Bridge Viewer FOV or Scale

[darrincates]

I hope this is an ok place to ask this, please excuse and move if not appropraite, I had asked this as a 2nd part of another post, but thought it might get better response on it's own?

I was wondering if anyone new anything about changing the viewer scale/ ratio / FOV for my TOS bridge viewer?

When I'm on the bridge and I see an object in space, it appears to be far away, but when I hit space bar for out of ship camera view, the object is much closer than it looked while I was on the bridge.

I'd like to get the bridge viewer to be true scale?, like a window.

I saw an aspect ratio in one of the mutatotrs, like 1:8 or something, but I could not edit the value there ... I click on it, but no cursor. But then again, for some reason, I have to click a million times to get the cursor for the warp factor variable in the mutator config .... maybe I'm not 'getting it ' if the scale is supposed to be changed at the mutator? ... Any ideas?

Is this an issue I should approach the modder who created the TOS bridge? Or a file relative to that bridge?

I haven't really compared to any Default BC bridges viewers because I've never played BC other than TOS enhanced, but this occurs with my TWOK, and BOP bridges as well. - Thanks for any help or advise! - Darrin

[Nebula]

not the bridges fault... it's the fault of the HP your ship is using.

bridge camera views and distances get configed in there.

[darrincates]

not the bridges fault... it's the fault of the HP your ship is using. ... bridge camera views and distances get configed in there.

ahhh .... now I come to hard points .... does KM come with SDK? ... The reason I ask is because I wrecked an install of BC/KM when I was going through the first steps of the widescreen tutorial.   I dropped the SDK files in and immediatly launched BC/KM to make sure it was ok, and it crashed right away .... luckily I had just made a copy of the BC dir. - thanks again Nebula! - Darrin

[Nebula]

don't dump sdk files into KM that's a big no no... the sdk files are stock files and won't mix well with what KM changes...

all you want from the SDK is the MPE to edit the HP's rly... but IMO the only thing needed to modify the py files is notepad. (That is if you aren't making an HP from scratch.)

[darrincates]

all you want from the SDK is the MPE to edit the HP's rly... but IMO the only thing needed to modify the py files is notepad.

ahh neb, I owe you again! .... I edit .php a lot for the odCommerce sites I develop. these .py's run the same way ..... I like Homesite 5 .. it color codes all the tags and variables .....  

So your sayin' theres a .py for the bridge somewhere that has some type of viewscreen variable I can edit to have the in bridge viewscreen 1:1 like a window rather than it's scale down setting?

Thanks for getting me pointed to all this! - I have twice as much time in modding and configuring as bridge time! ... and it's awesome I can actually bend BC to be exactly what I want .... the whole idea behind KM I'll bet. - D

[Nebula]

haha btw py is short for python the programming language BC is built on.

and no there isn't a bridge.py file that has that stuff... it's in the ship's HP file under scripts\ships\hardpoints.

[darrincates]

haha btw py is short for python...  it's in the ship's HP file under scripts\ships\hardpoints.

Python .. kewl name ... you know I run the TOS bridge, but that doesn't matter .... I found the ConnieHP.py and looked it over .... I see all the variables you can change ....

I think I found the code, but am having a bit of a time figuring out what variable would be for the FOV, or scale of what you see through the viewer itself while on the bridge:

ViewscreenForward = App.PositionOrientationProperty_Create("ViewscreenForward")

ViewscreenForwardForward = App.TGPoint3()
ViewscreenForwardForward.SetXYZ(0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000)
ViewscreenForwardUp = App.TGPoint3()
ViewscreenForwardUp.SetXYZ(0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000)
ViewscreenForwardRight = App.TGPoint3()
ViewscreenForwardRight.SetXYZ(1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000)
ViewscreenForward.SetOrientation(ViewscreenForwardForward, ViewscreenForwardUp, ViewscreenForwardRight)
ViewscreenForwardPosition = App.TGPoint3()
ViewscreenForwardPosition.SetXYZ(0.000000, 1.600000, 0.100000)
ViewscreenForward.SetPosition(ViewscreenForwardPosition)
App.g_kModelPropertyManager.RegisterLocalTemplate(ViewscreenForward)

I'm not looking to make the actual size of the viewer larger ... just what I see through it ...

I realize this is way outside KM, but would you know which variable it is? - DC

[King Class Scout]

hey, jimmy, didn't we play with this with the TMP grade bridges so the camera wouldn't always be pointing at Felix's back instead of at the viewscreen?

[Nebula]

KCS he wants to change the viewscreen not the in bridge camera.

[tiqhud]

Nebula makes a good point, You can use Notepad to make changes [but then he is experienced] however I have always found it safer to use MPE for anything major, it is so easy to accidently delete a Vital  [,] or [ ' ] causeing the HP not to load at all , then tracking it down can be Hard.

