Gosh. I have no issues with the camera suite at all so it's interesting to hear other CMDR's input!
Focused Feedback Thread - Camera Suite
- Thread starter sallymorganmoore
- Start date
This is a wonderful thing.
For me, I want to be able to film everything so I can make content without too many limitations.
Here's my list.. make a cup of tea and grab some biscuits, it's a biggie
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests
For me, I want to be able to film everything so I can make content without too many limitations.
Here's my list.. make a cup of tea and grab some biscuits, it's a biggie
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests
- The Blackout has to go, it kills footage. The way it's checking really gets in the way of filming, we're not always filming the commander directly. I want to be able to film the commander arriving or disappearing behind things.
- Have an option to not show the Camera UI when you open the camera suite, make it a toggle as it is, but I don't need to always see it - I've already configured my controls and it gets in the way of time sensitive shots.
- Don't prevent us from getting close to engineers or Elevators or anything really. Prevent the camera from clipping but let us show off your amazing artwork.
- Stop the camera controls from affecting the ship controls when exiting the camera. I often find that when I've been moving my camera around, when I exit the camera, suddenly my ship is in reverse thrust mode.
- Don't obscure the camera when going through the mailslot or when undocking.
- Revisit the collision box for the ship while in the hangar. It's too big and for some ships, it's difficult or even impossible to get the camera to move down the side of the ship when filming ship glamour shots for reviews and such. For larger ships we're forced to use the surface/station interior.
- Export a 360 degree screenshot. This would be useful for VR desktops, VR images and for me, as a 3D environment map for lighting models. this could be as simple as exporting the current light probe being used for the reflections on the commander and to light the ship.
- Allow a mode where I can set a velocity in a direction for the camera and then fly the ship relative to it.
- A follow target mode, where you can select an object to be the target of the shot, then fly around it with the external cam and it keeps the target in the centre.
- Don't reset the camera or view when changing game state, entering Witchspace, Supercruise, Glide.. allow me to film the entire journey uninterrupted. This will achieve some amazing footage.
- Allow a movement mode within the cockpit while flying so with the free-cam, I can position the camera anywhere within the cockpit after initially selecting one of the pre-defined camera positions. It would be nice to be able to save these positions too in a custom camera position slot.
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests
- Fix signal lost when object is between camera and player, that broke many things in videos and photos
- Augment the distance from the player especially on planet surfaces
- Add camera filters like black & white, sepia and others
- Add the ability to plot camera movement with several point to prepare the perfect path for videos
Current Issues:
- as others have said, it seems really easy to trigger the blackout, especially when getting close to other objects with it.
- for taking photos around planetary bases the 250m-from-self limit is sometimes tricky to work with. Even if it can't be the full distance allowed in space a bit more flexibility here would really help
Longer term:
- an "align with ground" / "align with local gravity" button would be useful
- a quick key for "take a picture of what I'm currently looking at from inside the ship but without the ship,HUD,avatar,etc" would make it much easier to take shots from orbital cruise and other "minimum speed" environments. At the moment by the time I've got into the camera suite and lined it up properly the ship has probably moved too far to take the shot.
- the ability to add an optional caption for location and/or time to the picture.
- as others have said, it seems really easy to trigger the blackout, especially when getting close to other objects with it.
- for taking photos around planetary bases the 250m-from-self limit is sometimes tricky to work with. Even if it can't be the full distance allowed in space a bit more flexibility here would really help
Longer term:
- an "align with ground" / "align with local gravity" button would be useful
- a quick key for "take a picture of what I'm currently looking at from inside the ship but without the ship,HUD,avatar,etc" would make it much easier to take shots from orbital cruise and other "minimum speed" environments. At the moment by the time I've got into the camera suite and lined it up properly the ship has probably moved too far to take the shot.
- the ability to add an optional caption for location and/or time to the picture.
Honestly unless you're planning on allowing full 3rd person control there's not much about the Camera Suite that needs changing. The blackout is annoying at times but always seemed fair to me.
There are only two changes which would make a major difference, and I'm not sure if one of them is even possible:
Long Term Wishlist (I guess)
#1 - Let us save our own preset camera angles. Alternatively (or in addition), when we reposition the existing presets, have the game save those camera positions rather than resetting to defaults whenever we switch between them. Out of all the things you could do, this would bring the largest value add by far.
