Heya, and hi @Raiju.
Below is a transcript of my latest video.
TL;DR - Video Link here.
TL;DW - n/a.
TBH, this transcript is pretty worthless is here for reference if I mumbled in the video. Very little here will make sense with the visual aids (it's a very visual addon, obviously).
Today we’re going to take a closer look at what I think could be a pretty important addon, or at least, what’s helping change the game experience for me, and it’s called dynamiccam.
I’ve featured it a few times in other videos but it hasn’t gotten its own video, so here it is. There’s a lot you can do with this addon and it’s super new, and even as I was setting this video up, I’ve talked with mpstark, the addon’s author, about upcoming changes, so keep an eye out.
The addon makes use of a new camera feature introduced in the 7.0.3 patch called the actioncam. Let’s just dive in.
First let’s look at the situations menu, which is the bread and butter of this addon. Situations are the many different profiles you can set up to change the camera according to what environment we’re in. If I’m inside Orgrimmar you see “City” as my current profile. As soon as I walk into this building, the profile changes from “City” to “City (Indoors)”, and my camera shifts a little bit according to that situation’s settings. So let’s get into what some of these settings do. The zoom setting is already on and set to “Zoom Range.” The Zoom Min is set to 10 with the max at 15. What this means is that as soon as we enter a city, the camera will adjust to a setting no closer than 10 and no further than 15. So I’ll go inside, zoom all the way in, and then walk back out. The camera will automatically readjust. The other options like “Zoom In To,” “Zoom Out To,” and “Zoom Set To” will work very similarly if you play with them. The Zoom Fit Nameplate is a bit more special that we’ll have to leave the city to check out, so I’ll get back to this later. The Rotate option is pretty easy to understand. Once I have it set, it’ll rotate as much as I set it to, including forever.
Under Camera Settings you can adjust the camera to shift left or right of the character’s center, how subtle the head tracking can be, and this special one, “Dynamic Pitch.” It’s this and the “Shoulder Offset Value” that really lets you unhinge your toon from the center of the screen.
The Target Lock/Focus setting explains itself, and is probably what will give many players a disorienting feeling with the sudden shifts in the camera. It’s not noticeable in the city with there being no enemies around, but I’ll uncheck the “Only Attackable” setting so the camera tracks friendly NPCs and players.
Finally under Extra Actions you can set a situation to turn nameplates on or off which could be convenient when traveling from a friendly to not so friendly place, or hide the whole UI, which doesn’t make much sense unless you’re doing this.
Let’s go back to the Zoom Fit Nameplate option. This is a setting most appropriate for combat, notable for stuff that’s typically big. Let’s get out into the world and make some adjustments. We’ll modify the World Situation to some simple values like just setting the zoom threshold and no other fancy stuff, then mess with the World Combat Situation. Here I’ll set the camera to zoom according to the enemy nameplate. With setting the Zoom to Max, Dynamic Pitch to on and the other settings to whatever you want, let’s move in engage. You can get a pretty good look at the giant thing you’re fighting.
Now you might be thinking hey, this whole dynamic thing is cool but I don’t want to risk getting nauseous. I’d rather have the camera just be at a fixed position but I want to see more. The addon can do that. How bout if you just want the old max zoom back. Well dynamiccam can’t do it. But we can do something with the camera pitch that we couldn’t do before. Here’s how.
We’re going to turn every situation off, then go here to Settings. Think of this as the default “situation” since no other profile is set up. We’ll turn on Dynamic Pitch which is the centerpiece of what we’re going to do, and for the sake of not feeling dizzy, leave Target Lock off. From there set your other settings however you like. I’ll use these settings. Notice that Dynamic Pitch already has a noticeable effect. You’re looking at more of what’s in front of you than what’s on the ground, now that your character isn’t stuck in the middle of the screen.
We’ll do some more adjustments. Let’s go back to the first menu and turn on the Advanced Options, which will soon be folded into the situations menu to avoid confusion. Dynamic Pitch should be enabled because we did that earlier. I’m going to adjust this Base FOV Pad thing. Pushing it all the way to 1 locks the camera like it used to. Same thing happens if I set it to 0, but that’s a bug. So let’s change it to 0.01. Check out what’s happening; the camera gets totally unhinged as you can see. It’s just my preference, but for me it’s a almost a game changer. My already cruddy bar placement will need to be readjusted now that my character can go as low as the bottom of the screen.