Thanks that's really interesting.... I guess 0.980 was better in some ways. I would have liked that difference between the behind and cockpit cameras better too.Same number of total cameras for a ship, just eight — a mix of cockpit and behind cameras.Wow do you have a lot of cockpit cameras in that 20 km long ship?
I forgot to ask, what's the difference between selecting cockpit camera, behind camera or auto? I normally just use behind camera. Do the others work differently?
I'm thinking I should max out the FOV to 120 degrees before editing the ship cameras so I can see them even when far away from the ship?
When I detach from the ship cameras, how do I re-attach?
When you make a squadron does the squadron share the 8 camera positions or does each member of the squadron get their own individual 8 camera positions? Thanks!
Not sure about the differences with the auto camera, I believe it is just a behind camera that gets placed a reasonable distance behind the ship without you having to worry about the exact placement coordinates. Two slight differences between the cockpit and behind cameras — with the behind camera, when the ship manœuvers, the camera lags behind a little. The cockpit camera does not (otherwise it would likely leave the cockpit!). And with the behind camera, right-click and mousing orbits the camera around the centre of the ship, the cockpit camera pans, as if you are looking around. At least, that's the way it used to work in .9.8.0 — with .9.9.0, right-click mousing does nothing with the cockpit camera (which still bugs me ) But you can still pan that camera with centre-button click, but as soon as you let go, the view snaps back to forward view. (I don't find that nearly as useful, but maybe that's just me.)
Also, if you have a behind camera active when you switch to ship orbit view, the right-click mouse move orbits around the selected reference body, while having a cockpit camera active it will pan the view. Or it might, not sure with 990. A minor quibble.
To reattach to the ship camera, just press "4" again. If that does nothing, you'll have to go back to the ship menu, make sure the right ship is selected, and click on "Take Control", that should get you back on board.
A ship can be composed from modules, or just one complete mesh. The .sss file contains the module definitions used for the ship. Many models use just one module so the complete ship is one mesh. You can add multiple instances of that mesh as different modules, with different x, y, and z coordinates. So the various ships all act as one unit. But that also means they all rotate as one fixed unit, so not perfect. And since the .sss file also contains the camera definitions, the entire squadron or fleet is still limited to eight cameras max.
Oh... one more difference between behind and cockpit cameras. When going to warp, the behind camera always pulls out well behind the ship (I still find that annoying, too, but what can you do...), the cockpit camera stays in place. I turn the warp effect off, and enjoy the undistorted view from the cockpit when going to warp. Mostly.
I totally forgot to ask you this very important question I haven't been able to figure out yet-- how do you turn the ship quickly? Like let's say I'm flying over a planet and I'm in horizon mode (autopilot hold altitude turned on), how do I turn from a 90 degree heading to say a 120 degree heading quickly if I want to move in that direction now? Using the arrow keys or the num keypad does nothing lol. Do I have to get out of autopilot hold altitude? But then that makes the movement of the ship unstable and it wildly swings back and forth and tilts and rotates and I end up losing control lol. I just want a smooth change of direction while keeping the horizon level and the altitude the same-- is there a way to do this? And if so how? Do I have to mess around with the retro engines somehow? That doesn't seem to change directions either.
Have you noticed more stable altitude holding with the new version of SE? I have with a couple of my ships which don't fly off into space or crash into the planet with hold altitude on and better use the hover engines, which automatically adjust to keep the ship within an acceptable distance above the surface (between 5 km and 30 km, mostly around 10 km up.) Also what happens if I have one of the cameras set to -10000 (10 km lower than the ship) and the ship gets lower, to say around 4 km up....the camera won't crash into the planet will it? Will it just stop working or will it still be just above the surface recording the movement just like before when the ship was higher up? And do you use an even number of behind and cockpit cameras or more of one or the other? I suppose you can place cockpit cameras outside the cockpit too (like the aforementioned 10km lower than the ship to record the surface) and they won't crash into the planet or stop working when the ship gets lower either? Of the two ships I've been using the most, one has 4 cockpit cameras and 4 behind cameras and the other one has 3 cockpit cameras and 5 behind cameras. All the cameras I've added to those 2 ships are behind cameras.
Also oops almost forgot to ask this too-- when landing on a planet how come some ships get closer to the planet than others? There is one annoying ship I stopped using that could never get closer than 15 km above the surface! I stopped using that ship lol. It also had this weird bug where as soon as I got lower than 22 km it crashed into the planet even if I turned the engines higher and kept the altitude level. Completely different engine behavior when above or below 22 km! The two ships I use now, one can get to within 750 meters above the surface and the other can get to 1.75 km above the surface. Are those good distances to get to from the surface or would you recommend I find a ship that gets closer than those two? 1.75 km is near the limit of what I find acceptable.
Also, would you suggest direct altering of the ship's cameras in the .SSS file? I've found these files and they do store the updated camera positions and rotations even if the program crashes while using the ship and trying to switch cameras (which used to happen to me but doesn't now that I lowered graphics to medium settings.)