Newbie questions

Hi All,

long time Il2 Cliffs and occasional Il2 BOS flyer here.

I've recently installed DCS 1.5 and have been enjoying the ww2 birds. Very well made and lots to take in. I've learned the basics, e.g. takeoff-freeflight-landing.

I do have a few questions, first of all can I please have a "for dummies" guide to changing the FOV limits? I find the default wide view far too wide and the zoomed in view a tad too zoomed in. I hear it's possible to change it, but haven't been able to make it work so far. Keep in mind i'm on the 1.5 so perhaps things work differently?

Second question - is it possible to do a readout on a second monitor? I use a gadget called Goverlay for Cliffs, the IL2 module had to be custom programmed by the developer but it was made possible using the TF readout interface available on ATAG forum. Is there a program I can use on a second monitor with DCS? Alternatively is the code for the readout public so it could be used by the Goverlay?

many thanks in advance!

badger

Answer to your first question, I simply bind an axis to "zoom view". There is one in every aircraft list of key and axis bindings.

Thanks, I generally don't bind my view to a zoomable axis due to a twitchy potentiometer in my x52 throttle, instead I use 3 POV buttons on the throttle for wide, normal and zoomed in. I also use a zoom in and zoom out slow, those are on my joysticks pov hat.

As I mentioned before I'd like to know how to change the default FOV limits. is it possible?

Yeah, it's possible. It's been a while but I'm pretty sure it's here:

In Folder: DCSWorld\Config\View

Edit file SnapViewsDefault.lua

At the bottom of the file, look for

Snap[11][13]["viewAngle"] = 95.0

Mine is set to 95 as you can see.

Right, thanks, but that's where I run into problems. For instance as I'm running the DCS open beta I'm looking here:

Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\Config\View

In the SnapViewsDefault.lua it says:

--reformatted per-unit data to be mod system friendly

--this file is no longer should be edited for adding new flyable aircraft , DCS automatically check core database for this data(i.e. where you define your aircraft in aircraft table just define ViewSettings and SnapViews tables)

-- result of ingame editing is saved to Saved Games/<USER>/DCS/Config/View/SnapViews.lua

Ok so I go to Saved Games/<USER>/DCS/Config/View/SnapViews.lua

SnapViews list several aircraft but the 190 Dora or 109 Kurfurst aren't among them.

Even if they were, each aircraft has 13 snapviews. The last one is labeled default view i guess that is the middle zoom or default zoom view.

Which entry is the widest zoom and which entry is the furthest zoom? And how do I add the right aircraft? Do I create a new entry?

To further illustrate what I'm talking about, I found a file called server.lua under Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\Config\View. It also has a note saying: "--this file is no longer should be edited for adding new flyable aircraft , DCS automatically check core database (i.e. where you define your aircraft in aircraft table just define ViewSettings and SnapViews tables)"

But these lines interest me:

CameraViewAngleLimits = {20.000000,140.000000},

CameraAngleRestriction = {false ,90.000000,0.500000},

I'd like to set something similar, bascially I want my zoom out button to go to 120 or 130 and my zoom in to perhaps 25?

I'm getting a bit lost in this.

Ah yeah, I'm still running 1.2 so can't help you out on that one then unfortunately.