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Post by Tom Goodrick on Aug 4, 2009 9:30:28 GMT -5
Doing this as a pop-up view does not seem to be possible. But it would be easy to do as a permanent fixture on the panel.
In the 2D panel view, just hit "{" to make a small screen called "Cockpit". This can be zoomed independently from the main view and then dragged to a new location and re-sized. But with the normal continuous panel background, this new view fits behind the panel where it is invisible. You can make a permanent hole in the panel anywhere by maling a square and painting it pure black. Then the small window can be dragged to that location and sized to fit. It will remain there as you fly showing whatever forward view you want.
I tried making a black square that would pop up into the MFD display but this did not show the small window.
But we should not overlook the value on approach of the relief map view in the GPS for showing the proximity of high terrain to the approach path. Note the approaches for VNY, TVL, SJC, MRY and PSP in California.
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Post by jerryluke on Sept 30, 2009 22:30:12 GMT -5
What would the proper zoom level be set at? (Views...view options...zoom) Mine is set at 0.90 right now.
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Post by Tom Goodrick on Oct 1, 2009 8:51:55 GMT -5
I use 0.9 most of the time. This really gets into "psychological optics" which is my name for a phenomenon I noticed back in the 1970's when I first started experimenting with "out the window views" on computers. I made views that were technically accurate in a sense but looked very unrealistic in certain ways. At that time I had an office with a very large window next to my desk. In devising how to make the view, I would try to hold my eye in a fixed position and fixed orientation while plotting witha marker where objects outside seemed to intersect the glass. I figured I could only see the light ray from the object after it passed through the glass. So I set up a geometric plane between the computer viewer and the "outside world" and mathematically mapped all points outside onto the plane as I did in the office onto the window. The math was really very simple - just proportion ratios.
It worked well except for points out near the edge of vision. When plotted, they seemed to be distorted. But most points and the lines connecting them looked real. My conclusion was that our eyes collect the rays for all such points to the limit of our vision but then our brain maps them onto a surface of some kind (not necessarily flat and then we are taught to ignore things on the periphery. I also compared the optics in photography to the apparant optics generated in the computer.
Sitting here at the computer I can see a 180 degree field of view. But I generally ignore most of it and concentrate on the screen.
When real pilots use the Flight Simulator with planes they are familiar with, they often have trouble with this field of view thing. In the real plane their eyes are picking up cues from the periphery. In Flight Simulator there are no such cues. You might think it would be best to use a wide angle view such as a "magnification" of 0.5. But this just makes matters worse.
So we must conclude that there is no "proper" magnification. We just set a nominal value and get used to it. We learn to tap keys or buttons on the joystick to "look" left or right as needed.
Yesterday I did several different visual approaches to a small airport on an island (Dauphin Island, Alabama) and in several cases held a key down to lock in a diagonal view as I made the turn to final which was important as I was descending steeply and slowing with flap changes. This motion can seem a little strange but it works and is somewhat equivalent to what you would see in the cockpit.
Note that you can set different magnifications for the different angles of view from the cockpit. I ususally run with values that give a slight overlap between the different angles.
The only thing that matters here is what you like.
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