Flight Path User Guide

A flight path is an animated camera fly-through of your scene. Mark the places you want to show — points of interest — and VRGS works out the camera positions for you; or capture each viewpoint (keyframe) by hand from the 3D view. Either way VRGS interpolates a smooth camera path between the keyframes, and you can then play it back, fine-tune the timing on a dedicated timeline editor, choreograph which objects are visible at each moment, add spoken narration, and record the result to a movie. Flight paths are ideal for presentations, virtual field trips, and rendering polished fly-over videos of an outcrop.

Works in both renderers

Flight paths run in both the OpenGL and Vulkan 3D views, but they are no longer equal. Vulkan-only: narration, guided tours, pause-and-look-around, the timeline transport strip, narration and holds in a recorded movie, Check Path, and the Keep the camera out of the outcrop check inside Auto Generate. Everything else — capturing viewpoints, placing points of interest, Auto Generate itself, Constant Speed, building and re-timing the path, scenes, gamepad recording, motion blur and movie recording — works in both. The only thing still exclusive to OpenGL is the presentation-mode controls for stepping a slide deck. Individual features are called out below; if you are authoring guided tours, use the Vulkan renderer.

Watch it done

A short tutorial that builds a narrated fly-through end to end: mark the outcrop with points of interest, generate the path, check it clears the rock, pace it, record commentary over it, and export the result as an MP4.

For the two-minute version — just points of interest and Auto Generate — see the Flight paths from points of interest quick tip.

Concepts

Term	Meaning
Point of interest (POI)	A place on the outcrop you want the tour to show. Unlike a viewpoint it is not a camera pose — it is the subject, and Auto Generate works out where to put the camera to see it (see Points of interest).
Viewpoint (control point / keyframe)	A captured camera pose — position, orientation (pitch/roll/yaw), zoom and clip planes. These are the keyframes you edit.
Interpolated path	The dense per-frame camera poses VRGS computes between your viewpoints. This is what plays back and records; it is rebuilt automatically whenever you change a viewpoint.
Segment	The span between two consecutive viewpoints. Each viewpoint stores a frame count that sets how long the segment takes.
Scene	A saved snapshot of object visibility — including large geometry such as meshes and point clouds — that can be triggered along the path, so objects appear or disappear as the camera flies (see Scenes).
Narration clip	A piece of recorded or imported audio placed at a point on the path's timeline, so commentary plays as the camera reaches it (see Narration).

The camera uses the same drone-style convention as the rest of VRGS: pitch (look up/down), yaw (heading) and roll. Orientation values in the viewpoint properties are shown in radians.

Creating a flight path

1. Open the Interpretation tree (the project tree that holds interpretation objects).
2. Right-click the Flight Path branch and choose New Flightpath. It appears in the tree with empty Viewpoints, Points of Interest and Scenes sub-branches.
3. Select the flight path. The Flight Path contextual tab appears on the ribbon, and the Flight Path Timeline panel auto-opens at the bottom of the window.

A flight path needs at least two viewpoints before it can be interpolated.

Two ways to get those viewpoints

	How it works	Best for
Mark the subject	Click the places on the outcrop you want shown, then choose Auto Generate Path on the Points of Interest branch. VRGS works out where to stand the camera, which way to face and how long to take. See Points of interest.	Getting a whole tour in a couple of minutes; orbiting a feature; tracking along a face.
Fly it yourself	Navigate to each shot and press Add View. See Capturing viewpoints.	Exact framing you have in mind, and fine-tuning whatever Auto Generate hands back.

They are the same object underneath — generated keyframes are ordinary viewpoints, so you can generate a first pass and then adjust it by hand.

Capturing viewpoints

Navigate the 3D view to the shot you want, then add a viewpoint:

• On the Flight Path ribbon tab, choose Add View. The current camera pose (position, orientation, zoom and near/far clip planes) is captured as a new keyframe and added to the path.
• Repeat for each shot. Viewpoints are listed under the flight path's Viewpoints branch and drawn as small camera glyphs in the 3D view.

