Removing limits on Stunts camera geometry

[HerrNove]

Hi guys,

as you know, Stunts does not allow to precisely point the camera vertically: the max elevation angle is limited at 84.375 degrees*.

Suppose one can build a mod removing this bound and allow a 90° angle**: would you be OK with such mod existing? In my experience, this would give a slight advantage for competitive racing: it would allow to more precisely compare partial times between replays in points where the car is flying above ground. On the other hand, such advantage is probably negligible in the grand scheme of things, and there are already repldump-derived tools that can be used for similar purposes.

* Internally defined as 240/256 of a right angle.
** Writing the mod itself is not trivial because it requires to repair a bug in the way Stunts handles the camera geometry. But I can probably build such a thing in short time.

[alanrotoi]

Maybe I don't get the full implications but I don't see a problem here.

[dreadnaut]

I can imagine a slight advantage when checking if the car is inside or outside a tile, but it feels very small.

[MiDiaN]

I thought it was already at max 90dgr angle. I don't see a problem with this.
Honestly, having a free-roaming camera not attached to car would be great, and being able to zoom out more would be cool too.

[HerrNove]

being able to zoom out more would be cool too.

My prototype can do that already. It crashes sometimes, hence it will remain a prototype, but the unlocked zoom is functional and will be integrated in the upcoming "official" version.

The free-roaming camera is also on my own wish list, but whether I will ever come to build it, is still uncertain.

[Duplode]

I, too, don't see a problem, any advantage should be completely negligible. (I also expect visual OWOOT validation of laps will keep being done with the standard angle as it exists now, so there shouldn't be an issue on that front either.)

[HerrNove]

Here is a freebie for those taking part in the survey. A mystery mod. Better you fasten your seatbelt before you try this one! 

[Foxpup]

Here is a freebie for those taking part in the survey. A mystery mod. Better you fasten your seatbelt before you try this one! 

Amazing, you actually fixed the sphere explosion bug! Did you actually figure out the underlying cause or just exclude sphere primitives from the bounding box calculation?

As for the camera mod itself, it is somewhat limiting that the camera cannot be rotated at all while set to 90 degrees. It won't even follow the car's orientation. Gimbal lock bug? Also, some custom cars (eg the Silverado monster truck) will crash with an out-of-memory error while attempting to load dashboard graphics. This seems to mainly affect cars with a large dast/dasm covering most or all of the screen.

But other than those issues, the mod seems to work fine. At least, I didn't encounter any other weird surprises.