kiwikat

1 hour ago, cobalt said:

And those who have actually taken the trouble to investigate the camera and learn how to use it would know this.

And those who have actually taken the time to read the complaints would realize this doesn't address the problem at hand. There is no way to change your distance from the aircraft in external view, only zoom. Zoom != Distance.

I've spent many hours tweaking configs, reading SDK documents, looking at simconnect vars, reading forums, asking devs, and nobody has a solution for this.

1 hour ago, cobalt said:

MSFS is an entirely new sim, so talking about stuff that existed in earlier simulators is irrelevant. Sounds to me like you should stick with FS5-- you will be happier there. 

No?

During the alpha you could literally change the cameras.cfg file to work the way we want, but they broke it sometime during final development. They could simply un-break it again and let us define our own camera position. No this would not break the new system.

In a world the Kodiak didn't exist this would be a lot more appealing... might just look at screenshots and videos of this one.

5 hours ago, cobalt said:

Sounds like you may need a flight-sim valet to perform all these onerous tasks for you.

Or, they could just add back the view that has been in the sim since I started with FS5.1 in the 90s.

Change for the sake of change isn't improvement. Nor is flat out removing features we've had for decades.

2 hours ago, cobalt said:

The camera system in MSFS is working just fine after the latest update. What "external camera system that had been working for decades" is kiwicat talking about? 

The simple "Spot Plane View" with the aircraft CENTERED in the screen with the ability to change both your distance and zoom from the aircraft. Why they removed this is beyond me. I don't want to use some stupid drone mode. I don't want an ultra wide distorted view. I don't want to have to press more than one button to change my view and then use the hat on my joystick to move the view around.

The Kodiak would be brilliant if the PT6 and engine systems were modeled more accurately. Fingers crossed SWS has more for us in that area in the future. I'll add the PC-12 to my long list of stuff to buy in the future.

I have no idea why they had to destroy the external camera system that had been working for decades. I complained about this several times but everyone tells me I'm crazy. I guess people like the "cinematic" crazy wide angle look with extra stretched wings, the plane getting cut off on the bottom, and only having 1/3 of the screen filled with ground scenery. I really hope this gets fixed someday but I'm not betting on it.

14 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Try pulling the breaker for the standby attitude indicator and see if that helps..

Thanks for the help! That got me another 10-12 FPS on average. Excellent!

Got the plane now that their site is back up. Thoroughly impressed by the ground handling and takeoff roll, and the inertia doesn't feel totally messed up like most of the planes. Cockpit FPS is a little disappointing but I'm not sure how much can be blamed on SWS rather than the G1000s. Once the next sim hotfix is available I think I might actually get back to flying for a while.

11 minutes ago, Simple B said:

They temporarily took it down from sale so that all those who bought it can update.

Thry barely have the server capacity to cope with the numbers. No doubt it will be up again as soon as the update rush calms down.

Yikes. There are solutions for that now in almost 2022. I guess I have to wait my turn.

So any idea why it isn't available for purchase on the SWS site now? I'd rather not pay 5 euro extra elsewhere.

Yikes. This smells like an excellent freeware package though.

NO. Buy a (1) L-39 and that's it. I wonder if I can somehow get a refund through steam?

11 hours ago, jarmstro said:

It doesn't. Unless it claims to be study level.

You would be hard pressed to find those words anywhere on PMDG's product pages or in their marketing materials. Go troll somewhere else. Nobody here has to justify PMDG's pricing scheme to you. If that's a deal breaker for you, then you can sit and watch everyone else having a blast at launch.

That's an absolutely massive area! I'll buy this instantly.

Too bad they couldn't cover the rest of India though.

8 hours ago, threegreen said:

As PMDG frequently point out, no news is good news because they're busy working and don't have the time or nerves to post updates. I like previews and updates as much as everyone else, but when it comes to PMDG, I'd be concerned if they posted updates every third day, because then development would probably pretty much stand still. 😄

This is an absolutely silly post and view of the developers' time. The amount of time it would take to give us an update is immaterial compared to what is put into the plane. They either have nothing to show or they don't want to show us anything (most likely the latter). Has nothing to do with how much time it takes to write a forum post.

2 hours ago, Rogen said:

I was watching an Asobo disucssion last weekend where they talked about a pause on feature releases to allow them to catch up with bug fixes, probably a good idea after reading all the issues people are having.

A month or two spent ONLY on bugfixes would do this sim wonders. Hopefully MS allows it.

6 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

So I click on the mouse button, and move the view up and down left and right and in and out in about 1 second. What's so hard about that? 

So at this point I can't tell if you're trying to help or deliberately trying to start something here. I am not talking about PANNING. PANNING and ZOOMING do not solve any of the issues I mentioned.