So for just starting out  [until ] a person gets a few years of experience in the making of HPs, stick with MPE, BCUT also has a good tweaker [ Tweaker ] for HPs

[JimmyB76]

hey, jimmy, didn't we play with this with the TMP grade bridges so the camera wouldn't always be pointing at Felix's back instead of at the viewscreen?

KCS he wants to change the viewscreen not the in bridge camera.

[darrincates]

You can use Notepad to make changes  ....  BCUT also has a good tweaker [ Tweaker ] for HPs

Yeah, I all ready have notepad bound for .py's ... it's just quicker ....

Now I feel bad for starting this thread .... I noticed last night that when I walk over to stand right in front of the view screen ... the scale of the objects I see are exactly the same in bridge and out ..... it's only when you move away from the viewscreen does the scale change ... I guess that's the way it's supposed to be .. naturally when you are in the captains seat, targets on the viewscreen would look smaller. Maybe I just need glasses when sitting in the captains chair! - No, I am going to look into it so that the view is scale while sitting in the chair just like it is when you walk up to the view screen .... Thanks! -DC

[darrincates]

From my post at KM forums:

Try playing with the pCamera.SetMaxZoom() line in scripts/Bridge/EnterpriseAbridge.py (TMP Bridge)

 almost!

Thanks for that, I do like pCamera.SetMaxZoom(1.4) for sure as it xooms in everything I see just a bit,..  but that's not quite what I was looking to alter .... good offer though ... it does zoom the whole overall view like an FOV setting ....

I'm looking to only change the scale of the space and ships and planets I see in the bridge viewscreen area only .... you, now, Like an 'FOV setting' for the viewscreen only on the bridge .. zoom in or FOV of bridge screenviewer .. I'd like to set it zoomed in like when Kirk says "On Screen Magnification'  only permanently set to zoomed in to scale ...

let me show you with screenshots and a photoshoped screen:



Default bridgeviewer screen as seen while sitting in captains chair makes the starbase look pretty far away doesn't it?:









but when I go to outside view, woah! Look Out!  - I'm a lot closer than I it appeared!!:











When I go back to bridge view and walk up to the viewscreen, the scale / distance /aspect ratio looks correct! and matches the external view!:











What I'm looking to accomplish is this scale / distance / aspect ratio displayed on the viewscreen from the captains seat (photshopd):





_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

This is how it is now:







This is how I wish it could look:
(and don't say move the ship forward ... hehe!)







In other words, when I'm sitting in the captains seat and I'm really that close, I want to really see that I'm that close on the viewscreen from the captains seat without having to walk over to the view screen to get a real sence of how close I really am .... 

And actually, when I walk up and stand in front of the view screen, I would want the space station to look HUGE! - actually displayed larger than the external view .... like it was much closer than than it really is ...
does that make sense? - I hope someone knows how to edit that  .... Thanks for the effort! - Darrin

[Bren]

I understand what you want to do, but the problem with it is that the game treats the viewscreen as a screen rather than a window. it's a 2-dimensional display surface.

Walk closer to a TV, and the image on it scales up with the TV, naturally. The same occurs in BC (though some other issues with the placement of the Viewscreen model on the bridge sometimes interfere with that and produce varying results).

Another issue I can see with having that particular viewscreen display things at a tighter zoom as would befit your request is that it's a tiny viewer, and it would be very hard to navigate the ship that way.

All that said, I have thought of one way you could sort of simulate a window. It will involve a small edit to the viewscreen.nif file. You'll need Nifskope and Milkshape, or 3DS max and a Nif exporter - or some other model editor that works for BC -  to make it happen. All you need to do, really, is scale the viewer up in size, and move it away from the centre point of the mesh. Say, 5x bigger and 2x further away. That way, you'll only see the part of the image visible through the viewscreen frame when in the centre chair, and as you move closer, you'll be able to see more out of the edges.

Get close enough, though, and you'll see graphical glitching where you can see the empty space beyond the edges of the viewscreen nif. To eliminate that, you'd need to modify the bridge nif itself, to put a kind of extruded frame from the edge of the viewer frame out to the edges of the location of the viewscreen in the viewscreen.nif file. That part is fraught with danger, though, as tampering with the bridge mesh in the wrong program could mess up animations, or even the proportions of the model. I only mention it out of a sense of completeness.

I thought all this up on the spur of the moment. Hope it helps ;)

[darrincates]

I understand what you want to do, but the problem with it is that the game treats the viewscreen as a screen rather than a window. it's a 2-dimensional display surface.

I know, I love that aspect of it! - Walk up to it and it looks really cool ....

All you need to do, really, is scale the viewer up in size, and move it away from the centre point of the mesh. Say, 5x bigger and 2x further away. That way, you'll only see the part of the image visible through the viewscreen frame when in the centre chair, and as you move closer, you'll be able to see more out of the edges.

Exactly! - You know exactly what I mean!

I thought all this up on the spur of the moment. Hope it helps ;)

Will do! - Thanks for the lead! - Darrin

[Bren]

No problem, mate! Show us some screens of your results, if it works out.