Lothar of the Hill People

Just posted a couple things in the Downloads section. While two weeks is a long time, there's plenty of life left in OFF! First I've repacked the ENBseries graphics mod, which adds Bloom and High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting, in a JSGME version with an installer and Creaghorn's settings. Should make it easy to try out if you're curious. The biggie is Lothar Maps, which makes flying around and exploring in OFF fun again. This mod gives you a choice of 3(!) new maps to replace the notoriously awful in-game map. All three are based on Google imaging, from Google Maps and Google Earth. I recommend starting with the 'Lothar Google Mix' map, here's a peek up close (the front shows up in-flight in red): A major update to OFFbase is also in the works, including some surprises from Bletchley. Stay tuned!

Yep! Exactly why I posted the tables in the post above... see the 16:10 aspect ratio. But this still doesn't account for your viewing distance and monitor size, which is why you want to move through and test the different widths to find the one that works best for your setup. Think I can make that easier as well; just replied to your PM.

I looked around a bit and not much of the stuff Google returned about field of view and gaming is correct or useful, so it's no wonder OFFers ended up on a slightly wrong track. But let's see if I can make sense of things a little better. First we need to understand the difference between aspect ratio and field of view. Olham's calculations are perfectly fine for a 2D world. If we were trying to play Pac-Man on our modern high-resolution wide-screen monitors, linear scaling is exactly the approach to make sure the title character is rendered as a perfect circle and not stretched into another ellipse. In this flat universe, aspect ratio and field of view are the same thing, just in different units. Talking about the square footage of your house versus measuring it in square meters doesn't change the shape of your kitchen, and rendering scale models such as floor plans is pretty intuitive. This 2D math, with two parallel planes, is a rough enough estimate for making sure a round cockpit gage that's flat and directly in front of you looks round. But all the other gages in your peripheral vision may look like coins run over by trains and seem ten feet away. What's missing? For 3D flight sims like OFF, a more realistic presentation of the game world is critical for immersion. The CFS3 engine is basically maps a three-dimensional model onto a 2D plane. Imagine sitting front and centered before your monitor. Notice that the pixels in the middle are closer to your eyes than the pixels far in the corners. As we move out from the center of our vision, the number of pixels required to cover each degree of vision decreases. I modified the field of view example from the Wikipedia article to illustrate this: With the camera at the center and looking right, the right side of the circle is divided into four 45° angles, so the 90° field of view (in green) is divided into upper and lower halves. You can see that the first 45° from the center of the view covers about 64 pixels, but the next 45° to the top of the circle is only covers 26 vertical vertical pixels (but more horizontal pixels). Angle degrees don't trade for pixels one for one--the relationship changes nonlinearly. This is why aspect ratio (pixels or inches) and field of view (angles) are not the same thing in 3D, and while Olham's linear scaling doesn't work. But what does this mean? Objects in the game world don't just have width and height, but also depth. I've said this before: despite what a lot of stuff on the web says, Field of View has nothing to do with zoom. Zooming in and out, such as you can do in game, changes the size of things but not the depth--physically it's no different from zooming in and out of a screenshot from the game, doesn't change the perspective of how things are viewed. Instead, Field of View has everything to do with perspective. A simple example might help, but instead of screens and lenses think mirrors--specifically the passenger side mirrors of automobiles. In the US and Canada at least they all have warning stickers saying "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear", emphasis added on closer. It's not a zoom effect--it's not that objects are larger than they appear. The convex shape of these mirrors changes the field of view, distorting perspective rather than scale. Zooming in on the mirror, or getting closer to it, does not "fix" the shape of the reflected image. With our two eyes we mostly think about perspective in terms of binocular vision, but that's only useful for stuff really close. Much of how we judge distance is due to angles, processing that happens in our visual system of which our conscious minds aren't even aware. When the FOV is so wrong that your plane in OFF appears taller than it is wide, that's enough to consciously know something's amiss. But most FOV problems are far more subtle, and far more insidious in how they break immersion--distorting our sense of distance and depth. No wonder forced perspective is one of oldest and most effective special effects tricks in film and photography. The true test of FOV settings is your perception of distance. Is the spot that looks halfway down your wing, actually halfway down your wing? Do your wings get too narrow farther away from you at the tip, or not narrow with distance enough? Does the wingspan of your E.III actually feel like nine and a half meters? Does that enemy craft you're firing at from thirty feet actually appear to be thirty feet away, and not 25 or 40? With the wrong FOV settings, even if stuff in a flat plane doesn't appear distorted (cockpit gages are round), the sense of perspective can be so off as to make you feel out of scale. OFF's aircraft may feel more like toys than some of the most advanced killing machines of the day. It's a shame so many flyers have had the wrong settings for so long. I just remembered a scene in this bad comedy Ski Patrol, where a character is pranked to wake up in a miniature version of his house. In the movie it's suppose to make a short character feel like a giant, but in reality his vision system would recognize that walls and doors are closer and not just relatively smaller, and that the ground is the same distance from head as always. But project that 3D world onto a flat screen, and we're much easier to confuse. This is why FOV is so important, and why it's so tragic that pretty much every gamer is looking at all these virtual worlds from the wrong angle. Anyway, my calculator's only a starting point--just gets all the really bad settings out of the way. Which of the recommendations yields the proper sense of perspective depends on more than just your monitor's aspect ratio. 24:15 is a good place for you to start, Olham, but depending on how big your monitor is and how close you are too it you may want to go wider or narrower on the chart.

