For more than a year, I’ve been flying VFR mainly with a full forward view without showing the virtual cockpit panel as described in my Post 638, 639 and 697.

However, lately I found showing the propeller and engine hood during curising actually adds more fun.

And, most importantly, brings forth more realistic and accurate landing and takeoff experiences.

The modifications for the new aircraft views are simple and just involved the changing of the InitialXyz and InitialPhb values of the “ClosePilot” and “LandingPilot” defintions in the aircraft camera.cfg as shown below:

[CAMERADEFINITION.1]
Title =”ClosePilot”
..
..
InitialXyz = 0.073, 0.134, 2.54     // C172 Full Forward View
InitialPbh= 2.0, 0, 0
//InitialXyz = 0.03, 0.02, 0.35
//InitialPbh = -10, 0, 0
..
..

[CAMERADEFINITION.2]
Title =”LandingPilot”
..
..
InitialXyz= 0.073, 0.134, 0.544     // C172 New Landing View
InitialPbh= 2.0, 0, 0
//InitialXyz = 0.03, 0.1, 0.3
//InitialPbh = 0, 0, 0
..
..

Yet, the adjustments are aircraft specific (above example is good for the C172 and C172 G1000 only).  And the process of experimenting the optimal desired InitialXyz and InitialPhb values for each aircraft, although straightforward, is quite time-consuming, too.

Nevertheless, I am quite happy with the results.

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