ORIGINAL: airbusdrvr
My mother used to own a religious book store. One of the requests she occasionally received was from customers wanting a "small" bible but with "large" print. She would have to explain to them that your could have one, small bible or large print, but not both. After reading all the posts in this thread, I am hesitant to ask for something I have been wanting. In post 1021 just above, there was a desire expressed for an ability to keep the ground in sight more often. I have seen this same desire expressed in other posts. I'm not sure how or if it could be done, but for those of us practicing aerobatic maneuvers like we fly at our RC fields, it would really be helpful if we could keep ground orientation more often. I find myself having to practice at low altitude or spiraling down to pick up the field. It is really tough to know if a loop or cloverleaf maneuver is being flown correctly without reference to the runway/flying field environment.
Also, I want to express my gratitude for the support we are receiving from InertiaSoft for FSOne. I feel they are presently really trying to support this sim. I really like the way the sim performs and have been very pleased so far.
Regarding "keeping the ground in view" -- as you mention, there are tradeoffs in everything. We have setup a range of view types and feel that these are the "best compromise". Keeping the ground in view is actually a very simple thing to do -- you basically enlarge the field of view (FOV) enough to keep the ground in view. You may be saying, "Hey, if it's simple, why not do it?". Well, it's a typical engineering trade-off. When the FOV is enlarged, a larger scene needs to be drawn, with more items in view, and this reduces the drawing speed. We feel that reducing drawing speed is not a good thing, so we approached this problem differently than some other RC sims, and do not have a "keep ground in view" mode.
Try this: Go to Options->General. You'll see a Primary and Secondary Views selection area. When the sim is running, the primary view is selected by pressing the F1 key, and the secondary view is selected with the F2 key. These keys work for 3D and Pano flying sites and allow you to set your personal preference for each of these F1 and F2 views.
There are "lagged" views and "perfect" views. A lagged view often has a slight lag in pointing the "camera", similar to someone trying to track the aircraft using a camera. The perfect view points directly at the aircraft and does so with perfect aim.
There are also autozoom and shifted views. Autozoom views will adjust the FOV so that, as the aircraft moves away from the observer, the camera automatically zooms in to keep the aircraft larger so you can see it's attitude better. Shifted views provide a vertical offset that keeps more of the ground in view as the aircraft gets higher.
Many users have found that the shifted views provide a useful means of keeping more of the ground in view, yet this approach generally maintains higher frame rates than the other "keep ground in view" I mention above.
Does the shifted view work for you or do you still feel that you'd want to drop frame rate and keep even more ground in view? Let us know. Thanks!