#2 - (maybe not possible?) Freeze time when you switch to camera mode, and then let us mess around with lighting/filters/character poses/etc. (sidenote we have character avatars now - there need to be emotes/poses/etc even if they're reserved entirely for use inside the camera suite). Let us pan around a still scene rather than forcing us to chase a moving target. This is standard practice in other games. Check out No Man's Sky for a great example of this. Thing is, Elite being an always-online "live" game, you would have to keep the game going in the background and players would have to interact with a snapshot of that particular moment frozen in time, so I'm not sure how doable this would be. It would certainly enable much nicer screenshots from the community.
Out of all the areas in need of improvement, Camera suite should be way way way at the back of the list, and I'm surprised (and a little bit suspicious of motive) that this is what Frontier has chosen to seek feedback on right now.
There are only two changes which would make a major difference, and I'm not sure if one of them is even possible:
Long Term Wishlist (I guess)
#1 - Let us save our own preset camera angles. Alternatively (or in addition), when we reposition the existing presets, have the game save those camera positions rather than resetting to defaults whenever we switch between them. Out of all the things you could do, this would bring the largest value add by far.
#2 - (maybe not possible?) Freeze time when you switch to camera mode, and then let us mess around with lighting/filters/character poses/etc. (sidenote we have character avatars now - there need to be emotes/poses/etc even if they're reserved entirely for use inside the camera suite). Let us pan around a still scene rather than forcing us to chase a moving target. This is standard practice in other games. Check out No Man's Sky for a great example of this. Thing is, Elite being an always-online "live" game, you would have to keep the game going in the background and players would have to interact with a snapshot of that particular moment frozen in time, so I'm not sure how doable this would be. It would certainly enable much nicer screenshots from the community.
Out of all the areas in need of improvement, Camera suite should be way way way at the back of the list, and I'm surprised (and a little bit suspicious of motive) that this is what Frontier has chosen to seek feedback on right now.
Nothing in terms of issues with the Camera Suite personally, but...
Quality of Life/Long Term Wishes:
Quality of Life/Long Term Wishes:
- Would be great to have camera distance/range from ship widened.
- Maybe a speed adjuster/slider when in free mode to give us a more fluid and controllable camera movement for capturing motion shots.
Top current issues
- Make the camera suite work in VR again
https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/32730 - Stop the avatar’s body disappearing when “clipping” into it (this is a change from one of the last Updates)
- “Commander view” added to the preset views - to let us VR players experience “full” VR while on foot
- Ability to take panoramic screenshots (multiple shots that get stitched together)
- Option to lock the camera to the local horizon so slewing the camera around doesn’t make the view go a bit skew-whiff, and needs rotating back
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests:
Insufficient range/distance from ship in external camera mode in some situations.
Togglable camera grid required for landscape shots and framing assistance.
Long Term Wish List:
Allow adjustments to exposure/saturation/highlights/shadows etc. in camera mode.
A range of filters/LUTs and a cinematic mode.
Design a dedicated, togglable camera suite interface.
Insufficient range/distance from ship in external camera mode in some situations.
Togglable camera grid required for landscape shots and framing assistance.
Long Term Wish List:
Allow adjustments to exposure/saturation/highlights/shadows etc. in camera mode.
A range of filters/LUTs and a cinematic mode.
Design a dedicated, togglable camera suite interface.
Top Current Issues
The Free Camera cannot be moved in VR. Apart from the vanity shots, some of us used the Free Camera as a scouting drone in Horizons. It's already on the Issues Tracker.
Thnaks
The Free Camera cannot be moved in VR. Apart from the vanity shots, some of us used the Free Camera as a scouting drone in Horizons. It's already on the Issues Tracker.
Thnaks
Well... as it currently is on ps4. It would be close to what I'd call intuitive design.But what would YOUR idea of 'Easy to Use' mean
I don't know how to describe what I'm asking for, other than end result of it, being an intuitive design.
You'll know, I trust your judgement in this area.
