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.

 

This is very important. It would be good to know whether you guys are using WIDEVIEWASPECT true or false.

For me, the performance drops noticeably with wideview on and I can´t get used the look of the sim then.

So, despite the fact that I use a 1920 x 1080 resolution monitor, I set it to false and I use zoom settings inside of around 0.50 - 0.70, depending on the addon, and oustide always 0.30 with the plane zoomed in via "CTRL" and "-". This makes the textures load more quickly and sharper for a greater distance, even though I haven´t change the setting of LOD radius.

http://calclassic.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=5083&page=1

http://calclassic.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=5361&page=1

calculation:

http://calclassic.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=3956&page=1

I think people are just used to using low zooms. If you're on a CRT monitor with a narrow field of view, in order to see the cockpit without doing a lot of panning you have to zoom pretty far out. By the time my CRT died, I was using zoom of 1.0 and I could mostly see what i needed during landing. When I got a wide screen LCD monitor and TrackIR, I started using 1.5 or 1.25 zoom, as that made objects in the cockpit look the right size, as if I was looking through a window the size of the monitor.

 

For example, look down at your seat. Does it look to be the right width? Does the copilot seat seem to be the right size and distance away? Is the yoke the right size? Without TrackIR, a zoom level of 1.5 would be quite impractical. Also, keep in mind that a Cessna is probably about 3 feet wide.

 

Hook

On my desktop machine with a 27" monitor I use .5 and on my 14" laptop .8 - 1.0. I like the idea mentioned above about using the moon size as a reference. I'll try that.

Dave

I like the idea mentioned above about using the moon size as a reference.

 

The moon is 0.5 degrees wide. If you sit 30 inches from your monitor the moon should be about 1/4 inch wide in a screen shot. This is probably about a zoom of 0.75.

 

Edit: actually, the zoom would probably be a lot less. Too much math for me this time of day.

 

Edit 2: make that 0.27 inches wide.

 

Hook

I don't really understand the need to be concerned with a realistic zoom level. In a real aircraft you aren't restricted to one or several monitors. Also, most simmers use very small monitors which makes things even more unrealistic. You don't see real pilots flying with a cardboard box with a small viewinghole over their heads. Besides, the FSX scenery isn't totally realistic either. The scale of much of the autogen is exaggerated. Use what looks OK for you.

On my 24 inch Samsung LCD, I have been using widewiew with .60 @ 1920×1024×32.When I get home from work, I think I will try no widewiew and .75, to see If my framerates improve.

0.40 seems to give the sharpest ground textures for me.

On my 24 inch Samsung LCD, I have been using widewiew with .60 @ 1920×1024×32.When I get home from work, I think I will try no widewiew and .75, to see If my framerates improve.

 

It will have no impact on fps. However it will make the scenery look less realistic as you will zoom closer to the areas where autogen is less dense, and without a high LOD_Radius settings unsharp landclass textures and mesh will become more obvious.

When using track ir I'll frequently use 1.00. Without it (not often) I'm at .80

Using TrackIR, I always keep it at 1.00 for all the reasons Hook mentioned above. On my own 27" 1920x1080 with TrackIR, based on the default C172; the size of the instruments, the cockpit, the dash, and the controls "feel" the most like real C172's. Its probably still a tad off at 1.00, and somewhere between 1.2 & 1.5 would probably be about right. To me, 1.00 seems the best compromise between realism with the TrackIR and view angle.

and somewhere between 1.2 & 1.5 would probably be about right.

 

Keep in mind that you can get fine zoom levels by holding down the control key while pressing the zoom keys.

 

I'm not sure 1.5 is zoomed in far enough. Those instruments look awfully small. But 1.5 is as far as I'm willing to go without getting a multi-monitor setup. Where's that hemispherical display anyway?

 

Hook

I like the idea mentioned above about using the moon size as a reference. I'll try that.

Dave

 

When I came up with that idea it seemed like the only way I could get a good real life reference point to compare with what I see in the sim. Trying to do it by memory or with what seemed right never worked for me. Using the moon was easy since I could simply look outside, then look at my screen and zoom in and out until the moon appeared about the same size as what I saw outside. Of course this value can vary depending on the size of your screen, but it worked like a charm for me and i've used it ever since.