Camera Tweaks

Compared to X3, the external camera is a pretty big step back in functionality. It was very helpful in X3 to pop into the external camera in order to get a good look at what was going on around you, either for tactical reasons or just sightseeing. With how nice X4 looks it is a pain in the ass to use the external look-around camera for anything but screenshots. While I couldn't fix what I actually wanted, the biggest fix was simply making the external look-around camera not default to the completely zoomed in state. Now you can switch to it and look around a bit easier.

Unfortunately I couldn't fix three of the biggest problems. The external look-around camera still initially defaults to looking at a fixed

position in space instead of relative to the ship on activation, I couldn't remove the pitch limits of the external camera, and I couldn't increase the external look-around camera's speed. I will continue to look into these issues.

The following things were adjusted:

External Follow Camera: Slightly increased the speed at which the camera adjusts to flight maneuvers. Not a huge change but makes flying in this mode a little more snappy and responsive and less time with the camera "hanging". Most noticeable when making extreme maneuvers.

External Look-Around Camera: Set default zoom level to the same as the follow camera of 3 instead of 1. Increased camera acceleration so it feels less sluggish and is more responsive. Increased zoom speed. Increased maximum zoom level by a factor of 10.

Internal Cockpit Camera: Increased the default maximum pitch and yaw values. Pitch (default 35) to 85. Yaw (default 65) to 120. This gives a more natural feel of being able to look over your shoulder a bit and almost straight up and down. Some cockpits now have a full view compared to the default values.

To edit some zoom levels:

Find this line:

<external maxpitch="85" initialpitch="20" posspeed="250" posacc="250" anglespeed="180" angleacc="1800" zoomspeed="3" zoomperclick="0. 1" minzoom="0. 75" maxzoom="1000" initialzoom="3" maxdistance="100000">

Mostly self-explanatory. Change posspeed and posacc to change how fast the camera moves in the follow camera mode.

maxpitch and anglespeed don't seem to change anything if you go above the values. You can lower them, however.

I included the follow-cam code but I didn't change the defaults. Find this section:

<follow roll="0. 25">

<base y="1" z="-3" />

<lookat y="1" z="7. 5" />

<linear x="-0. 1" y="-0. 1" z="-0. 01" />

<angular x="-0. 5" y="-0. 5" />

</follow>

The "base" part is where