EDIT: OMG I found a workaround for the camera location while taking a screenshots to demonstrate my issue. Turning track IR on, tilting my head so the plane is in the middle of the frame instead of the bottom, and then turning track IR off seems to hold the new camera center point. Now I can pan all around with the plane staying in the MIDDLE of the screen. Hopefully Asobo doesn't read this and then 'fix' it in the next SU. The focal length/ultrawide issue remains, but I don't think there's anything I can do to convince that to get any better.

2 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

I've never seen this, you can easily move the camera around.  I must be misunderstanding.

Everybody sees it every time they use the default external view, so yes you are misunderstanding. It is hardcoded into the game.

The default external view has the camera a bit above the center point of the aircraft and is angled downward slightly. It results in you seeing the top of your plane rather than a shot straight-on from the side like we've had forever. The angle along with the focal length and zoom of the camera is such that the horizon is at roughly 1/3 the height of your screen rather than the 1/2 that had been used for decades. This results in a more 'cinematic' style camera. No matter how you pan the camera, it remains centered on that point above the center point of the aircraft, so you can't get it to look like it used to. Often this causes the plane to get cut off on the bottom edge of the screen depending on your zoom level and pan angle.

I want the camera to be on the same height as the center point of the aircraft, be set much closer to 1x zoom, and for the camera to be further away to reduce the ultrawide look. This is the way the sim has been for decades, but for some reason they just had to change it in MSFS. The old default lets you see more of the ground, less of the sky, and have your plane way way less distorted. Make the fancy cinematic view an option, not the default.

The SDK claims you can set a DEFAULT_CHASE view that works like the old camera in the cameras.cfg of the aircraft, but this has not worked since an early alpha build in like the spring of 2020. Changing the height and angle of the camera in cameras.cfg does nothing either- it is like the default external camera is hardcoded somewhere else that can't be modified. I'm not convinced cameras.cfg does anything at all at this point. A plane will have 8 external quickviews but only 4 in the cfg file. Changing them in the file doesn't seem to do anything to any of the views in-game.

The only thing I have found that lets you get close to a view like we used to have is with track IR enabled. Even with it enabled you still do not have control over the distance of the camera from the plane so it remains distorted.

The drone camera is neat but it is not a replacement for the old spot plane view, it does not work the same way, nor does it follow the plane's movements in the same manner.

24 minutes ago, bofhlusr said:

I'm not sure if you're referring to 'slew' mode in MSFS. If you are, have you tried using the drone mode in MSFS instead (from the cockpit press the Insert key)? 

Once in drone mode:
w, a, s, d = move the view (drone's) forward, left, back, right)
r, f = up/backwards
Numlock 4 and 6 = yaw
c = toggle switch to control your plane (not the drone)

Nope, a super simple Spot Plane View like we've had literally since I started playing on FS5.1. I don't want to mess with toggling control, I don't want a completely different set of cameras, just let me move around with my hat switch with my plane CENTERED on the screen instead of hanging off the bottom. This isn't rocket science.

Their SDK documentation claims this is possible but the entry in cameras.cfg does not work. Others have confirmed this behavior as well. There was a period back in the alpha where I got it to work but they seem to have hardcoded it so I couldn't do that anymore.

A camera system that worked for 25 years. It wasn't flashy or customizable but at least we didn't have to stare at the top of our planes every flight and barely see the ground due to the angle of the camera and the plane being in the way.

Out of all the things to break... good job Microsobo.

Awesome, now we get to wait 3 years for it.

2 hours ago, Car147 said:

There's been a noticable silence from all the devs that were bringing new high fidelity aircraft to the sim since SU5 it was released.

FTFY.

The silence is deafening across the board. I don't understand what is so difficult about being transparent about what's going on. Communication and support was pretty atrocious with the last gen sims but somehow it seems to be getting even worse now. What's really going on with the hobby? Is this thing not as successful as people thought it would be? Why are freeware projects the only folks that seem to be able to adapt to new technologies? I can't believe we're over a year into this thing and haven't gotten some sort of a preview for an A2A plane. Did Flight1 cease operations? What happened to the QW787? Majestic, hello? FSLabs, are you there? TFDi, do you have a pulse? It was refreshing to see Leonardo the other day with a preview of the MD80. At least one of em is alive.

Kudos to those few devs leading the pack right now while the others seemingly have nothing to little to say or show- FlyingIron, JustFlight, Milviz, and a sprinkle of others. Something something... heroes we deserve.

Give me all of the bits!

8 hours ago, MattNischan said:

I'm actually somewhat amused as to how little traction or attention the NXi has gotten on these forums. I seem to recall this crowd yelling somewhat the loudest about how poor the original G1000 was, but relatively little fanfare about one that now does all the IFR stuff everyone wanted in the first place (and a good deal more).

For me it's been on the 'meh' side because of the aircraft selection. We still don't have any good quality payware to put the thing into. Your work is appreciated but we need folks like A2A or some sort of replacement for RealAir to make it to market. Even a VLJ featuring it would be neat. The Citation Mustang was certified for the thing, but we don't have one of those in this sim either. The stock planes stopped being interesting a year ago unfortunately.