EZdok Camera is frustrating... (at best)

[Guest PFL]

Read post #58 a few times, and tell me if you understand it?The developer is Russian, the manual is cr*p, the endless updates are frustrating, the... Do I have to go on?Now a version 2.0 is announced, will it be more userfriendly? I doubt it very much...It´s a geek tool, made by a geek, no problems with that, but I just want to fly, not do endless tweaking with EZCA, there´s enough of this in FSX already!:(

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

I didn't touch EZCA for months and I'm using it always.

[TheDanger 182]

I havent had any problems adding views/creating cameras for either default or addon aircraft.I think the product is fantastic and can't fly without it. Eagerly awaiting version 2.0.

Read post #58 a few times, and tell me if you understand it?

I can understand it very well.

The developer is Russian, the manual is cr*p, the endless updates are frustrating, the... Do I have to go on?

As for the authors grammar - He may not be fluent in English but he can express himself enough for me to understand what he is saying. He is also very helpful on the forums. The manual could be clearer with regards to the settings and what they do ie vibration controls but I'm not really bothered by them at the moment - I just want switchable camera views which I have!The 'endless' updates - at least any issues are being addressed and new features added. Lots of updates are better than no updates.If you don't like the product don't buy/use it. I have plenty of addons that i'm not keen on or that frustrate me so they are uninstalled collecting dust on the cyber shelf.

[David Roch 1,982]

Read post #58 a few times, and tell me if you understand it?The developer is Russian, the manual is cr*p, the endless updates are frustrating, the... Do I have to go on?

No, to go out for two weeks, it will give you enough time to read the manual.And next comment about someone's citizenship will get you banned definitly.

[Hypo 1]

Interesting...i have it, and i dont have any problem with it, no ctd. I've setup all my aircraft views manualy ( little bit long process)but now its working and i like it a lot.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

It's interesting how people buy stuff and than when they see a bug or more than one sentence of instructions they run away saying the product is no good.

[Guest TomOOO]

Although I posted #58 - I consider EZdok worth the money and the effort to getworking. It certainly gives a better feel to the flying. One thing I have noticedis that before using EZdok I could plant a plane on a runway same place every time -and it seamed too easy. With EZdok it is much easier to drift since your POV changes with the movement and it becomes more difficult to be perfectly consistent.Bit like the real thing really :)So - frustrating - but worth the effort (and the money).

[MindYerBeak 73]

Ezdok is one of the addons I wouldn't do without. It changed simming for me. Good stuff !V

[Guest]

I can't imagine flying without EZDOK. It's the best addon there is (apart from texture addons and planes, of course). I can set up ANY view I want in a few seconds. The default views are all obsolete because I can make the ones I want, so I won't be stuck with the ones the dev wanted. TrackIR works perfectly well with it. The idea of having to edit cfg's to get another view.... please, no! And the motion effects... it seems such a simple thing and often it's quite subtle but flying a GA without it is sooooooo unrealistic...EZDOK is awesome.Maybe it's a good idea to repost some tips I posted after buying EZDOK myself:A lot of people seem to have problems with setting up and using EZdok. On another forum I posted two tips/tutorials and maybe someone here is interested in it too, so... copy, paste (and a little bit of editing) and here you go! ;)Setting up TrackIR with EZdok (without having to watch a video on Youtube... ;D )1. Go to your TrackIR folder and rename the files ‘simconnect.manifest’ and ‘simconnectSP2.manifest’ (simply add a number to the name).2. Start TrackIR, make sure TrackIR is updated (click on Game Updates) and restart TrackIR.3. Uncheck ‘True view’ in TrackIR.4. Start FSX. When you are in the aircraft in FSX, open EZdok studio using the menu (you have to switch to FSX windowed mode to actually see it), go to the TrackIR settings in the Options menu of EZdok and check ‘Transform X Y Z’.That's it!Editing views (or simply moving around)1. When you are in the VC (or outside the plane or whatever), open EZdok studio using the menu (switch to FSX windowed mode to actually see it).2. Click on the name of the view you want to edit or if there aren't any views (there weren't any for my addon aircraft) and/or you want to create a new view, click three times in an empty viewslot and enter a name.3. For convenience sake, add a shortcut to the view: click once on the Keyb SHORTCUT field and when it has turned red, click your desired shortcut (otherwise you will have to switch back to the studio everytime).4. To make editing easy (and in order to be able to move around even if you don't want to edit a view), make sure to enable the green button called POV (for moving around with keys). Leave ML (mouse look) off (you can temporarily enable mouse look when you need it by pressing and holding the middle mouse button). You can turn on Z (for zooming with the mouse scroll wheel) for editing purposes, but don't leave it on during normal flight or you will zoom in and out when you want to use the scroll wheel to change settings in the VC itself. Besides, it is better to change the position than it is to zoom (I always use the same zoom for all views). PTP is activated by default and makes switching between views smooth (unless you used another zoom setting), but that's of no importance for editing views.5. Now go back to FSX (full screen if you want to) and (with the view you want to edit selected: press the shortcut again to be sure) simply move around using the arrow keys (left, right, forward, backward), the Page Up and Page Down keys (up and down) and if you want to look around, press and hold the middle mouse button and move the mouse. Use the middle mouse button (scroll) to zoom in and out: the default EZdok view is zoomed a lot. This way you can move around and position yourself very easily anywhere you want to.6. When you like the view you have and want to keep it, press NUMPAD 2 twice and that's it: your view has been overwritten with the current settings! If you don't like what you've done (at anytime) and want to reset the view (or if you didn't want to save it at all but just wanted to move around), simply press the shortcut you made earlier on and you are back where you started.(Actually, the manual tells you to press NUMPAD 2 to enter the EDIT mode, change the view and then exit the edit mode to save the view, but then you will here an annoying beep all the time: setting up the view and THEN pressing NUMPAD 2 twice does the same and you will only hear a beep for a split second! ;D )Additional notesIf you want add another view you can 1. create a new view from scratch (click three times on an empty spot in the EZdok studio etc. etc.) or 2. rightclick on the view you want to base it upon (in the EZdok studio) and choose Clone camera with effects. Simple as that. (You cannot move around or edit a view and then save is as a NEW view: maybe that will be possible in the future. Right now you can only edit and save the current view.) I usually make a default (pilot) view and base my other views (mainly co-pilot and passenger views) on that one: that way you have the same zoom and the same basic settings for every view.As far as effects are concerned: personally I enable all three red buttons (RD, DHM and CR) for all motion effects. I use the default settings and feel no need to dig into all those options. If you need a specific view to stay steady during flight (to use knobs or whatever) you can disable the effects for that specific view or you can temporarily disable EZdok with NUMPAD 3 (which works as a toggle).If you want to make a view that is zoomed in on a specific gauge, do not use the zoom but simply move your position forward etc. towards the gauge: transitions (with PTP enabled) between various zoom levels aren't smooth but transitions between various positions are. So try to avoid using zoom for various views in order to move around smoothly all the time.

