I'm trying to get incremental zooming working by pressing my X52 pro's "pinkie" button on the stick (set as "Hold to Adjust Field of View") and using the throttle's nipple-mouse to emulate the real mouse. However, the nipple-mouse seems to have no effect in game - does anyone know how to turn it on?

EDIT: For clarification, it's almost as if Cliffs does not recognise that my joystick has this mini-mouse as I cannot assign any controls for it at all. It is confirmed working in the windows USB Game Controllers page though :confused:

Does your mini-mouse stick work in windows?

If not it means you havent mapped the mouse function to it in the profiler.
Im pretty sure it defaults to directional axis instead of mouse.

I just set the throttle hat to mouse, and pinkie to "hold to zoom"

Sorted! Thanks Phat!

The SST profile editor was constantly crashing before I could edit anything so had to search high and low for a different version, I now have what is -I think- an older version of the software which is working perfectly :)

Many thanks

A lot of overlay programs can interfere with the graphical rendering of the new profiler software. I have to disable playclaw before launching the profile software.

there is no complex mathematics involved at all

for 95% of il2/CoD players they sit at roughly an arms length from their flat screen monitors. monitor size for them varies from 19 to 30' , and the viewing distance is determined by the monitor technology (lcd in this case). some sit a little closer then that, some a little further away, but it wont vary by much. hence it is pretty simple for each of those screen sizes (19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, and 30) to determine with a basic formula what the correct FoV is, and once set to this value the player can see all ingame objects in their correct sizes, and knowing the object they look at they will know from its size what the distance is. for my 27' pc screen that FoV is 50 or 55, and in il2 i had that set to my "normal" keyboard key, and was able to use quick snap views to 35 or 90 FoV to briefly overcome the limitations of sitting behind a pc monitor rather then look out of a real cockpit in ww2.

the fact a large number of il2/CoD players never made that mental leap results in them either playing in a dinky-toy world where all objects have shrunk (and hence it distorts distance perspective) when set to an artificially wide FoV, or they are playing superman flightsim by giving themselves "magic magnification" eyes to zoom in and spot minuscule objects on the ground no ww2 pilot would ever find.

its a very different experience flying around in the il2/CoD world with the correct FoV and limit yourself to that most of the time, its err well you know, more "real".

it absolutely boggles the mind that luthier has succeeded in leaving out simple well working features that existed in the il2 series, and right now for CoD as a result is PREVENTING people from seeing the CoD in-world objects (and scenery) correctly.

Heh, what's funny is that Luthier could probably just take code from IL2 and get the many incremental FOV's to work in COD with ease. Might have to alter it a little to match COD code's function terminology, I think this is just one of the countless features that are being ignored while they fix major problems. I'm betting this feature will come, but not for 12-18 months.

I use a logitech G510 keyboard that has 18 macro keys on the left side of the keyboard. I've mapped my view keys to the top six, gunsight view, looking around, and recentering. My middle 6 control mix up/down, pitch up/down, throttle up/down. The bottom 6 control my elevator/aileron/rudder trim. I have my 3 FOV views set to 3 buttons on my saitek evo i can easily press when i need to zoom in/out. Honestly, i don't really need any more resolution in the FOV's, although, the highest zoom setting could be toned down a bit.

the G510 is a great flight sim keyboard. It has an LCD screen you can switch profiles with. Also has a RGB backlight that lets you assign different colors to profiles.

EJ

for someone involving math into discussion, you're pretty far away off, mate.

first of all, because when you're measuring an object's apparent size on the screen by varying FOV until that object's apparent size seems to be right, it doesn't mean the object actually is at the proper distance which would give that same apparent in reality. that's one thing.

another is that you don't actually know which is the real scale of the objects in-game.

a third one would be that zooming has the same scaling effect (ie is done with the same %) on all the objects on the scene, unless there's special code to over-ride that.

a fourth one is that actually FOV is firstly about the field of view, not about the right distance/scale/apparent size of the rendered objects. hence the name FOV (Field of View), and the formula for computing the FoV depending on screen's size is actually about matching human's FoV (ie "view's width" = how much to the right/left can you see a close object), not matching object's apparent size, and using it to get object's apparent size is wrong.