Hey Olham, the simple linear scaling gives an okay approximation, but the relationship between FOV and aspect ratio is nonlinear. So your method can't tell which of the combinations are better than the others, and if anything the intuition can be misleading. For example, while it looks like 24:15 is the most accurate ("clean") because you don't have to round, really 30:19 is more accurate spatially despite the 30.4 you got. And what about VFOVs of 13, 16, 18, and 20? Doing 3D spatial correction shows that you're not going to get as good of results using any of these compared to the set I suggest. 26:16, which you recommended to Creaghorn and others, is downright awful compared to 27:17 FOV at a 16:10 aspect ratio. I'm curious which one you're actually using--what seemed to feel best, math or not. Think of it like gamma correction, which is done to photographed and rendered images because of the nonlinearity in how we perceive luminosity. Non-gamma-corrected images look "alright", in that darks are darker than lights, but the degree of darkness and lightness is off. OFF would look a lot uglier if you disabled gamma correction in your graphics driver.

Have you tried just waiting a bit? Seems after you attack, they often come around for a pass of their own... but you have to go first. That's always how it seemed to work in my old DFW C.V campaigns anyway.

Just updated the calculator to version 1.3, which compared to the original expands the search space and eliminates accurate FOV combinations not possible in OFF. Having just 4 combinations of accurate settings to test beats going through all 88 by trial and error! But it's great we have the choice with OFF. Most graphics engines fix one or even both of the horizontal and vertical field of view, which is one reason cheap conversions of console games to PC look so weird. I can no longer edit the above post, but here are the updated results for a few common and uncommon aspect ratios. 4:3 aspect ratio (r = 4/3 = 1.333), such as 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960, and 1600x1200: 16:9 aspect ratio (r = 1.778), such as 1280×720, 1366×768, 1600×900, and 1920x1080: 16:10 aspect ratio (r = 1.6), such as 1440x900, 1680×1050, and 1920x1200: Notice the 0.001 error on the ultra-wide 30:19 FOV. If you're going to go massive multi-monitor or huge projection screen that fills your peripheral vision, you definitely want to go for an overall 16:10 aspect ratio for almost no spatial distortion in OFF. 5:4 aspect ratio (r =1.25), such as 1280x1024: 66:35 aspect ratio (r =1.886), such as 1980x1050: A couple more options for Olham!

Olham's calculation's are incorrect, but there is a better solution. See this post and continue further discussion of the topic in that thread.

