Has anyone from nevrax or jolt answered why we cant alter the zoom out?

[xenofur]

try that in matis, south of the city triangle, back in nov we had a test there, the defenders were on the hill and the attackers hid behind the tree back on the road. well, i was able to give out targets for the nukers so the healers could be taken care of first. just remember, enemy presence is not the only information.
also, with some more changes it doesn't take minutes ^^

[dazman76]

@fyrx - lollerskates

@amitst (spelled it right see ) - I've never made a post about race here before, so your 'all the time' is quite exaggerated (OMG!!!11lolz) And it was just a warning, so stand off

@xenofur - I would imagine, as with other cam implementations I've seen, that zooming shifts the actual position of the camera, rather than adjusting an arbritrary zoom level. Setting a focal point like that, for a 'virtual' camera is quite difficult IIRC, and in a real-time engine I don't think it makes much sense. Also far clipping distances are specfied from the viewpoint (i.e. the camera), and not from the 'projected' player position. You can see this with zooming out for starters - the far-clipping and detail drop of objects will be linear with the amount you zoom out. Also, if you go below the 'floor' you will see through it into nothingness - achieving this by modifying your terrain near clipping distance would be horrible, and give nasty effects if you were still viewing at a 3rd-person angle - a big oval hole in the ground, at a certain size and distance. When you physically move the camera through the ground, it's invisble (visible polygons and surface normals pointing up), so you don't need special-case clipping changes.



EDIT: And if you did do realtime-zoom on the camera, you would never actually see through the ground, which you can in Ryzom

[suib0m]

but that would be bad because if you can zoom forward then you can see through walls, and you could get a headshot through some of those boxes or a door maybe


oh wait wrong game it doesnt matter in ryzom

rofl.. classic

[dazman76]

Zoom in distance should definitely be limited to the 'first person' position, the camera should never go further forward than the player's head.

Granted, you could still get a good vantage point with various zoomed-out angles and positions, but it's certainly not the same as zooming in 100M

[splatula]

I would never condone this... but zooming out should be fine. Mostly it is a computer performance/stability issue that keeps it where it is now. I know of at least a couple of computers with ryzom accounts on 'em that can zoom way out for hours and hours, without crashing at all.

The trick is, don't go around blabbing that you have done this. There is NO WAY for anyone to know that you have used this, as the config files are client side. That is why they moved the run speed out of there. Keep an original copy of your config, and if you have any problems replace the new one with the original and try running Ryzom again before whining to support that your Ryzom isn't working. Though I haven't seen many crashing issues that weren't directly related to the persons machine itself since the big Tryker fix.

-Oroboroed