Cab too high!

GilbertsFridge · Post by **GilbertsFridge** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 11:06 pm

Hello

Is there a way for me to change the position of the camera in the cab view mode as in many of the locomotives I have downloaded the cab appears to be much higher than any of the other rolling stock. It destroys the illusion of driving a British train if I can see over the roof of an adjacent train.

Just wondering.

Regards

exshunter · Post by **exshunter** » Fri Apr 25, 2003 12:01 am

i also discovered this when i first had msts,and through trial and error discovered a solution.go into the cabview folder and locate the cvf file,open with wordpad and look for roughly the sixth line down'position'
for example Position ( -0.9 2.8 7.7 )the central figure is the one you need to change,and i am fairly happy with it set to 2.8.save your changes and then restart msts.hope this helps

Fodda · Post by **Fodda** » Fri Apr 25, 2003 3:10 pm

EEEEEEK!

Go careful with this. You need the Front Position line. The middle number which to you looks good at 2.8 is the eye level above rail-head. In the cabviews I've done (and am doing) getting this position right is the most time consuming part of doing cabviews and something I strive to get spot on. Each cab is different and a standard number applied to all cabs will end up a little worse in the long run. Try my checking the cabview position trick below before wiping out what could've been a long job for someone.

For future reference, the three numbers are (x.x y.y z.z) and are:

x.x = distance left or right of engine centre-line. -1.2 is 1.2 metres left of centre (for UK stuff) and 1.2 is 1.2 metres right of centre (for US)

y.y = height above railhead in metres. so your 2.8 is 2.8 metres above railhead.

z.z = angle of 'your head' with 10 being looking directly at the horizon. This one is dead wierd and doesn't seem to follow a convention I understand. As noted 10 is head level, but if you look at my Warship cab, the photos were taken looking down quite a bit. To get that angle I used trial and error (quite a lot of trial and way too much error). It seems that 15 is looking down more and 5 is looking up more although as I said degrees of turn might have made more sense than whatever units are used here.

Cabview position trick:

To get the eye position spot on I make a consist of the engine concerned front-coupled to exactly the same engine. I then Alt-TAB in and out of MSTS making adjustments to the lines in the cvf file and saving until I've got the eye line just right.

Download the Falcon and cab to see just how close I got it.

I'm chuffed to bits with that although it took a good hour to get spot on.

exshunter · Post by **exshunter** » Sat Apr 26, 2003 12:36 am

the way i actually tested 2.8 was to set an activity with traffic passing me ,checking the height as the consist passed,and also checking as i passed static locos,im certainly no perfectionist

but got fed up of looking down on passing locos and decided to investigate

2.8 doesnt seem to bad,its a lot better than before.i do have the falcon cabview for my 47s,it looks great

Fodda · Post by **Fodda** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 2:36 pm

Yeah 2.8 seems about right for most UK locos. But I play with +-0.1m and 1 degree of turn for ages getting it spot on.

A few additions to the above info... Having worked with 2 other cabs since I wrote that, I can say the the z.z info seems to make more sense now, with 0 being looking horizontally towards the horizon, and positive numbers looking down from there, negatives looking up. It could be that it's degrees above and below dead level after all.