I am looking to find the best zoom for my experience, that one that seems more realistic (low zoom makes your speed look faster than it is) and I noticed that this is very relative to your screen resolution and size.
I changed recently for 1080HD 42 inches to a OLED 4k 48. And I found that the zoom looked visually better changed from default 50 to 30 in this new screen. Anyway I’m not sure if Im falling in realism when talking about speed and altitude appearance or not.
In other hand too much zoom makes scenery looks blurry and you can’t be sure if rolling your aircraft feels realistic or not.
I don’t think zoom level is only about personal preference when you want to feel realistic about your altitude and speed (mainly in approaches).
I would like to know from you, what zoom do you use in your screen?
What’s the resolution and size?
How realistic you feel about it?
Are you real life pilot?
Let’s share a lot of this topic, can help many people regarding zoom level on flight sim.
I tend to use the default level and have zoom set up on yoke buttons, in/out, to find wind socks or runways. Zoom speed is slowed down in options. Default view in options is set to wide.
But I also set up and save a pilot viewpoint, per aircraft, using translate up/down & translate view in/out.
The default zoom generally feels a bit too close in to me. This is probably due to restrictions on FOV with the monitor though. Zooming out to get back in position makes things a little small to see properly. Zooming out seems to work particularly well with a large screen such as a 4kTV though as you can get that FOV with your bigger ‘portal’ into the world. I’d assume ultra wide screen monitors would be similar.
There is a detailed series of three videos on YouTube for FSX/P3D. I followed it (still had P3D on the previous machine) to calculate the most natural zoom for my screen, set my plane onto the entry of RWY 28R at KSFO and made a screenshot. Next, I fired up MSFS, set my plane onto the very same point and zoomed in and out until the view was identical.
The result was a zoom level of 80.
Just telling, no need to follow this. And keep in mind high zoom can degrade performance.
I’m nearly exclusively on VR those days, thus don’t care about this anymore.
Google “Field of View Calculator” =) The thing is, setting a correct value will narrow the view so the sense of speed is gone. So, personally I prefer to be a bit closer than default, but not with the windshield on my nose.
I recently went down the FOV rabbit hole for sim racing. I ended up with an extremely zoomed view, which while accurate meant that I couldn’t see the gauges. For most people I’d venture a guess that a truly accurate FOV would also be borderline unusable without head/eye tracking. My recommendation is the same as @BoxiestAbyss920: Find the correct setting using a calculator, then back it off until it’s actually practical to fly.
Set your zoom to your like, and then look down to the seat diver height and look than in front.
Now translate view some forward or backward to your comfort
Devs use different zoom levels for their cockpit cameras, so the view from the cockpit to the outside world is different from aircraft to aircraft. And they even use different zoom values for different camera views in the same aircraft.
I save the default view to custom view 1, then in the file I change the zoom to the exact same value that I use for all my aircraft and from there I generate my custom views 0 to 9.
Otherwise I would have a differently sized outer world in redarg to which aircraft I use.
Thank you, I checked this out in the following link:
According to the proposal of this topic, my zoom level should be 80. I tried it, tried to fly with a heli, and it was amazing how look like your screen is a window though the plane. I was completely wrong setting it below 50, instead in my case it should be upper.
The bad thing is about the gauges, but if you want a realistic feeling in terms of distance, I agree with this site. In true life I wouldn’t see gauges with a window in my screen size limiting the view.
That’s my opinion and I tried and agreed with the FOV calculator and the zoom level relations in the link.
Edit: since 80 I was lost too much of gauges, I made some adjustments reducing my screen distance, calculated again and I found the reasonable Zoom level of 66.
Zoom is actually NOT a preffered usage. MOVE is what you want to do. Basing this on that how close the outside world is to the windscreen; if this is corect set at “50” zoomlevel - then you want to MOVE closer to the windscreen instead of zooming which takes everyting (!) with it: not just the instruments in the aircraft.
A lot of devs (Asobo and more) are using the zoom - feauture when moving closer to dashboard. Im using my top-hat POV on my joystick. Default stages are Normal, closer for landing and wider I guess. BUT - when doing this on most (cheaper?) addon aircraft, it just..does not look good. We want to come closer to the dashboard, not getting the whole world around us closer
So, instead of using the zoom, and based on that on “50” the surroundings are ok (how they would have looked with that zoomlevel IRL), we should instead MOVE forward and backward. I have not practised this a lot myself though, but I guess there must be some “move forward” and “move backward” keys.