if you want a FoV which would give you the closest resemblance of object's apparent size, you should:
- make sure the scale of the objects is right (draw the real wingspan of a known airplane into the game's editor (using game's "meter" scale) and compare it with that plane's wingspan. even better, import a proper known made object (using a real meter scale) into the game and measure it with game's "meter".
- put that object at 100 "meters" and measure it's apparent size against a game's known FoV (at 60 degrees FoV, and 100 meters away, the screen width's represents X meters. put two objects at x/2 meters away from the center of the airplane, measure the apparent distance between them on the screen at that known FoV and distance, and then, by comparing airplane's apparent size with the distance between the 2 object's apparent size, you can see the real airplane's apparent size). then repreat vy changing FoV until you'll get the proper airplane's apparent size.

you should see that the proper FoV for that it's at around 30 degrees (even less than more), for a same relative scale, no special object groups scaling code, normal screen size.

simpler than that, assuming that the scale of the objects is right for all game object's, adjust your FoV until the targeting apparatus (or just the crosshair) has the same real meters apparent size on your monitor as if in reality you would keep that targeting apparatus (or crosshair) at screen's distance (from between your eyes and screen) from you. then you'll have your proper FoV, again at around 30 degrees, and you can check to see then if airplane's apparent size at 100 "meters" straight in front of you matches the crosshair's measurement as it should in reality.

pretty nasty stuff, right?

the ONE and ONLY solution to object's apparent size in a virtual world having a sufficient FoV (not causing tunnel vision) and objects having the same scale, is to have special code scaling the objects depending on the current FoV used and their distance from the camera.

it's a nightmare from computation's point of view (because forcing the scale of the objects to match the visual appearance will make the objects bigger than they should be, and then.. what would you do with collision? because there's a difference between shooting at a packet of cigars and shooting at a door..), but there were games who did it successfully.

CFS2 was one of them, if I remember right. flying in formation was really feeling like flying in formation in there :)

Adony's Viewpoints aside for a second (which are actually all valid - excuse the pun!)

I think you are confusing object scale & distance with FOV and making a mountain out of a mole hill.

I'm also sorry to have to break it to you, but there is absolutely no way a 27" can render anything to actual real life scale with any degree of usable FOV.
You would need a 100" hi res screen to approximate real life scale and FOV properly with a 180degree FOV. Only then would you have a real appreciation for distance and scale which I think your talking about.

It's not ideal that we have to make all these work arounds to get variable FOV but as has been demonstrated there are several ways around it.

The perfect scenario would involve having the screen at the seating distance of the retical as it would be in a real cockpit and the retical to real life scale. Obviously this dictates the need for a massive hi res screen as per above!

I'm afraid I too just don't get the thinking behind your scale and distance argument? Perhaps you could explain it more. Politely of course!

Modest Proposal for assigning a key to any desired FOV - by a gentlemen from Germany
 

Using Autohotkey, this script enables to assign any desirable FOV between 0-180° (e.g. 22° 45°, 57°) to a key.

Assumption (but you can change that) is that:
"Hold to Adjust Field of View" is assigned to <Alt + Insert>
"Field of View 30°" is assigned to <Strg + Insert>
"Field of View 70°" is assigned to <Strg + Home>
"Field of View 70°" is assigned to <Strg + PageUp>

This example assigns
<Shift + 1> to FOV 10°
<Shift + 2> to FOV 20°
<Shift + 3> to FOV 30°
...
<Shift + 9> to FOV 90°
and
<Shift + z> to increase by 10°
<Shift + x> to decrease by 10°



The most important is
which defines that the Mosue has to move 75 pixels to change the FOV by 10°. A value of 75 is fine for my 1920x1200 25,5" Screen. Probably you have to experiment with different values...


Artist

Artist..That sounds pretty much what I was trying to achieve.....although being the novice I am I have no idea how to implement what you have described in the script...Where does it go?....How do I put this into the game so that I see it in the controls?....