How to increase your camera distance

But if you've got a really nice PC and, like me, want to see a little farther than normal (or as in the picture above, a lot farther than normal), there are a few easy ways to increase your camera distance, as Dr. Laxative found over on LJ.
ImprovedCamera is probably the easiest-- it's an addon that will give you a slider to increase camera distance up to the max allowed range. You can also see, in the description on that site, that there are ways to edit your WoW files and increase the max range even farther. By editing the "SET cameraDistanceD" number in your config.wtf file, you can change one of the preset lengths for the camera, and then cycle through them with Home and End. You don't even really need an addon to tweak your settings-- type "/script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax",30)" (or whatever distance you want) into the chat console, and then you should be able to scroll out to the max distance that you just set.
If your computer's not that great, doing this stuff will definitely introduce slowdown and pop-in to your graphics, so run these commands with care. But if you've got the gear for it, you can see Azeroth at a whole new distance.
Filed under: Tricks, How-tos, Odds and ends, Add-Ons






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Izbay Oct 4th 2007 7:48PM
Whoo!
Zuty Oct 4th 2007 8:03PM
Whoo, indeed.
I am going to use this for my video recording now.
~Zuty
tormented909 Oct 4th 2007 8:28PM
i cannot download PFE because the file is outdated, is there a newer version, or another program that i can use?
Paul Oct 4th 2007 8:30PM
Ok, i'm a little confused-
Do you have to do the "SET cameraDistanceD" thing -AND- the type "/script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax",30)" thing to get it to work, or just one or the other?
dreadlorde Oct 4th 2007 8:57PM
/script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax",30)
Mike Schramm Oct 4th 2007 10:26PM
one or the other, Paul
kcgb Oct 5th 2007 3:08AM
Awesome, I was just wondering about how to increase my camera distance today (I was doing some Brewfest quests and I noticed that when I was drunk the camera would sometimes zoom out further than normal).
Thanks for saving me a decent bit of time looking for a solution!
Halite Oct 5th 2007 7:09AM
My tauren self thanks you - I knew there was a way, but I couldn't find it either. This will be helpful while trying to see around ... well me. =)
Kay Oct 5th 2007 7:53AM
The "camera zooming out" you were referring to is actually kind of deceptive. Rather than actually zooming out, being "drunk" in WoW fiddles with the game's FoV (Field of View) setting to make it wider than usual. You see more, and the enviroment becomes sort of stretched a bit more, so it sort of seems like you're more zoomed out than usual because it's pulling more of the landscape onto the screen at once. This can be kind of neat (if a bit motion sickness inducing on flight paths), though as far as I'm aware there's no way aside from getting virtually plastered to change this setting in WoW.
Todd Oct 5th 2007 8:49AM
Does this have any effect on the distance at which you see mobs? Or is it only terrain?
Jasperwind Oct 5th 2007 9:28AM
I tried going the config.wtf route, but cannot find the "cameraDistanceD" variable. There is a "cameraDistanceMaxFactor" variable that seems to be between 1 and 2 depending on the slider bar in the Interface options. Anybody know how these variables are related?
franz Oct 5th 2007 1:23PM
Or you could just use the max camera distance slider bar in the interface options...
Hidden_Agenda Oct 5th 2007 9:55PM
@franz
The max zoom from the distance slider will not go nearly as far as what you can do from the script command. For me the max setting I could get it to use was 50. Very nice!
/script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax",50)