As discussed off-topic in this thread, Olham's simple calculations, while maybe a useful first approximation, aren't very accurate. Nor are they useful for people in different display situations. So I've created a simple Excel-based FOV Calculator for OFF. Just enter in your resolution and it suggests a range of the most spatially accurate FOV settings. Here are a few common aspect ratios for those of you without Excel. Just divide your horizontal by vertical resolution to calculate your aspect ratio to find which example applies to you. The first example will provide a good contrast to Olham's method: 4:3 aspect ratio (r = 4/3 = 1.333), such as 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960, and 1600x1200: As illustrated in the program output, 20:15 FOV renders a picture close to a 4:3 aspect ratio, but not perfectly. The narrow angle of this FOV setting (width 1) suggests it's good at some distance from a small CRT monitor, but 25:19 (width 4) is nearly as accurate in terms of aspect ratio and much more appropriate for sitting close to a large bank of monitors or on the floor in front of an old low-def big-screen television. Here are some more common aspect ratios: 16:9 aspect ratio (r = 1.778), such as 1280×720, 1366×768, 1600×900, and 1920x1080: The 35:20 suggestion isn't possible in OFF, 33:19 being the widest FOV that's both feasible and relatively accurate. 16:10 aspect ratio (r = 1.6), such as 1440x900, 1680×1050, and 1920x1200: 5:4 aspect ratio (r =1.25), such as 1280x1024: And an uncommon one for Olham: 66:35 aspect ratio (r =1.886), such as 1980x1050: Poor fellow, only two of his suggestions are feasible. But I have no idea what weird resolution for which OFF's default of 23:16 would be appropriate... the rendered aspect ratio is r = 1.448.

File Name: Lothar Field of View Calculator File Submitter: Lothar of the Hill People File Submitted: 04 December 2012 File Category: Modding Tools and Add-on Software OFFfov - the OFF Field-of-view Optical Vanguard, is now part of the OFF incomplete campaign editor (OFFice) suite of programs. Download and install OFFbase 0.8.5 or newer at this link. Click here to download this file

Sure thing! I'll make a post to update this on-topic thread, and post a few common examples for those who don't have Excel. And try 28:15.

But your calculations actually cause distortion! The physical screen of your monitor is not the same thing as the virtual screen on which the rendered image is projected; you can't just do a simple linear mapping. FOV has absolutely nothing to do with zooming in and out. I've written a ray-tracing engine, trust me. A wide angle works just fine with certain aspect ratios and viewing situations--such as up close to a giant screen. Since everyone hates trigonometry, I've slapped together a little Excel spreadsheet that does all the math and recommends the most accurate settings for your resolution and relation to screen: It will take a little time for mods to approve the download but hopefully it'll be up soon.

Sorry buddy your formula's not "normal", just wrong. Projecting a 3D world onto a 2D screen you're dealing with a virtual camera, virtual lense--so you have to deal with angles in order to preserve the aspect ratio. For example, the 23:14 you recommend yields an aspect ratio of 1.66 at 1920x1200, while correcting for angles I suggested a 22 hfov for the 14 vfov for an aspect ratio of 1.58--much closer to the real 1.6 aspect ratio of the screen (1920 / 1200). Let me update my 1920x1200 table showing the aspect ratios r: 30:19 (r = 1.601) - closest virtual camera 27:17 (r =1.606) 24:15 (r =1.615) 22:14 (r =1.583) - farthest virtual camera 30:19 is the most spatially correct at that resolution, but is most comfortable sitting close to larger displays. Smaller monitor, sitting farther away, you'll probably end up moving down the list a bit to find the sweet spot.

Version 0.8.4 which I hope to release later today supports FM 3.1. I also submited your 3.1 to SimHQ since they still have the old version 2, so hopefully Doug will get it up there soon.

Thanks rjw! You're welcome to vote for the mod and leave a review at the bottom of the download page.

The calculations are actually a bit more complicated. I'm also running at 1920x1200, and at that resolution I'd recommend trying: 30:19 (29.98) - closest virtual camera 27:17 (26.90) 24:15 (23.79) 22:14 (22.23) - farthest virtual camera As you can see with the rounding error, 30:19 is the most spatially accurate for this resolution. But it may feel a bit fish-eye (it's more complicated than a matter of zoom), so a virtual camera farther from the virtual screen (a smaller FOV) may feel more natural. Any other combinations will have much more spatial distortion. Whatever the resolution, doing a little math first greatly narrows down the trial and error. Use the wikipedia H= equation to find the horizontal FOV (H) for each of the eight possible vertical FOVs (V) between 13 and 20 at your monitor's resolution. Even the Windows calculator can do arc (inverse) tangents! Then try out the ones that yield an H closest to an integer.

