I find the deafult camera system very intuitive, tbh.

Easy to use with a controller 👍
In the cockpit, i move around freely as I want to and save some camera positions I use often.

Drone cam is also great and easy to use.

I don't have experience with chaseplane however, so maybe I am simply not conditioned on that software and therefore find the MSFS camera system easy to use.

 

The inbuilt camera system is dead simple to use, one might even want to call it "simplistic".

As for the drone camera, print out a guide to the main commands, and you're good to go.

Edited July 25, 20223 yr by Ricardo41

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

If they planned to bring out their own utility I could understand it. But two years on and they haven’t. It’s a bizarre decision. I rely on ChasePlane so much in P3D I couldn’t contemplate any other system.

MFS had its own powerful utility integrated from release; as suncoastflyer said, there's very little you can't do with default MFS that you can in Chaseplane, and as omarsmak30 it's just learning a different way of working. They could do with being a bit more user friendly, an overlay of the key bindings would be handy.

But certainly for external views, drone cam does just about everything you could ever want before you even consider the fixed external cams; so in terms of bits of the sim I want opened up to third party developers for improvement, I think cameras is the very bottom of the list.

2 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

MFS had its own powerful utility integrated from release; as suncoastflyer said, there's very little you can't do with default MFS that you can in Chaseplane, and as omarsmak30 it's just learning a different way of working. They could do with being a bit more user friendly, an overlay of the key bindings would be handy.

But certainly for external views, drone cam does just about everything you could ever want before you even consider the fixed external cams; so in terms of bits of the sim I want opened up to third party developers for improvement, I think cameras is the very bottom of the list.

This topic was raised because some people would prefer ChasePlane to the supplied camera system. As you say there are limitations which doesn’t apply to ChasePlane. Everyone has their own priorities.

1 hour ago, JacquesBrel said:

What exactly are the problems with the default camera system? Just curious as I haven't had any needs beyond the basics that the default system provides - it lets me move the camera around and save the position as a custom view with a keyboard shortcut, and then I can just switch between the custom views I have saved. I don't use it for anything else than a few close-up cockpit views of various instruments, and I haven't had any issues with that.  

I have all of my views set up this way using the number key pad.  The issue I have is say my Captain view is using number 5, if I press the number 5 twice it goes to some other random view.  I have no idea why or how to change it so its linked to only one view.

I thought I read something from chaseplane team way back that was talking about coming to MSFS sometime.

any body remembers that?

One of the benefits of Chaseplane was not only to save custom views while in the cockpit but also externally. I don't think MSFS supports custom camera views on the outside do they? I could be wrong. 

Edited July 25, 20223 yr by Zangoose

2 hours ago, JacquesBrel said:

What exactly are the problems with the default camera system? Just curious as I haven't had any needs beyond the basics that the default system provides - it lets me move the camera around and save the position as a custom view with a keyboard shortcut, and then I can just switch between the custom views I have saved. I don't use it for anything else than a few close-up cockpit views of various instruments, and I haven't had any issues with that.  

For one, its limited to 10 custom views. You can't cycle through views the way you do it in chaseplane - basically you're limited to keyboard control of your views. In P3D for instance I have views assigned to a 4 way hat switch and with the cycle function you can set any view with 1-2 quick keypresses. If you set it up properly you can switch between dozens of views easily and smoothly without resolving to keyboard or getting your hands off the controls.

1 minute ago, ha5mvo said:

For one, its limited to 10 custom views. You can't cycle through views the way you do it in chaseplane - basically you're limited to keyboard control of your views. In P3D for instance I have views assigned to a 4 way hat switch and with the cycle function you can set any view with 1-2 quick keypresses. If you set it up properly you can switch between dozens of views easily and smoothly without resolving to keyboard or getting your hands off the controls.

I haven't found an aircraft that needs more than 10 custom views, in either p3d or msfs - I control the views exactly the same way on both sims (number keypad).

Only thing I miss from Chaseplane is the ability to cycle views - you're right that was handy! Used to have a key for scenery views and cycle through them.

