press CTRL+V aka Paste, but changes to cockpit view in FL.

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Well duh. I ain't talkn' 'bout that. I'm not that much of a nOOb. What I am refering to, is the point on the ship that you see through when you are in cockpit view. I want to be able to shift its position on a Rheinland Battleship so that I am not looking from inside the middle of the thing. I want to be looking from the front of it, like in the control tower near where the HpMount point is. I'm sorry I should have given more details in my original posting.

Edited by - NotOfSoundMind on 12/19/2006 6:18:05 PM

I know in the cockpits.ini there are the settings for the "Tether" angle for the 3rd person view...but that doesnt help much.
However, in the Data Folder of the game, you have the
Cameras.ini (settings)
(in this ini you have this setting)
CockpitCamera
fovx = 70 (field of view angle)
znear = 2.000000 (distance to front of cockpit? )

Freelancer has/had a provision for a "lookable" cockpit camera, but never implemented it. Why? I have no clue since that would have added some realism to flying your ships from the cockpit.

I have a feeling this is probably where you might have to change it....BUT
this move might have undesireable consequences with the rest of the pilotable ships..unless you can transfer this base setting to the particular ship cockpit.ini file for the game to "see it".
On a wild guess, I think you could add the necessary entries to move your battleship cockpit camera to the desired location.
znear = +/- (some number) front to back
ynear = +/- (some number) up or down

I'd leave the x alone since that determines left to right position.
All you can do is experiment with it but I'd probably "exagerate" the number a little to show some definate movement.
Worst it can do is crash...so you'ld have to restore the original settings and try again.

Edited by - Rankor on 12/20/2006 4:58:37 PM

Edited by - Rankor on 12/20/2006 5:00:17 PM

I tried the znear as you suggested in the cameras.ini but that seemed to turn the world very very dark when I put it up to 700. I guess that isn't it. I also tried adding a view_position = x, x, x under the [CockpitCamera heading in
the cockpit ini file. Nothing. Well, if anybody can figure it out let me know.

Cockpit view is centered on the hardpoint HpCockpit. If this hardpoint is not in your ship's .cmp file, cockpit view position defaults to the center of the ship model instead. Also note that the location of the third-person camera as set in shiparch.ini is relative to HpCockpit, so be sure to correct these camera offsets to compensate.

Dev,
I thank you, and my Cat thanks you. That did the trick. It is also worth mentioning, that I discovered while digging around the guts of other ships, a hardpoint exists called HpCockpitEx. When added to my ship, it changes the 3rd person view to that location. It has to be outside the ship, up, and way back on a battleship. Thanx to all who responded. You were a big help.

Thanks Dev,
Now I've got something to work with for future reference and features.