[DeCampos 40]

Never had a problem with EZdok. Wouldn't fly with out it.

[spesimen 135]

ezdok is in my must-have list as well, i would never fly without it.actually i'm surprised that so many people seem confused by it... it is certainly less complex than correctly operating the md-11, for example. at least some of the problems people mentioned above are quite frankly from not RTFM when they installed it. i do agree the documentation could be clearer and doesn't necessarily explain well enough that you must disable some of the default keys so it can override them, otherwise it won't work correctly.. as far as releasing lots of updates, that's because he added a lot of requested features. if there are no updates people would complain just as much, which just goes to show you can't please everyone.anyway many kudos to the ezdok author, i love flying with itcheers,-andy crosby

[CoolP 283]

as far as releasing lots of updates, that's because he added a lot of requested features. if there are no updates people would complain just as much, which just goes to show you can't please everyone.

You name it. I must admit, I found the argumentation to be somehow strange, stating regular and fast updates as a negative point of a program. :blink:If every dev would work that fast and open to customers wishes, the small flight sim industry could be very proud.As far as I can see, every new version was easy to install (no uninstall needed) and worked out of the box while implementing better performance and useful features. If you don't need or like the features, version 1.15 or so will do the job, so you don't need to update there. So I'll personally turn the "too many updates" points in a big pro and the "no updates since 6 months or more" one to the downsides of some other products from much bigger devs.Great post from J van E there hopefully helping the guys struggling with the options.

[petehowell57 17]

Hi.I am yet another supporter of EZdok. Yes at first I found it VERY confusing, but some patient research and the excellent tips by J van E helped me to sort it out. Once you get the "knack" its easy to set up any aircraft. I do sympathise with those who like to operate straight out of the box, but I personally see these sort of things as a "challenge" from which I get a great deal of satisfaction when successful. :biggrin:I also use TIR5 with it . Oh and yes at times it gets a little choppy when trying to operate a knob or suchlike so I simply disable it temporarily by pressing F9.Simples!Pete

[Alan_A 1,650]

I understand completely why people get emotional in support of EZCA. Look, I like it myself - if I didn't, I wouldn't have tried to get it working through three separate installs. I appreciate all the hard work Marniftarr has put into it and I think the frequent updates are a good thing - they show commitment to continuous improvement. And Marniftarr has been more than responsive to user feedback, as witness the work he did to get EZCA working with Track IR.I also appreciate J van E's instructions, which I've used in the past. It's simply my personal choice not to go through all those steps for each of my add-on aircraft. Others want to, I don't - simple as that.It's also in the nature of FSX that EZCA, like any add-on, will work smoothly on some systems and create mysterious effects on others. I just had this experience: I decided it would be interesting to see if I could re-introduce the head latency effects that were originally a part of FSX, before SP2 and/or Acceleration. So based on material in another thread, I edited the MomentumEffect line in the camera.cfg file to read MomentumEffect=Yes. Everything was fine until I tried to launch FSX after launching Active Sky Evolution with Smooth Cloud Transitions or DWC selected. The result was that FSX crashed on startup. If I launched ASE in standard mode, FSX was fine. As soon as I reverted to MomentumEffect=No, I was able to use ASE Smooth Cloud Transitions and DWC - FSX then started up with no problems. Interestingly, each crash was also associated with a TrackIR lockup that required an exit via the task manager and a restart. So apparently there's something going on deep under the hood that creates conflicts related to head latency, and maybe involves Simconnect. I'm not enough of a programmer to know what's going on, but it seems broadly similar to some of the "unintendend consequences"-style problems I've had with EZCA. I mention all this to illustrate that it may not be as simple a matter as whether or not you're able or willing to go through EZCA setup. I think it's possilbe that you can do all that and still run into problems on some systems. Consider this a plea for tolerance of the other guy's viewpoint - on both sides of the argument.Hope this helps.

[Alan_A 1,650]

UPDATE: Or maybe it wasn't MomentumEffect after all. The crash-on-startup problem recurred after I'd switched the MomentumEffect off - I finally had to rebuild the fsx.cfg to cure it. Not sure the cause - one of the trusted modules, I think, but I don't know which. To me, yet another argument for trying to keep the FSX setup as simple as possible...