View Angle slider maximum value

[mistythunder]

In the Firestorm Viewer what controls the maximum value of the slider at "Avatar => Preferences => Move & View => View (top tab) => View angle" ? I find that it is usually 1.64, but sometimes it is 2.27. I thought at first it was controlled by the resolution of the monitor the Firestorm window is in while logging in. But now I find this is not necessarily the case, for I have been unable to repeat this effect.

I have two viewers connected to my computer. These are:

Sony SDM-HS94 1280x1024
LG Electronics 27MP33 1920x1080

My graphics card:
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

[Rowan Amore]

7 hours ago, mistythunder said:

In the Firestorm Viewer what controls the maximum value of the slider at "Avatar => Preferences => Move & View => View (top tab) => View angle" ? I find that it is usually 1.64, but sometimes it is 2.27. I thought at first it was controlled by the resolution of the monitor the Firestorm window is in while logging in. But now I find this is not necessarily the case, for I have been unable to repeat this effect.

I have two viewers connected to my computer. These are:

Sony SDM-HS94 1280x1024
LG Electronics 27MP33 1920x1080

My graphics card:
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

This might be what you're looking for

 

[mistythunder]

I read the article. It is about how to use the camera, and control the view. It does not answer the question, which is, what controls the View Angle slider's maximum value?

[Rowan Amore]

It will change if your hit ctrl 0 or ctrl 8.  As far as I'm aware, it doesn't change on it's own but is set at the default of 1.048 regardless.of your screen size. Not inworld to check but I believe ctrl 9 sets it back to default view angle.

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by RowanMinx

[Nalates Urriah]

The viewer's View Angle is similar to a RL camera's wide, standard, and telephoto lenses. In other words the field of view or focal length. The control is a setting for the viewer's camera. There are other settings that control screen resolution and viewer window size. Those are a mix of the Operating System (Windows/Apple) settings and video card settings which are, in some measure, dependent on your computer screen. The View Angle only determines how much in-world stuff will be rendered to your system's screen.

Rowan is right. The value is controlled by Ctrl-8 ,9, and 0. With 8 => wider, 0 = reset, and 0 => more narrow - telephoto.

This gets discussed in several places in the Look Today thread. Many of us make our portrait pictures using Ctrl-0 (pressing 5 or more times). This gives a more realistic look to the face. Try it and see what you think.

 

[mistythunder]

My question does not regard Ctrl-8 ,9, and 0. These move that slider. My question regards the maximum value that slider can be set to. There are conditions that change that maximum value that I have not been able to identify.

Because I do a lot of Gorean combat, I need peripheral vision, so I typically always have it set to its maximum value.

[Rowan Amore]

8 minutes ago, mistythunder said:

My question does not regard Ctrl-8 ,9, and 0. These move that slider. My question regards the maximum value that slider can be set to. There are conditions that change that maximum value that I have not been able to identify.

Because I do a lot of Gorean combat, I need peripheral vision, so I typically always have it set to its maximum value.

Go to debug setting/camera angle.  This should show what the maximum value could be set at.

There are no conditions I'm aware of that change these on their own.  It's a user controlled option.  Unless you've change the operation of the ctrl 8,9,0.

Edited December 25, 2020 by RowanMinx

[Nalates Urriah]

The SL Wiki has a page which lists Second Life Debug Settings. You can search using the browser's FIND on the word 'limit' or 'camera' and find all the settings that affect the camera. I don't see anything that I think limits the view angle.

What conditions change the max value you can set on your camera?

View Angle in Preferences and in CameraTools and PhotoTools' Cam tab are the same. The limit in FS' Preferences panel is 1.51. In PhotoTools the limit is 3.060 but when the value reaches 1.51 the camera stops changing. From 1.51 to 3.060 the camera does not change, the camera view remains at 1.51. In CameraTools the changes stop at 1.522. This suggests the limit is built into the viewer not a debug setting.

The Debug Setting is CameraAngle. It too allows settings larger than 1.522 in FS but again those larger settings do not affect the camera. The SL default viewer maxs its changes at 1.51. Black Dragon goes a tiny bit farther, 1.5573. Almost 180°. BD's Debug Setting will go to 1.57, just a tiny tiny bit more.

These values are radians. So 1.51 = 173 degrees.

Since the three viewers I looked at are slightly different I think it is reasonably certain the limit is in the viewer. This suggests you might compile a version of the viewer with a greater limit. However, that all three viewers stop at about 180° and human vision provides a 210° maximum field and a practical field of 150° I would expect more variation in the third-party viewers.

There used to be gamer specific viewers. None of those are actively maintained today. I don't remember any of them having a wider field of view. I think they would have gone for a wider field for combat gamers.

These things lead me to think the render engine may not be able to handle more than 180° field. Which seems odd to me. But, the 360° Camera viewer takes 4 views (I think) and stitches them together. I am not sure that says anything about the render engine limits but it may.

You could research further looking into the UI control's XML file to see if there are limits set there that can be overridden. Or it may be easier to dig through the viewer source code, which is open source and online.

 

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

13 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

There used to be gamer specific viewers. None of those are actively maintained today. I don't remember any of them having a wider field of view. I think they would have gone for a wider field for combat gamers.

These things lead me to think the render engine may not be able to handle more than 180° field. Which seems odd to me. But, the 360° Camera viewer takes 4 views (I think) and stitches them together. I am not sure that says anything about the render engine limits but it may.

Having a wide field of view becomes a detriment after a certain point as even close-up targets become small (harder to see) on the screen, you lose depth perception, and it can cause motion sickness.  Gamers don't tend to play at 180 FOV when given the chance.

As for why the viewer doesn't let you go beyond 180 FOV, it could be because the rendering is done with a few assumptions about the maximum FOV to simplify things or make them more efficient. Going beyond the current limits could cause glitches or distortions that would make such FOV actually useless.

 

[animats]

Monitors are getting wider.

49 inch curved monitor. The price on these is coming down. Many are now below US$1000, with the cheapest below US$750. They're essentially half of a 4K TV display, and as those have gone mainstream, making wider monitors has become cheaper.

Now if you had three of these in a semicircle...

Who needs a VR headset?

[NiranV Dean]

The maximum field of view depends on the aspect ratio of your world rendering. The broader your initial field of view is, the less you can raise it and vise versa. Someone with lets say 4:3 ratio can set it far higher than someone with lets say standard 16:9 or 16:10. This is so everyone ends up at pretty much the same maximum field of view.

Edited December 27, 2020 by NiranV Dean