Oolite Bulletins

Hello everyone! I am new to this website but not new to Oolite, however, this question may seem a bit nooby. I have recently introduced my younger siblings to Oolite and have decided to setup a triple monitor setup with eyefinity and all that stuff as a fun project we can do together. I never really had to think about it until now but I need to change the FOV in order to give the setup that "wrap around" effect. I have searched through the general settings as well as some of the code but havent been able to find anything. I have probably missed something massively obvious, but to save time, I would like some help. Is it possible to change the FOV, and if so, what do I need to do in order to do so.

Thanks in advance!

Hi and welcome!

To change the FOV, as soon as you start or load a commander, press F2 to go to the Options screen, then select Game Options. The setting you are looking for is the slider called Field Of View and is set to 57 degrees by default. You can take it up to 80 degrees.

If you try it and think that 80 degrees may not be enough, let us know. We could maybe up the limit a bit for the next version of the game.

Thank you so much for such a fast reply! I knew it was blatantly obvious. This has already made things look much nicer. I like your idea of making the FOV range greater. I think this will definitely be a good addition to the game as it will allow for greater experiment possibility and perhaps more monitors?! I did some research and have found some topics where people have brought the FOV way out to nearly 180 degrees!

Anyway, thank you for your reply. I am planning on posting photos of how the setup is coming along in the future. Also, I am currently programming a dashboard with switches, lights, smaller displays etc. Hopefully it works but we'll see how things pan out.

Good to know that the increased FOV made things better for you and looking forward the the setup photos.

The reason we can't really go much higher with the FOV is that view side-effects involving the ships' models themselves start to occur if we go too far. In other words, you start seeing the inside of your ship's model. I have made a quick test using the core ships and a 90deg FOV and I think that 90 degrees is about as high as we can go without excessive model interference. Higher than that will require repositioning of the internal view camera locations and of course, testing at various FOVs and screen size ratios and for every single ship to ensure that no other side effects occur.

As an example, here is a screenie of the core Python's side view wilth 90 degrees FOV and 16:10 screen aspect ratio. The bar you can see at the bottom is part of the Python model that is not really meant to be seen and is indeed not visible at 80 deg FOV. Note also how the HUD missile info is already obscured at that FOV as a result. So we need to be careful before we apply any changes and I would not expect too much of a jump from the current limit of 80 deg..

Ok, thanks for the example. I see the issue with the higher FOV. However is it possible to perhaps change the position of the view camera myself, through the code? I might do some digging around to see if I can perhaps do so. Thank you for your help!

You can adjust view positions in the shipdata.plist of whichever ship you're using.

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Ok thanks. Also, maybe this is worth noting, I am running linux. Version 1.84 of the game is not yet available for download via the terminal. At the moment I am still using version 1.82. Will 1.84 be available for download via terminal anytime soon?

Full disclosure: I don't run Linux.

I believe each distro is responsible for the version they make available. However, on the Oolite download page is a .tgz which is a far more reliable way to get the latest released version. This .tgz has the specific libs Oolite needs to run reliably on Linux (and a couple of them have been custom-built for the game). Our Penguinistas can chime in here because I've run out of intelligible Linux-speak and am at risk of saying something someone (probably me) will regret.

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Exactly.

I run Linux and compile from the source. But really, using the tgz archive is the simplest way to be up-to-date.

Yep, use the .tgz (available here) - lovingly crafted by the tap-dancing Penguin.

_________________
We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth

I mentioned the issue with the "low" FOW with multiple monitor setup a while ago, and iirc a nice value would be up to 160 degrees for a 3 monitor setup.
The issue with the ship showing only happens with a single monitor setup when its up there, so my suggestion is to either to just allow the 160 (so people would have to find a good FOW by them selves if they didnt want to go with the default one) or detect the resolution (X AND Y, as iirc the problem is that Oolite only checks Y resolution) and scale it automatically (so the menu scaling is relative to resolution+fov instead of just fov)

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"There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere." - Isaac Asimov