Reprogramming View categories on my joystick

[Guest JohnC]

Keyboard Letter S and Button 2 on my Microsoft Sidewinder joystick are programmed to View(Next category). I cannot see any relation between the camera definitions in the aircraft config file and the series of views I see when I step through by pressing Button 2.My Beech Baron's aircraft cfg has no relation to the categories I see. I see VC, Locked Spot, a Nearest Airport, and a Right Wing and I want to change these and add a fith Custom view into the category string.I have custom views already for some aircraft. That is not my problem. It is how to program/redefine the string of views for a specific aircraft if possible or at least a different default string when pressing S or button 2 on the joystick repeatedly.I think the n in the CameraDefinition.n statement plays some role but it is not spelled out in the FSX SDK. I have tried saving a flight after manually changing the views but the same view string reappears upon reload..

[beatle 0]

There are 2 keys that allow cycling through views, 'S' and 'A'. As you've noted, the 'S' keys cycles through the view categories (Cockpit, Outside, Tower, aircraft defined) while the 'A' key cycles through all of the views within a category (for Cockpit, that might be Virtual Cockpit - Pilot, Virtual Cockpit - CoPilot, etc, for Outside, that might be Spot, Locked Spot, etc). For a fairly quick visual representation of how these keys work, right click on the 3D view window and see the top level menu items (Cockpit, Outside, Tower, Runway, Aircraft, Air Traffic), these relate to the 'S' key cycle (although Runway and Air Traffic are skipped in that sequence), now hover over one of these top level view category items and the submenu that displays shows the views that the 'A' key will cycle through when that category is active.As to how these relate to the aircarft.cfg and camera.cfg files, one of the items defined in the camera definition is the category that camera goes in. Within a category, order is probably arbitrary based on the order they were found in. The CameraConfiguration.N numbers only requirement be that they start at 001 and are sequentially numbered within each aircraft.cfg or camera.cfg file, the actual .N number doesn't have any special meaning.

[Guest JohnC]

Thanks for the link to your site. I'm at the point now where I have only two more questions.....can I eliminate a default view category entirely...specifically the Tower View...and can I clean out some of the default views the A key cycles through inside a category?

[beatle 0]

Don't know the answer to that one, but if you have the SDK from the Deluxe version of FSX, check out the Camera system documentation included in that, it explains all the stuff you can do with the camera system (or at least all the stuff we remembered to document anyway :-> )

[lliaudais 2]

John,adding "CycleHidden=Yes" to the end of a camera definition keeps the view from appearing when cycling through the views; still available from the drop-down menu. Seems to work that way (as described in SDK).Loyd

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

Is the SDK automatically installed along with FSX de Luxe? Edit: Found it on DVD 1.

[Guest JohnC]

Guys, thanks for the response....I saw the cyclehidden=yes/no thingy IN THE sdk, but sometimes the specific aircraft.cfg file doesn't have the particular camera block of code there. Some of it is sittng somewhere. i AM GOING TO TRY GOING INTO THE CAMERA.CFG FILE AND TRY modifying cyclehidden to yes there and see what happens....again... thanks.My interest was peaked when I realized some of my aircraft downloads had some of the camera views missing, so I thought the answer must be in the downloaded aircraft.cfg, not in the default FSX. The end of runways cameras I installed look great...watching a replay aircraft from the end of a runway then have the camera rotate around to look down the runway to see a touchdown is pretty slick.