Would definitely prefer it if they were more open to 3rd party devs in utility department though. Probably wouldn't bother with Chaseplane, but do miss ActiveSky...

 

G

 

 

1 hour ago, MarkW said:

I have all of my views set up this way using the number key pad.  The issue I have is say my Captain view is using number 5, if I press the number 5 twice it goes to some other random view.  I have no idea why or how to change it so its linked to only one view.

I'm pretty sure that your second press of "5" will go to the reset view which should be the pilot's view at your default zoom level. The same view as pressing the "F" key. Should happen if you press any of the numpad keys you programed twice in succession.

That's how it works here, and I have no idea if it's changeable somehow, somewhere.

 

27 minutes ago, Twenty6 said:

I'm pretty sure that your second press of "5" will go to the reset view which should be the pilot's view at your default zoom level. The same view as pressing the "F" key. Should happen if you press any of the numpad keys you programed twice in succession.

That's how it works here, and I have no idea if it's changeable somehow, somewhere.

 

Yes, it does that but its annoying when I only want one view per key.

The default Camera View is not bad, but it lacks these crucial features:

- The ability to create new Camera views programmatically or, at least, the ability to control the positions of the existing ones. It's quite silly because, with the current SDK, you can control programmatically many things already, even marginal ones, like the focus blur, but you can't control the most important one: the POSITION of the camera!

- Not only you cannot control the position of the camera, you can't even READ where the camera is located. Not with WASM and/or Simconnect at least, meaning there are no standard variables associated to it. It is possible through Javascript but, in addition to Javascript not being well connected to the rest of the SDK, there's the additional issue of Javascript code for non-airplane add-ons being killed as soon as you close the toolbar menu, to save fps. Of course, if the camera could be controlled entirely through Simconnect, fps won't be an issue, since those code would run in fast C++ and possibly with an external .exe, so it won't slow down the sim.

- The OTHER issue with the camera view starts from another problem with the SDK at large, and it's the inability from an add-on to MOMENTARILY STEAL KEYS from the sim. This was possible both in FSX and P3D and, at least in theory, it should be possible in MSFS, just the relevant API flag to do that is not working. When we raised the problem, Asobo reply was they didn't like the very idea of add-on "stealing keys" and, when confronted with many legit reasons why an add-on might need to do that, they said they'll think about it, possibly with a completely new interface but, of course, there's no telling when this will happen, if ever.

These two issues together makes using the camera system less ideal that it might otherwise be.

As an example, in GSX for P3D we had multiple camera views that were created by each vehicle, or in the editor, which were customized to the task at hand, and disappeared automatically when not required anymore. And, we used the LOCATION of the current eyepoint in the camera ( regardless which one it is ) to set the *listener* position to handle positional audio, that's why just reading the camera position in the  world would be useful.

I can only suggest to vote the issue on the various forums, because I'm not sure Asobo even realize how useful a Camera API could be. 

Separate question.... but is there a way to open a new window and undock it for 2 views in MSFS? This was the norm in P3D for me to have cockpit and external view going at the same time. 

Something that i hate with a passion in the default camera system are the infamous "White dot" in the middle of the screen and also the white border that appears on some airplane's display if you're using an xbox controller to control your views

My god, how i hate that thing.

And also this

 

If anyone knows how i can get rid of those tell me for the love of god!

Great information @virtuali thank you! 

As a layman user the default system is better than average and I've been using it "similar" to how I use EZCA. 

I've got my Alt-0-9 keyboard shortcuts mapped to my joysticks and mouse so I can save my cockpit views and cycle through them with a keyboard, mouse or joystick but would like the expanded functionality listed above as well. Especially the EZCA walk around functionality and saved external views and I do like to use GSX views to watch the ground crew or go for a ride in the GSX vehicles!  🙂   

None of those are show stoppers for me from an end user perspective though and I do get a lot of what I need out of the default system.  

Virtuali is always great to enlighten us as to why it matters behind the scenes though!