the camera in 3rd person needs to be more responsive. the effectiveness of third person camera angles in car games is very important in contributing to how cars feel to drive. the camera angle acts as your only frame of reference to the direction and orientation of your vehicle and should reflect the physics that your car is being subjected to (i.e driving over a big bump, throwing the cars weight into the apex of a corner). at times, there may be a large difference between a vehicles orientation and velocity direction. the current camera angle does not do a good job of presenting this in a useful way to the user. as third person is usually the default camera angle, most of the casual users will end up using it all of the time. making sure it is as usable as possible is important. currently, beamng's camera is far too unresponsive. in turn, this makes the cars themselves feel unresponsive, and overall makes precise driving very difficult when the camera itself does not reflect the direction of the car. to highlight this, notice the differences between the following games: gran turismo 6: (imported from here) - the camera is rigidly fixed behind the car. notice that you can see both side view mirrors of the car clearly. - the direction of the car matches the camera angle with only a few degrees of smoothing, if any. - the result of this is a very rigid feeling to every car. forza 5: (imported from here) - the camera is slightly less fixed behind the car. again, notice the side view mirrors. the left side of the car is not visible, but the direction of the car still remains clear. - the camera is similar to gran turismo, but the factor of smoothing is much larger, allowing the camera some extra room to manuever. when a car rapidly changes direction, the camera still displays what direction the car is facing but manages to feel more smooth and relaxed than gran turismo. ...beamng: (imported from here) - wtf? - the camera more closely follows the direction that the car is travelling (forwards) than the orientation of the car (inwards towards to apex) - i cannot see what is in the direction that my car is facing - i have a completely useless perspective on the orientation of my car - if i allow my car to spin out in such a maneuver, my camera will be looking in the opposite direction that the car is facing and the camera makes no attempt to reorient itself. why? overall, the 3rd person camera is very, very unresponsive in beamng. under normal cornering manuevers, the camera angle will differ greatly from the angle that the car is pointing. this makes precise driving with the third person perspective very difficult. i propose that a camera model be adopted that more closely resembles other racing games. i particularly like the choice of camera in forza: the camera smoothing allows for the camera angle to differ from the car angle by about 15 degrees at max. the rigid camera model in gran turismo makes cars feel rigid in handling, and i do not prefer it. i think beamng will benefit from some combination of these. one thing to note between beamng and other vehicle games is the z-axis: other games generally do not have cars that go flying off of jumps or really encounter any rough terrain. the terrain in beamng can be very unforgiving, and having a camera that is too rigid will make this terrain not very fun. consider dropping a vehicle off of the cliff level: if the camera angle were fixed behind the car, it would be difficult to watch. you would simply become dizzy and not be able to watch your car get smashed to pieces. perhaps the current camera model is best suited for scenarios where the car is being seriously thrown around, but this is not an effective camera angle for actually driving the vehicles. hopefully a medium can be met somewhere. if this suggestion is implemented, i think it will help people drive a little better, indirectly promoting the idea that beamng is more than just a car crashing game.
Great post man. Hopefully the whole camera implementation in Beam will get overhauled SOON but I surmise that won't happen for quite awhile. Incremental steps like the one in the pre-race update, ( which I think was handled brilliantly ), will be the norm for awhile. My 2 cents.
There is a value in lua\vehicle\default.lua: obj.camRelaxation = 3 Try changing that value and see if it helps. If you find a value you like, let us know
1 is too much, 2 is a major improvement. I'd go with 2(or even 1.5), it whips around nicely to follow the car. Especially from going forwards to revese, rather than the camera sitting around a whole lot, it comes back around straight away.
Also, is there anyway to eliminate that obnoxious camera spin when you reverse the car? I want to control the camera, not have it spin around when I've already got it where I want it to be.
I used 1.3 and it seems really nice. much better. still swings around wildly when moving away from the natural direction, such as going in reverse or when doing a left -> right spin out.
Seeing as the value is already exposed, perhaps it would be possible to make a menu option to adjust it realtime?
obj.camRelaxation = 1: [webm=]http://www.beamng.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=33305[/webm] obj.camRelaxation = 2: [webm=]http://www.beamng.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=33306[/webm] sadly, changing this value does not fix the problem. a value of "1" at low speeds is actually pretty nice. however, at higher speeds when the car begins to slip (the cars velocity direction is different from the cars orientation), the exact same issue shows up.
I took a liking to the camera as is when in third person. Perhaps I'm just weird. One thing I'm not fond of is the camera spinning when I want to reverse.
I took a liking to 1.4, but like deject points out, once you start moving at speed it really cocks up again, it perhaps needs to decrease with speed if possible.
