I also made an experimental change. I'd like to hear any feedback.
The result of the change is when the distance from your eye to your target is less than 2 meters, a change to the perspective projection is made that causes the object of your attention to get bigger on the screen, as if you zoomed in on it slightly. The amount of apparent zoom is greater as the eye distance gets shorter.
This stemmed from work on improving the near clip plane distance. I was able to bring it in closer to the face than it used to be.
This experimental change bears a bit of explanation about what is going on, if you are interested. It's a bit technical.
The perspective projection matrix has a factor called the near clip distance. Anything closer to the camera position than the near clip distance gets clipped away. You see this all the time when you walk through plants and people and get close to walls. This value cannot be zero; the closer to zero it gets, the worse the scene degrades.
For example, if the camera position is the center of your eyeball, the ideal near clip distance would be the radius of the eyeball.
Unfortunately that does not work. As the near clip distance gets smaller, distant values in the scene get less and less accurate. This causes ugly polygon surface collisions. The value needed to render scenes in the game is actually much larger than the eyeball size due to the distance to things in the near scene, such as coastlines when viewed from up in the air in a space fighter.
Far things are rendered in a separate pass that is unaffected by this value. I should say it uses a near clip distance different from the near scene.
To compensate for the larger near clip distance, the eye camera is moved backward from the eye until the clip plane is just in front of the face. As the camera backs up, more of the scene is visible, as if you were standing just behind your avatar. The near clip plane clips your avatar away so you don't see it.
With that understanding, this change causes the near clip distance to be reduced when you are looking at something close by. Keeping the clip plane just in front of the face, the eye camera thus moves closer to the back of the eyeball. Things appear larger just as though you moved closer to them, but you don't really move. It is intended to feel responsive to things nearby that have your attention.
For example, when sitting at the capt chair on the bridge of the Atlantis, there is a display screen on the left arm rest. When I look at it now, it gets bigger and easier to read.
I would prefer not to add a setting for something so esoteric to explain. If this is disturbing or annoying for people, I may simply nerf it.
The result of the change is when the distance from your eye to your target is less than 2 meters, a change to the perspective projection is made that causes the object of your attention to get bigger on the screen, as if you zoomed in on it slightly. The amount of apparent zoom is greater as the eye distance gets shorter.
This stemmed from work on improving the near clip plane distance. I was able to bring it in closer to the face than it used to be.
This experimental change bears a bit of explanation about what is going on, if you are interested. It's a bit technical.
The perspective projection matrix has a factor called the near clip distance. Anything closer to the camera position than the near clip distance gets clipped away. You see this all the time when you walk through plants and people and get close to walls. This value cannot be zero; the closer to zero it gets, the worse the scene degrades.
For example, if the camera position is the center of your eyeball, the ideal near clip distance would be the radius of the eyeball.
Unfortunately that does not work. As the near clip distance gets smaller, distant values in the scene get less and less accurate. This causes ugly polygon surface collisions. The value needed to render scenes in the game is actually much larger than the eyeball size due to the distance to things in the near scene, such as coastlines when viewed from up in the air in a space fighter.
Far things are rendered in a separate pass that is unaffected by this value. I should say it uses a near clip distance different from the near scene.
To compensate for the larger near clip distance, the eye camera is moved backward from the eye until the clip plane is just in front of the face. As the camera backs up, more of the scene is visible, as if you were standing just behind your avatar. The near clip plane clips your avatar away so you don't see it.
With that understanding, this change causes the near clip distance to be reduced when you are looking at something close by. Keeping the clip plane just in front of the face, the eye camera thus moves closer to the back of the eyeball. Things appear larger just as though you moved closer to them, but you don't really move. It is intended to feel responsive to things nearby that have your attention.
For example, when sitting at the capt chair on the bridge of the Atlantis, there is a display screen on the left arm rest. When I look at it now, it gets bigger and easier to read.
I would prefer not to add a setting for something so esoteric to explain. If this is disturbing or annoying for people, I may simply nerf it.