I also wish that the dev’s of aircraft would STOP using zoom in the cockpit, and for the setting for how close you are to the dashboard. Its not accurate at all.
Is it possible to set a allround setting for all aircraft: Looking closer, all instruments, landing position, right, left (or front-right, front-left which I would have preffered, which is standard on a few planes)?
Also - it seems like the standard zoom (that word again!) is not looking the same on all aircraft. There should be some sort of standard I think. Not sure how Asobo / MS think about this, but if would have been much better.
It would be nice if the fish eye effect were not as strong when at, what I consider, the proper zoom. The cockpit and scenery immediately around can look just right but distant scenery directly in front of me will then be too far away. Its always a compromise. It’d be great if FOV and fish eye effect could be adjusted separately if thats possible.
Zoom is related to screen size, once you have found your seat position (with translate left or right)
Find your zoom setting by rotating with shift + arrow key or xbox controller, it should go around like you are standing on the street or beach going around in circles.
Than you have right zoom setting for your screen size also for up and down
This is an interesting topic as from the screenshots I can see the very wide variety of tastes. Some flight deck shots are so far back that I think the plane is being flown from one of the first class lie-flat seats
This is what I do, I much prefer it to zooming. The only time I zoom is to temporarily look at the displays (some of the fonts are so tiny).
OK, here it is. The sim seems to lack a “center camera” function. So whenever i press reset view it takes me out of any adjustments or the landing view for that matter. I use the joystick hat to look around but recentering resets the view (height and temporary zoom changes). The only way to sit perfectly (distance to front panel/yoke and height) we have to change the entries in the camera.cfg. I did that for every aircraft i own but unfortunately most Asobo patches rewrite it back to their defaults, so that’s a lot of work after every major patch. The camera.cfg also has an initial zoom entry, mostly .35 but some devs make changes here, so i change that back to .35 also. I realized (watching people on YouTube) that 50 zoom (default) on a 50 inch TV screen is the correct zoom to make the world and the cockpit look properly sized as long as you sit right in front of it (you should be able to reach the TV screen with your fingertip when you stretch out your arm). I have a 30 inch monitor so i have to make compromises. Monitor size and distance to monitor are most important. Making things look realistically sized kills the immersion because of the reduced field of view. So i make sure the initial zoom is .35 for every single aircraft. This is an excerpt of my C172 camera cfg:
[VIEWS]
eyepoint = -3.7, -0.85, 2.0 ; (feet) longitudinal, lateral, vertical distance from reference datum
InitialZoom =0.35
InitialPbh = -3, 0, 0 (look down angle -3 degrees)
I use zoom level 53 ingame for every aircraft.
Tip:
You can put your hands in a position in front of you as if you were holding a real yoke, then look at your ingame yoke and check how tiny or oversized it is when you compare both. I tried to get as close to real size as possible by moving the seat forward not the zoom that always stays at 53 because i don’t want to change the size of the outside world as well. I hope this helps a little unfortunately xbox users can’t manipulate the game files.
Since Im using my top-hat POV control on my simple joystick where the default up and down button is ZOOMING in and out (closer to windscreen letting the rest of the world come closer as well), Im looking for a proof-safe way to make this move back and front instead.
BUT - that should be said, some devs have realised the problem of zoom and as standard made the pov-function (default in MS I guess??) to move instead of zoom.
Someone inte direct contact with Asobo and can make a point in this? =)
Holding down the left ALT key and then pressing ‘up’ or ‘down’ moves you forward or back in the cockpit IIRC.
Asobo could help everyone by either explaining or simplifying their camera system. ‘Global camera settings’ control some things but it never says more than ‘hold the input’ or ‘press the input to toggle’. You define the input elsewhere in Controls. It’d be nice if they rewrote that part to include what keys you have currently set up to perform those actions because it almost seems as if the ‘Controls>Cameras’ sections was written by different people than the ‘Global>Cameras’ section.
Can I in a easy way make my forward and backward on my POV tophat make this instead? But then i will probably brake preset views “wider”, “standard” “landing/close” I guess.
Also - devs much follow the same rules, I think. So its alike in all planes.
Whats your zo…that word again. Whats your setting, and why? I tried correct FOV but I got claustrofibic, since the screen dont mimic the eyes which can se everyting around even though you are wathich one specific spot. Therefore in my case, 60 I guess.