Thanks Andy, sounds great. But it's not quite JSGME-ready for the correct location. Putting JSGME inside the 'CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields' folder prevents mods that patch the 'WW1Scenery' folder from working, including mods from myself, Bletchley, Creaghorn, etc. See OlPaint01's notes on paths for the OFF version of JSGME. I'm happy to help repack it so it easily works alongside other mods, just let me know.

File Name: Lothar Maps File Submitter: Lothar of the Hill People File Submitted: 03 December 2012 File Category: Maps, Missions, and Campaigns This mod offers several alternative in-game maps for Over Flanders Fields based on modern Google imaging: Lothar Google Map – Google’s Terrain map illustrating basic topography with modern cities and roads, much of which hasn’t changed from a map-eye view over the past century. While there’s a hint of the underlying topography, this is generally best for flying by human landmarks. Lothar Google Earth – Google Earth satellite imagery was a long way from even hypothetical during the Great War, so this mod applies diffusion and texture filters for a slight painted canvas map effect. Important locations are marked as on the stock OFF map, but overall this is best for just flying by terrain. Lothar Google Mix – This simply overlays the two above maps with transparency. Things may not line up exactly, especially at the extremes of the map, but overall this provides a subtler view of the road and city detail of the Google Map with more of the geographical richness of the satellite view. In any case, the result is vastly more detailed, accurate, and useful than the stock OFF map, despite the occasional anachronism. Try them all to see which you prefer on utilitarian and aesthetic merits. And have fun exploring with fresh eyes the amazing terrain Over Flanders Fields and beyond! Requires: Over Flanders Fields http://overflandersfields.com JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler 2.6.0: http://combatace.com/files/file/13045-jonesoft-generic-mod-enabler-jsgme/ Installation and Usage: The installer automatically extracts the mod folders into your OFF JSGME mods folder if OFF and JSGME are installed correctly. JSGME will be run when installation is complete, just activate the ‘Lothar Google Map’ or ‘Lothar Google Earth’ or ‘Lothar Google Mix’ folder to enable the mod. It only makes sense to activate one of the map mods at a time, but you can easily switch between them with JSGME. Notes: The front no longer displays in the Briefing Room, but does so (and more accurately) on the in-flight map. Credits: http://combatace.com/user/48442-lothar-of-the-hill-people/ Click here to download this file

I've uploaded a JSGME with installer version of the ENB series graphics mod here, preset with Creaghorn's settings from his Homebrew. Should be an easy way to try out the bloom and HDR effects. If anyone has a custom enbseries.ini with settings that work great for OFF, please let me know.

File Name: ENB for OFF File Submitter: Lothar of the Hill People File Submitted: 03 December 2012 File Category: Modding Tools and Add-on Software Description: Enhances Over Flanders Fields with the ENBSeries Bloom and High Dynamic Range lightings modifications with settings by Creaghorn. Installation and Usage: JSGME will run after install; activate the ‘ENB for OFF’ mod. Press Shift-F12 in-game to turn the graphics effects on and off. Customization: The enbseries.ini installed in your ‘CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields’ folder can be further tweaked to modify the graphcis effects to taste. Requires: Over Flanders Fields http://overflandersfields.com JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler 2.6.0: http://combatace.com/files/file/13045-jonesoft-generic-mod-enabler-jsgme/ Credits: ENBSeries game modifications: http://www.enbdev.com Creaghorn’s Homebrew: http://combatace.com/files/file/10515-creaghorns-homebrew/ OFF JSGME Installer Version: http://combatace.com/user/48442-lothar-of-the-hill-people/ Click here to download this file

Don't forget desktops and workstations in offices, used by people to get actual work done. Sure there's growth of mobile in the consumer space, when secretaries who type reports all day go home and watch neflix on their Kindle Fire, but who do you think Dell sells most of its machines too? Can't imagine volume business customers lining up for Windows 8.

Fuel tank was punctured by ground fire as I was mapping west of Verdun. Seems like a lovely forest road to take a walk or land an Albatros: Or maybe not!

Typo, support for DX8 is required for CSF3.