Gamepad recording

Toggle Record from Game Pad to capture viewpoints automatically as you fly with a gamepad. A new viewpoint is dropped whenever the camera has moved more than a set distance or rotated more than a set angle since the last one. Tune Record Distance (m) and Record Angle (deg) in the flight path's properties under Gamepad Recording.

In the Vulkan view this rides the gamepad poll, so Game Controller mode has to be on for the camera to be read at all. In OpenGL it runs from that view's own game loop.

Viewpoint properties

Select a viewpoint in the tree to edit it in the properties panel:

Property	Description
View Position	The camera's X/Y/Z location.
Direction/Yaw, Angle/Pitch, Rotation/Roll	Camera orientation, in radians.
Zoom Factor	Lens zoom / field-of-view at this viewpoint.
Frames	How many frames the segment leaving this viewpoint takes — the primary timing control.
SmoothStep	Ease the camera in and out of this viewpoint (see Ease in and out).
Hold Here	When recording a movie, stop on this viewpoint for the path's Pause Frames before carrying on (see Holding on a viewpoint).

You can also update a viewpoint to the current camera (right-click it, or use the timeline), reorder it, split the segment after it, and copy / paste / duplicate viewpoints from the tree context menu (see Reordering keyframes).

Points of interest

A point of interest marks a place on the outcrop — the thing you want the audience to look at. It is not a camera position: Auto Generate decides where the camera goes, so that the subject is framed, the camera stands off the rock rather than inside it, and the tour visits everything in turn.

This is the difference that makes the feature worth using on a real outcrop. Standing off a bounding box would put the camera inside a re-entrant or swing it between opposite faces; VRGS instead fits a plane through your points to get the overall orientation of the face, bends the standoff towards each point's own surface normal so the camera follows bays and noses, and then checks the line of sight against the real geometry.

Placing points of interest

1. Select the flight path so it is active.
2. On the Flight Path ribbon tab, choose POI. The cursor arms for placement.
3. Click the outcrop wherever you want the tour to stop. Each click drops a point, so you can place a whole set without re-arming.
4. Press Esc to put the tool away.

Points appear under the flight path's Points of Interest branch in the Interpretation tree, and are drawn on the outcrop with a glyph that shows what each one does — so a glance tells you which will be orbited and which merely looked at. They are drawn whether or not the path has been generated yet.

Move one without re-placing it

Reposition Object on the Interpretations tab moves a point of interest as it moves a waypoint or sample point: click the point, then click where it should go. Delete or rename one from its right-click menu in the tree.

The surface normal is recorded at the click

VRGS stores the orientation of the surface you clicked, and that is what lets the camera follow the shape of the face. A point placed where no triangle was available — on a bare point cloud, or in a project made before this feature — has no normal recorded, and simply falls back to the overall face direction. The Surface → Normal row in the properties shows it when there is one.

What each point tells the camera to do

Set Type in a point's properties:

Type	What the camera does
Look At	Stands off the point and faces it. The default, and the right answer for most stops.
Rotate Around	Circles the point, facing inwards the whole way — a turntable of a single feature.
Traverse Anchor	Shapes a face-on traverse without getting a stop of its own: it steers the line the camera tracks along, but no viewpoint is generated at it.

Point of interest properties

Select a point in the tree to edit it. Every 0 means automatic field falls back to the value in the Auto Generate dialog, and that in turn falls back to a fraction of the scene size — so a point placed with one click and never edited still generates a sensible camera.

Property	Description
Name	Used to label the keyframe the point generates.
Position	Where the point sits, in project units.
Type	Look At, Rotate Around or Traverse Anchor (above).
Standoff	How far the camera stands off this point. 0 = automatic from the scene size.
Dwell (seconds)	How long the camera holds here. 0 = do not stop.
Pitch (degrees)	Downward tilt at this point, positive looking down. Leave at 0 to use the run's pitch.
Shape The Flight → Turn To Look	Turn the camera towards this point as the flight passes it. On by default. See Letting points shape the flight.
Shape The Flight → Max Turn (degrees)	How far the camera may be pulled off its own heading to look here. 45 by default.
Shape The Flight → Influence Radius	How much of the flight either side of this point is affected, in metres. 0 = automatic from how close the flight comes.
Shape The Flight → Speed Factor	Speed passing this point, as a fraction of the rest of the flight. 1 = no change.
Rotate Around → Radius	Orbit radius. 0 = use the standoff.
Rotate Around → Sweep (degrees)	Arc swept around the point. 360 is a full turn.
Rotate Around → Keyframes	How many viewpoints are generated around the arc.
Surface → Normal	Read-only. The orientation of the surface at the click (above).

