View Postion

[juaness]

Hi all, 

 

Does anyone knows how to change default position of aircraft view?

I mean, when I load the aircraft and I go for aircraft views, I want to change position and zoom for those views so I don’t need to change every time I load the aircraft. 
 

Thanks.

[Ray Proudfoot]

@juaness, it’s not great which is why ChasePlane was so popular. You don’t say what version ofvP3D you’re running but unless it’s v6 this is the best solution. Once you setup your internal and external views they are stored and load automatically when you switch aircraft.

https://parallel42.com/products/chaseplane

[juaness]

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@juaness, it’s not great which is why ChasePlane was so popular. You don’t say what version ofvP3D you’re running but unless it’s v6 this is the best solution. Once you setup your internal and external views they are stored and load automatically when you switch aircraft.

https://parallel42.com/products/chaseplane

Thanks Ray. I’m using 5.3.

i know about chaseplane, but just wondering how to change the default position. Without using chaseplane. 
 

thanks anyway. 

[Ray Proudfoot]

@juaness, might this help?

https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv3/LearningCenter/getting_started/view_system/using_views_and_windows.html

[JonP01]

I was wondering what that was all about since I was watching a video yesterday that had internal views but were designated as "chase plane". As someone who has just moved from FSX to P3D I really like that the camera details can be stored in a scenario file and they will override everything else - so my plan had been to simply create a "default" scenario file for each of my aircraft. I will have to look into this chase plane to see what it can do versus the methods I have always used (painstakingly creating files for each and every aircraft). It worked but it was very time consuming and tedious. As a (slight) aside, I have found the manage cameras function in P3D very good for working out a camera angle "in real time" and then using those same values in a scenario file but I imagine chase plane works off that to a whole new level.

[JonP01]

On 6/22/2024 at 6:12 PM, juaness said:

Thanks Ray. I’m using 5.3.

i know about chaseplane, but just wondering how to change the default position. Without using chaseplane. 
 

thanks anyway. 

Juaness, my experience with P3D is extremely limited (compared to a lot of FSX experience), but what I have discovered so far - if you are not wanting to use any add-ons - is that like the previous FSX, your basic "default" virtual cockpit view (as in left seat fixed wing pilot) is still controlled by the default camera.cfg file in terms of zoom. If you change the virtual cockpit zoom, it will "stick" for all aircraft. I changed mine from the default 0.3 zoom to 0.33 zoom. But of course that will only be satisfactory if you want one consistent zoom level for every aircraft.

For all other values I have found the easiest thing is to save a scenario file for each aircraft. So you can have each aircraft cold and dark, for example at your favourite airport parking spot and call it something like "Default - XXX" where XXX is the particular aircraft in question. That scenario file will actually contain all the camera data in it. You can then change all the camera data to suit but you would need to understand what parameters do what in camera files (there is not much change from FSX here so far as I can tell, at least for versions 4 and 5 - I cannot speak for version 6 as I do not have it).

If you are then stuck for working out exactly what values to change to for those camera stanzas in your scenario file, that is where the "manage cameras" menu function comes in handy inside the P3D interface itself. When you use that function, you can - in real time so you see the real time consequences - of changing the various camera parameters for each of the camera different views you want. But that will only change a temporary camera with a temporary name - you cannot overwrite the standard ones. But you can then take your amended camera values and then input those values into your scenario file and then they will "stick" when you load that scenario. You could simply just save that particular scenario "as is" but it looks a bit clumsy because you are stuck with both the standard cameras plus the ones you actually want. That is where the manual editing comes in since you change those standard camera parameters to the corresponding ones you decided upon for your temporary cameras.

So basically:

1. Use the main default camera file to set your preferred "global" virtual cockpit zoom value.

2. Change each aircraft's individual aircraft.cfg file to change where precisely each camera inside the aircraft is located and at what view angles and zoom they use (as for the old FSX).

3. Create a scenario file for each of your aircraft and use that to have control over all the additional (non virtual cockpit cameras) including the external views.

This has worked for me so far for my add-on aircraft but since I only have two so far it has been reasonably easy to do and I carried across much of the data values from my previous FSX install anyway (since I had already set up all the cameras in FSX to my liking). But it is very labour intensive and time consuming when setting up a new aircraft or if you have a fleet of them.

[Luis Hernandez]

I used to edit manually the aircraft.cfg, not by trial and error, but by saving a flight with the VC camera positioned where I wanted, and then copying the coordenates to aircraft.cfg.

Since last year, I started using Camera Position X, by Lorby. Available here. A lot easier to set just the views I want.

[juaness]

22 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

I used to edit manually the aircraft.cfg, not by trial and error, but by saving a flight with the VC camera positioned where I wanted, and then copying the coordenates to aircraft.cfg.

Since last year, I started using Camera Position X, by Lorby. Available here. A lot easier to set just the views I want.

Something like this I was looking 

[JonP01]

I'm three weeks into my P3D adventure and as of yesterday evening I had completed all the basic setting up, installation of aircraft and the tonnes of ORBX scenery and 90% configured with just a couple of config file parameters left to fine tune. So I turned my attention now to the camera views. Suffice to say that I found the old FSX cameras a bit complicated to use natively but I could happily setup the aircraft config files and main camera file accordingly (I actually had different main camera files for each aircraft and just wrote a batch script to copy the relevant ones in as required - same with the controls.xml file as they were very different for each aircraft. It did the job very well - no complaints).

But P3D puts a whole new layer or three of high complexity into it all and I have to say that I now understand why pretty much 99% of you have gone for a third party camera app. Just as I think I am understanding how all the cameras work and the relationships amongst camera files, aircraft config files, scenario files, parent cameras and child cameras sharing a common guid etc, something comes along to throw that understanding all out of whack again.

I think any payware camera add-on is worth it and I am going that route. This is all too hard and I could sit here for weeks contradicting my desired camera setups. That said, I understand why P3D have gone down this route where scenarios play such a large role. If I were running a flight school simulator project, I would be making very heavy use of the scenario functionality and that would mean a lot of customised cameras. But I just wonder if this is a case of not wanting to rebuild that code base from scratch and instead adding onto it but by doing that it starts to become so messy and complex that for end users it is (almost) a nightmare.