How can I disable camera auto zoom near walls?

In normal walking, the camera (non mouselook) follows the avatar from a default distance. However, if the AV is close to a wall and that usual distance would result in the wall blocking the view, the camera automatically zooms in so we can continue viewing the AV. Usually that is what we want.

However, this automatic zoom near walls also occurs if the wall is transparent or semi transparent. I am in a situation like that where I would like to view the avatar through the semi transparent wall and prevent the auto adjusting camera zooming from occurring. I don't want to have to readjust the position on the fly after the zooming has occurred. I'm in a time pressured situation and don't have time to do that every time it happens. I need to maintain the normal camera view and view the AV through the wall. Is there some setting I can change that will allow me to do this.

Good question this drives me nuts as well...

Oh hold on - if you disabled the auto zoom how would you see yourself if you were behind a wall? Wouldn;'t it be more annoying to keep having to cam through walls than the annoying pusalting effect you get sometimes?

I just need to do it in a very constant situation. I'm on a fairly narrow fashion runway with invisiwalls on boths sides to keep you from falling off. While I'm walking along the length of it, I'm ok. But mid way back, I have to stop and turn to my left. As soon as I do that, the presence of the invisiwall causes the camera to zoom in over my head. As a result I lose my orientation on the runway and can't set up properly for my next move.

So I would want to be able to turn off that feature while I'm in a show, but turn it back on later. And I can't use some of the alternative cameras that can be found. I need to be able to use the alt cam feature of the standard camera to set up my next move.

There's no setting to make the cam any more aware of the "alphaness" of walls than it is already. You might want to try the Release Candidate viewer, if you haven't yet, because there's been some clean-up in cam operations; not aware that it addressed this, however.

I'm not clear what you mean by saying you "can't use some of the alternative cameras." Before I saw that, I made a special version of my CamCast Receiver HUD with an "OutsideCam" that uses (almost) the normal cam position, but makes the cam extremely hesitant to pull inside walls. Of course it can't know whether those walls are alpha or not, but one can switch between "Normal Cam" and "OutsideCam" from the HUD's "..." menu.

For scripters: setting to 0.0 the CAMERA_FOCUS_ and _POSITION_THRESHOLDs is the solution here; because the defaults to llSetCameraPosition() aren't actually the ones the normal cam uses, CAMERA_PITCH and _FOCUS_OFFSET need tweaking, too.

Anyway, since it's otherwise useless to me, I'll send a copy of the HUD, in case it helps.

Qie, I'm using the RC. Same old thing tho.

Maybe this thread will help, I have it bookmarked but haven't actually tested it in world yet...
/327/b7/269114/1.html

Qie:

I tried the HUD that you sent me. It of course keeps the view on the outside of the wall and prevents the automatic zoom that plagues the standard cam in that situation. But as I alluded to in my previous post, scripted cams don't work the same way as the standard cam as far as the alt-arrow keys are concerned. Models use this technique all the time. They play their standing animation at a given station. While posed, they swing the camera around using alt-arrows and set themselves up to walk to the next station. When the pose finishes, they just hit the arrow key to start walking and the AV turns around and begins walking in the direction that the cam was pointed. This feature does not work the same way with scripted cams. That's what I was getting at above.

Malia:
I read the post you referred to. It describes the problem I am having. Unfortunately, they recommend moving the default camera position closer to the avatar. That won't work for me since I need to maintain a fairly distant view to see where I am in relation to my surroundings. I really just want to disable this "feature" but it doesn't look like that will be possible.

Can the walls be lowered?

There's no reason the invisiwalls need to go all the way up to keep you from falling off. A half wall of .75m is more than enough to keep you from stepping off and does not trigger the auto-zoom.

Unfortunately, it's not my agency. So I have no control over lowering the walls. I thought of that myself along with widening the runway and plan to propose it to the owners.