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Guest RichardL

Realistic Zoom Setting

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Guest RichardL

Quite possibly this has been discussed many times but difficult to find in a Search. Is there a consensus on what is the proper zoom setting in FSX to experience take-off and landing as it would be in a real aircraft?I suspect real would pilots have a better "feel" for the proper zoom setting.

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Guest jprintz

>Quite possibly this has been discussed many times but>difficult to find in a Search. >>Is there a consensus on what is the proper zoom setting in FSX>to experience take-off and landing as it would be in a real>aircraft?>>I suspect real would pilots have a better "feel" for the>proper zoom setting.It depends upon which aspect of the view you want to be realistic. You can zoom out and widen your view and get a more realistic feel of how peripheral vision is helpful and necessary in real life... but then you'll gain distortion. Or, you can go the other way, and set the zoom at 1.0, which will more realistically depict angles, distances, height, and scale... but then you'll feel like you're looking through a keyhole. I've always stayed near zoom 1, because a 3 degree glideslope in real life looks a lot more like what you'd see at FSX zoom 1.0, and that visual picture is what's been important to me. Any smaller number is too flat. Others prefer to have more of the side showing, a kind of wide view. Bottom line: as you zoom out from zoom 1 you lose scale. As you zoom IN to zoom 1 you lose peripheral cues. What's to be sacrificed is all up to you. For me personally, the answer is clear:TrackIR 4 Pro;-) You can then have proper scale, AND pretty easily and naturally pick up the necessary peripheral cues.

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Great question and by coincidence I have been doing some experimenting with this.It may be that I am primarily flying a recreation of my rw aircraft right now and only have a 2d view-but I find .30 does a multitude of good things in my situation. It gives a greater field of view and looks more correct visually, the autogen look the right size (taking care of the complaint that autogen is too big), and the textures look incredibly sharper.Definately worth experimenting with.GeofaMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

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I think the question is much more important for 2D panels than for VC cockpits. A well designed VC should give you all the correct dimensions and proportions right from start with no need for tweaking. So assuming your VC is perfect (take for example something like PMDG's MD-11 or 747) you can see what sort of zoom in 2D panel will "squeeze" the same amount of runway width in your glareshield. So by trial and error you can find the answer. In other words your 2D panel will have the same proportion to the outside world as in VC. This is important for example for proper perception of speed.Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

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Default value is 0.50 inside and outside for me.Objective here is to get best and most instruments details while getting crisp scenery.When I fly heli., though I go down to .40.Pierre


Pierre

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Guest RichardL

Looks like we are getting to a consensus but a bit more discussion may be needed.As to the points on peripheral vision on a single monitor, don't consider it. Look at it this way. Place your self in the real aircraft. Imagine you have on blinders that limit your peripheral vision. At what zoom setting do you see the outside objects in the same relative size, ie runway width, tree height, building size. Replies so far seem to favor the lower end of the scale.

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"As to the points on peripheral vision on a single monitor, don't consider it. "Curious about this statement. In large, the way you land a plane is with use of your peripheral vision. That is the beauty of a virtual cockpit on a single monitor-you can zoom out so you can get some of that.You can also get it in 2d...GeofaMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

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Here are some pictures to illustrate my point-and to also show that peripheral vision can be done on a single monitor.Here is a shot my wife took out of the back seat of the plane. It is largly what a shot of the sim looks like in 1x zoom-a straight ahead shot of narrow view. However, that is not what the pilot sees.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/194104.jpgHere is a shot in the sim at 1x zoom in the 2d view.The view is very similar to the backshot passenger view out the window, however the cockpit view is more what the pilot would see.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/194105.jpgHere is the same in 2d view but .30 zoom. Notice the circled area.When you land-you are basically looking ahead to judge your flair-but you are also using that circled area with your peripheral vision to judge height. By zooming out even in 2d, I am now able to use that area to make a realistic landing.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/194106.jpgEven better, is the virtual cockpit-now the circled area that is needed periphally to land is quite realistic to what you see seated in the pilot seat.So in addition to sharpening the textures, and making the autogen objects a better size,the pilot's viewpoint becomes more realistic, and one is able to use your peripheral vision to land like in real life. The 1x view is more appropriate to a backseat passenger view.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/194107.jpgGeofaMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

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As an interesting side note-here are exact same shots at 1x and at .30 zoom-same place, same altitude.Notice the "blurries" on the 1x zoom shot and sharp great looking textures (at the expense of a few fps) in shot 2 in both forward and side views. Maybe why some never have the blurries? Certainly a much wider range of view like what you see in a plane vs. tunnel vision!GeofaMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/194109.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/194110.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/194111.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/194112.jpg

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After viewing a number of airline videos, I believe the zoom at 1.0 is accurate for landing purposes. For flying at cruise level, I have zoom at .69 to include more peripheral vision. I've wanted a concrete answer to this also, as the sense of speed is changed along with the zoom level. 1.0 I believe is accurate, but the speed appears very slow on final approach. Running at .50 makes the same approach seem too fast.Curt

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First off-the speed sensation on final approach will be dependent on the winds.At that point groundspeed is paramount. Add a thirty knot direct wind and you will appear very slow-no wind and you will appear faster-tailwind and you will be very fast.The second point is the sense of speed for a passenger vs. a pilot.When you drive your car at 70 mph-looking directly ahead the speed sensation is very little. Look directly to the side and the speed sensation is very great. Same works with planes-the sensation from the front view is slow compared to the side view which appears fast.I haven't really noticed that much of a difference between the look of speed with the various zoom levels, but I have noticed the difference in the look of reality.One of the things you learn as a pilot is the appearance of speed will look different on almost every landing-but the indicated airpeed is what you must fly by-you can't be influenced by the apparent change of speed over the ground. You trust that and learn that each landing will look different speed wise as the wind is never constant.GeofaMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

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Well for my 2 cents worth I started using a zoom level of around .6 to .69 only because you can't adust the pilots height view in the 2D cockpit like you are able to in the VC and FS9. And also differences between stock and some addon aircraft which seem to have a steep eye point angle also started me doing this. I get a better view of the runway on taxi and takeoff at around those numbers. On final i use about .84 or so to get a little earlier view of the end of the runway and it seems to smooth the graphics out a little bit.


Regards,

 

Dave Opper

HiFi Support Manager

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