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[henkypenky]

Hi fellow pilots, recently I was flying a mission ove Malta with a Spitfire Vc, when I noticed that the POV was very restricted. A cumbersome black arc was obscuring my view. And as the Spitfire was one of the more succesful plane, I thought that there could be something wrong with this POV. Searching the net I couldn't find a really good picture of the POV, but on the DCS site I found a screenshot of their Spitfire POV, which seems more 'real' to me



From left to right: Standard Il-2 wide view,
Standard Il-2 wide view + 5 times PageDown & Standard DCS view,

Now I wonder if 'our' POV is wrong, as it seems the pilots head is much to close to the front of the windscreen, and if this could be corrected?   

[Cafs]

From these pics, the correct position lies between the no. 2 and 3 screen pics above:







You can achieve it in CUP FOV mod.

[Paulo Hirth]

Hi fellow pilots, recently I was flying a mission ove Malta with a Spitfire Vc, when I noticed that the POV was very restricted. A cumbersome black arc was obscuring my view. And as the Spitfire was one of the more succesful plane, I thought that there could be something wrong with this POV. Searching the net I couldn't find a really good picture of the POV, but on the DCS site I found a screenshot of their Spitfire POV, which seems more 'real' to me

From left to right: Standard Il-2 wide view,
Standard Il-2 wide view + 5 times PageDown & Standard DCS view,

Now I wonder if 'our' POV is wrong, as it seems the pilots head is much to close to the front of the windscreen, and if this could be corrected?   

 
  Yes, 100% agree!

[WxTech]

The PgUp/PgDn keys merely alter the field of view, by zooming in/out. This does nothing to alter the virtual viewpoint's location. I mention this only for the complete understanding by all readers...

If one uses head tracking gear and 6DOF, such concerns are largely moot. Otherwise, a mod which provides the mesh (often Body.msh, or MaineHull.msh) containing the view hook assignments can be obtained, and the desired POV edit made with any text editor.

I generally like a more forward POV, as though leaning toward the sight rather than reclining all the way back. This provides both a better sight picture and improved rearward view.

[henkypenky]

The PgUp/PgDn keys merely alter the field of view, by zooming in/out. This does nothing to alter the virtual viewpoint's location. I mention this only for the complete understanding by all readers...

Yes, that is what I suspected, Wx. Can one safely alter the hier.him putting the pilots head against the headrest? And if so which numbers have to be changed? I thought this could be a great opportunity to have a new Spitfire cockpit with more correct POV 

[WxTech]

Heir.him does not control the POV. For the Spits (and most other planes) the file Body.msh has a section at the top called [Hooks], in which the 12-element transformation matrix has the X Y and Z values for the virtual viewpoints. these are the last three numbers, where increasing the values moves the POV left, back and up. The values are in meters, and so 0.001 = 1mm.

When I make an adjustment for the first time, I copy and paste the lines of data, placing before the original lines "//" characters or a ";" character so as to render them not readable. This preserves the original values if I bugger things up.

And so if you want your POV farther back by, say, 8cm, you would add 0.08 to the second last number.

As to which line of the two, three or more... The first line is called CAMERA, and this is usually the "sitting farther back" viewpoint. after the is usually CAMERAAIM, which sets the SHF-F1 viewpoint where you're typically centered on and closer to the gun sight.

This stuff is a cakewalk, which any text editor can handle... If you have Body.msh extracted. Note that there's a *possibility* of differences in Body.msh between game versions, IF DT are permitting to introduce changes to meshes in the stock planes. But I'm not at all certain of the practice here, and can only suggest to be aware of a *potential* for unexpected changes if you use an older mesh.

[Sturmpanzer]

This used to be a big topic in regards to the Fw-190 as well...

[henkypenky]

Thanks Wx, I'll look into this between Cristmas and New Year.

[SAS~Tom2]

Henkyp.:
Sorry for shortening your name...what also comes in handy is the 6DOF normal mouse mod as well as the FOV mod, both allowing to have zooms much closer and farer away as well as a shifted POV (6DOF).

I used them combined in 4.09m and for 4.12 I use the Visual Mod.

WxTech: Very interisting, I recall greybeard did something similar for the F-86 pit, I would like to zoom in the default POV to simulate a wider front frame and thicker sheets.

Will try that. Eventually, in this life or hell.

[WxTech]

There exists already a POV mod for a goodly number of cockpits. Perhaps a plane one is interested in changing this for is present there?

Just be aware that any other mod one might have that has had alterations done to the mesh (more commonly, Body.msh) containing the view hooks might well cause a conflict, or result in missing elements that your beloved mod might contain.

I stress this because in some of my mods I've had to remove gun sight elements contained in Body.msh, and in others I've added some new bits.

This is the area where modding and the use of the fruits therefrom can be a minefield!

To my way of thinking, all gun sights should be completely self contained in their own mesh. Having parts of a sight contained in two or more other big meshes is BAD.

And I think the view hooks should have been given their own little dedicated file, which would never be larger than about 1 kilobyte, or 2.

[henkypenky]

Thanks for the extra info Wx,but Il-2 has got me confused again  ; checking out Sakai's Mk VIII CBI skins, I got this POV:



And this looks near perfect for me, I could live with this cockpit for all Spits

[WxTech]

In the mod for this pit you like, open Body.msh with any text viewer and note the last three numbers for each of the view hook entries. The same values may not apply for all Spits, although it's possible a few variants might share entries. In any event, you need only obtain a mod containing Body.msh (or MaineHull.msh for many German planes, and a few others) for any planes of interest, and then you can fiddle with these three values to find which axis and in which direction each value works, then work out your own favorites.

Note that the mirror orientation does not necessarily work well for POVs well removed from that POV the mirror was set for. I also re-orient mirrors as necessary in hier.him, which involves the rather more complicated trigonometric rotation via the 9-digit transformation matrix preceding the last 3 XYZ positional values.