real world distances from using the sim, then zoom level is important. Otherwise it's more like, "Can I see all the instruments I need to when looking forward?" With a 2D panel, you always see all your instruments so you try to adjust the outside zoom to match the size of the panel, which is probably what the tutorial is talking about.

 

Hook

[Paul Golding 92]

The correct zoom setting for your monitor is important to judge distances.

See the tutorials at calclassic.com for how to set properly.

I agree Johan, wideviewaspect=true together with a zoom of 1.0 seems to give the correct immersion factor and I just can't for the life of me see how anyone can think less than 0.8 looks 'right'! I understand how big screens and low zoom settings still allow users to read the gauges, but that isn't really relevant IMHO and I'd love to read some kind of expert explanation as to why low zoom is correct.

 

Still, I guess if someone wants to see a zoomed out world, they're free to do so.

 

Paul

[Johan_Dees 84]

In FSX the VC view zoom should be set at 1.0 and keep it that way to have the correct view. They eyepoint might be off, and can be set in the aircraft.cfg.

If one uses 2D panels, the zoom must be set differently, otherwise its incorrect.