Ok, so I was just informed that my blind self completely overlooked the fact that there is already a speed adjuster... my bad. But extra distance would still be nice Quality of Life stuffs.Nothing in terms of issues with the Camera Suite personally, but...
Quality of Life/Long Term Wishes:
Aside from that, just keep up the good work
- Would be great to have camera distance/range from ship widened.
- Maybe a speed adjuster/slider when in free mode to give us a more fluid and controllable camera movement for capturing motion shots.
sallymorganmoore
Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
This is a wonderful thing.
For me, I want to be able to film everything so I can make content without too many limitations.
Here's my list.. make a cup of tea and grab some biscuits, it's a biggie
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests
Long Term Wish List
- The Blackout has to go, it kills footage. The way it's checking really gets in the way of filming, we're not always filming the commander directly. I want to be able to film the commander arriving or disappearing behind things.
- Have an option to not show the Camera UI when you open the camera suite, make it a toggle as it is, but I don't need to always see it - I've already configured my controls and it gets in the way of time sensitive shots.
- Don't prevent us from getting close to engineers or Elevators or anything really. Prevent the camera from clipping but let us show off your amazing artwork.
- Stop the camera controls from affecting the ship controls when exiting the camera. I often find that when I've been moving my camera around, when I exit the camera, suddenly my ship is in reverse thrust mode.
- Don't obscure the camera when going through the mailslot or when undocking.
- Revisit the collision box for the ship while in the hangar. It's too big and for some ships, it's difficult or even impossible to get the camera to move down the side of the ship when filming ship glamour shots for reviews and such. For larger ships we're forced to use the surface/station interior.
- Export a 360 degree screenshot. This would be useful for VR desktops, VR images and for me, as a 3D environment map for lighting models. this could be as simple as exporting the current light probe being used for the reflections on the commander and to light the ship.
- Allow a mode where I can set a velocity in a direction for the camera and then fly the ship relative to it.
- A follow target mode, where you can select an object to be the target of the shot, then fly around it with the external cam and it keeps the target in the centre.
- Don't reset the camera or view when changing game state, entering Witchspace, Supercruise, Glide.. allow me to film the entire journey uninterrupted. This will achieve some amazing footage.
- Allow a movement mode within the cockpit while flying so with the free-cam, I can position the camera anywhere within the cockpit after initially selecting one of the pre-defined camera positions. It would be nice to be able to save these positions too in a custom camera position slot.
Thank you so, so much Scorbs. I know you worked hard on the video and I do feel a little guilty asking you to essentially bullet point it here but it's a MASSIVE thing for us to work together in this space, and I'm really excited to read this and all of the feedback collected
Thank you!!!OK, I've been chatting to Yamiks - as he's a content creator for Elite and uses the camera every day, he's asked me to post his QoL and Wishlist.
"Camera suite eh? well ok, not that I expect any of it to change but call me a hopless dreamer here's what I got that obstructs my works on daily basis!
Oh and consider this list to all be "TOP ISSUE" also in descending order of importance!"
Wishlist item
"For now that's enough beathing that dead horse and upsetting everyone i guess. I'll see what really comes out of this "initiative" but at the very least tweeking those numbers should be something that anyone could do, surely."
-Yamiks
"Camera suite eh? well ok, not that I expect any of it to change but call me a hopless dreamer here's what I got that obstructs my works on daily basis!
Oh and consider this list to all be "TOP ISSUE" also in descending order of importance!"
- -Black out - this thing must go ASAP, as you remarked yourself it was to hide stuff. That was VERY wrong (Yamiks struggles to not "upset" the childeren) and should be removed NOW!
- Maximum travel distance of camera. This no matter the source should be increased to 30km like SLFs max range or more! (for ref: ships = 3km / srv & ship on surface = 250m!!!!! / Legs = 100m !!!!!)
