Scale

[DAllen]

I don?€™t know if it me, but objects seem smaller than they are suppose to be, from earths orbit the moon looks like nothing more than a dot that blends in with the rest of the stars, wouldn?€™t be able to find it if I didn?€™t have render moon labels checked. But I know this isn?€™t correct because I can see the moon just fine by looking out my window

I tried changing the field of view to about 6 that seemed a more appropriate size, but that made navigation even more awkward.

[Cham]

This is all about FOV (field of view). Just check the angular size at bottom-right of your screen. You can change it easily using shift-drag the mouse.

[DAllen]

I said I tried to change the field of view but it makes navigating harder, you lose that good virtual feel you get with default FOV has, and getting around is like trying to walk while looking threw binoculars. It?€™s makes for a nicer screen shot but its very disorienting for getting around.

[Cham]

I don't get it. Using a FOV of about 35 or 45 degrees is perfect to me. What is your problem, exactly ? You can see the Moon like in real life just by changing the FOV and the distance (zooming with ctrl-mouse) at the same time. This is like a real camera, that's alll.

[Malenfant]

I think I read somewhere that humans naturally have a field of view of about 120 degrees... and if you try looking at a FOV that big in Celestia you'll see it's quite distorted and things look tiny.

The problem is that we're trying to cram an entire field of view going out to infinity onto a small computer screen a few feet away from your eyes. Unfortunately this is going to mean that things aren't going to look quite the size that they appear to be in reality.

In other words, it's a feature, not a bug. Yes, if you want to see detail you'll have to zoom in to a small FOV, and yes that does mean it's like walking around looking through binoculars. But I'm afraid you'll just have to adapt to it.

[Kolano]

To Cham's point...

Try to imagine a camera that takes a 120' picture. One that takes a picture as wide across as your vision from peripheral to peripheral. That would be a really wide camera angle, and a similarly wide picture.

If you now imagine the picture taken by that camera held in your hand, how big is the Moon?

Celestia can only offer a small window on what one might be able to see, or I guess more acurately, could offer a similar window but if it did so things would be even smaller.

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To your original point,

Yes, the moon does appear like a spec when viewed in celectia "from earths orbit", but consider how big the earth is then. Even if it is cut off the screen, how big would it be if you had a big enough screen to show it? I'd guess only < a meter or so wide. Given relative distance (which could vary widely), it doesn't seem all that strange that the moon is shown small.