Camera Angle

jay.kickliter's picture

I'm developing a Cocoa application to serve as a ground station for a small open-source UAV. I need to make an artificial horizon. I really like this one:

http://www.tausendstern.com/horizon.html

The developer wants $30 for the source, and I'm not sure what it would take to make it work in a Cocoa app, since I haven't done any OpenGL programming, nor have the time to learn it.

I tried to map the same image he used onto a sphere in QC, but the camera seems to be a bit too wide-angled and didn't look anywhere as nice as the iPhone view. Is there anyway to adjust this? I found the hidden patch "Field of View", but it doesn't appear to do anything.

Thanks,

Jay

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Camera Angle

The look of that should be achievable in QC... play with the diameter and z distance of your sphere render patch. How do you know you have the same exact image that is used by the developer, and that it is mapped correctly? If you want control over how much "border color" you have on the sides/top/bottom, maybe consider putting everything in a render in image patch, connecting that to a crop patch, and then to a sprite or billboard.

franz's picture
Re: Camera Angle

30 bucks ? pfff, buy it, support development.

how much is one day of your work worth ? More than 30 $ i guess.... If you buy it, you'll spare one or two days.....

gtoledo3's picture
Re: Camera Angle

....that's my thought too.

jay.kickliter's picture
Re: Camera Angle

That's also what I'm thinking, but since this is going to be an open-source application, he might not let me use it. I'm still waiting for a response from him...

I tried varying z position and size, but it has the same distortion no matter what, which makes sense. I just used the image the developer posted, which is good, but a little low in resolution.

On a side note, I've been using a home-made attitude indicator using QC for a while, it's very basic, but worked fine. Until today, now whenever I change z or x rotation on a sphere, in any QC patch, even one newly created, they both change x rotation only. Very weird. It happened after I installed Kineme 3D, a coincidence? I uninstalled it and the problem is still there. I'll try my other machine and do a reboot.

cwright's picture
Re: Camera Angle

Kineme3D doesn't alter any geometry stuff already present in QC, so it would by purely coincidental. Rebooting is never necessary for QuartzComposer stuff, at worst a logout/login cycle is all (for finder/quicklook to reload plugins).

Check each axis individually -- you might be experiencing gimbal lock, which would make one or more axes collapse into a single axis of rotation.

jay.kickliter's picture
Re: Camera Angle

I figured out all the problems. Except, I still haven't been able to find a way to change QC's camera focal length. Is there no way to do this?

franz's picture
Re: Camera Angle

use GL tools FOV patch