- Incrementally slower/faster movement speeds (NO matter what the camera source is)
- Ability to turn on/off "SMOOTHING" between rotation & movement speed changes (look at star citizen specifically, there mouse movement rotation is ether "smoothed" or "using acceleration" making transition between speed & rotation a lot less jarring and possibly making cinematic shots with warrying speeds better)
- remove collision boxes from ships (beluga is the worst offender of this)
- Remove fading effect on camer UI text when hiding the UI (i talked about this in my old QoL videos for [inser childeren "upsetting" word] sake)
- Ability to detach camera in cockpit(at least give everyone ability to see what VR people see)
- Seperate camera control section with export/import option(without the need to go in %appdata%)
- visual indicators which "stored" cameras have been saved on camera UI
- Greater zoom than 4x (say 10x if FOV zooming allows it)
- faster/better way to quickly move "focus point" (maybe seperate buttons for quicker increase or straight value increase)
Wishlist item
- Example from WARFRAME camera : place points in camera space and have camera follow that line with & motion (nothing too complex just a little variety)
- Removable PHYSICAL camera - completely removable camera that you could go as far as you want(within same instance etc)
"For now that's enough beathing that dead horse and upsetting everyone i guess. I'll see what really comes out of this "initiative" but at the very least tweeking those numbers should be something that anyone could do, surely."
-Yamiks
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See Warframe? Go download it, use their Captura mode. If you can achieve feature parity there it'd be awesome.
Now for the specifics:
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests
1. Clearer indication when you're in focus mode or when you're in zoom mode. Or if you're controlling the ship or the camera.
2. FoV indicator in diagonal FoV.
Long Term Wish List.
1. The ability to set and save camera paths — see Warframe's Captura mode again for an example. I'd love to be able to do more dynamic videos using it. Even better: The ability to script them outside of game
Now for the specifics:
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests
1. Clearer indication when you're in focus mode or when you're in zoom mode. Or if you're controlling the ship or the camera.
2. FoV indicator in diagonal FoV.
Long Term Wish List.
1. The ability to set and save camera paths — see Warframe's Captura mode again for an example. I'd love to be able to do more dynamic videos using it. Even better: The ability to script them outside of game
sallymorganmoore
Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
Make the camera suite work in VR again
Seconded! Would be great to have the free cam function work in VR again. Currently only works in non-VR mode.
Sorry I'm going to chip in and say keep the invisible avatar when clipped please. (Sorry A
)It does seem helpful to me for positioning ourselves in a pseudo first person position and enjoying the views.
This would be great
(And shouldn't break with the vanity cam's purpose ultimately, as gameplay would still be pretty much firewalled off by the lack of UI / reticules / menus etc)
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Love the idea of focused feedback on the camera suits ! Thanks for the idea Sally !
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests
Top Current Issues/Quality of Life Requests
- Remove blackout (or decrease its "sensitivity").
- Increase max distance of the camera.
- Being able to save custom views as presets.
- Replay. A lot of flight sim does it (DCS and, very soon, MSFS2020) and it gives the community an amazing opportunity to create high quality content (which is good promotional stuff for the game). I'm not asking for a full time replay but if we could have a specific key to start recording a replay and than be able to replay the scene and move with the camera suits through the replay to film different angles it would be amazing. I'm mainly thinking about combat. Right now, it's not possible to have great combat footage (except if you have another commander filming) because you simply can't fly your ship and fight while filming. This would be such an amazing feature. Once a replay is recorded, we could access it through a new menu (like the store / livery in the main menu) where we can access all our replay and work with them. To limit the size of replay it could be limited to 1 km around the CMDR ship for example and to 5-10 min sequences.
TOP
WISH
- resume option to continue from where the camera was last set (including all the adjustable parameters) so we can pick up creating a scene where we left off in case we need to exit the camera suite for any reason.
- saved positions (and settings) for reuse when we want to duplicate the same scene in a different context ... ALT: give us the ability to edit the canned positions and save the results with an option to return to defaults.
- selectable default starting position so when we enter the camera suit we can choose which position the camera will always start from
- longer tether as 250m seems rather short
- night vision toggle so we can set up in the dark an see the same things our cmdr can see in a vehicle or on foot.
- eliminate the delay from SIGNAL LOST when we move back to a non-clipping position.
WISH
- plot trajectories so we can set up a cinema scene and control camera parameters at points along the path.
- time lapse so we can capture bodily motion or traffic patterns
- video capture so we can make short videos in the game
- broadcast so we can provide a feed directly from the camera separate from the cmdr view of the game