Auto Generate

Auto Generate Path, on the right-click menu of a path's Points of Interest branch, turns that path's points of interest into its viewpoints. It needs a 3D model window on top. The dialog opens on a line telling you what the run will use — "Generating from 7 points of interest." — so you never have to guess.

It replaces the viewpoints

Auto Generate discards the path's existing keyframes and writes a new set. Ctrl+Z puts them back. If you have hand-tweaked a viewpoint since the last generate, the dialog says so before you commit — "Some viewpoints have been edited since they were generated; those edits will be lost." That comparison lasts as long as the session: reopen the project and there is nothing left to compare against, so treat the absence of the warning as "no edits seen", not "no edits made".

Settings

Setting	What it does
Pattern	The overall shape of the tour — see below.
Standoff	Default camera distance from a point, for points that do not set their own. 0 = work it out from the scene size.
Pitch	Default downward tilt in degrees, positive looking down. Range −89 to 89.
Seconds each	How long each generated segment takes, which is what sets the tour's overall length. 2 by default.
Follow surface	How far each point's own surface normal pulls the camera away from the overall face direction. 0 holds a rigid line across the whole face; 1 follows every local bend. The default 0.5 suits most outcrops.
Return to the first viewpoint at the end	Return from the last point to the first, for a path that can play round and round.
Open with an establishing shot	Open on a wide view of the whole subject before the tour proper begins.
Keep the camera out of the outcrop	Ray-cast each candidate camera position against the real geometry and move it when the rock is in the way.

Patterns

Pattern	Shape
Waypoint tour	Visit each point in turn. Points set to Rotate Around still orbit as they are reached. The general-purpose choice.
Orbit every point	Orbit every point regardless of its type — a survey of several features in turn.
Face-on traverse	Track along the face at a constant standoff, holding the outcrop side-on. This is where Traverse Anchor points earn their keep.

Keeping the camera out of the rock

With Keep the camera out of the outcrop ticked, each candidate camera position is tested against the real geometry. When something is in the way, VRGS searches around the obstruction — sweeping sideways first, then looking over it — rather than simply backing further off, because retreating along the same line keeps a shoulder of rock exactly where it was.

Vulkan only

The line-of-sight check needs the Vulkan renderer. In an OpenGL view generation still runs and still produces a path, but the check is skipped and a warning is written to the messages panel — the tick box cannot do anything there. Either way, run Check Path afterwards: proving each keyframe is clear does not prove the curve between them is.

Pressing Generate with nothing placed

You get a path anyway. With no points of interest on it, VRGS lays out stand-ins from the scene's own extent and generates a serviceable establishing sweep of the whole model — spaced across your view rather than along it, so the camera tracks past the outcrop instead of driving at it. An Orbit every point run instead gets a single turntable of the whole model.

The dialog says which of the two you are getting. It is a reasonable first look at a new project; for a path that actually follows the outcrop, place some points first.

Playing back

Use the player on the Flight Path ribbon tab, or the transport strip on the timeline:

Control	Action
Play	Start playback. The same button becomes Pause while playing, Resume while paused, and Continue while the tour is held at a stop-and-talk marker.
Esc	Stop the tour and hand the camera back.
Go to Start	Jump to the first frame.
Go To End	Jump to the last frame.
Step Forward, Step back	Advance or rewind one frame. A running tour pauses first, so stepping never fights the clock.
Stop	End the tour outright and keep the camera where the path left it. On the timeline's transport strip; Esc does the same.

The same controls sit on a transport strip along the top of the Flight Path Timeline panel, with a running readout of the tour's position and total length. The readout is also where the tour tells you what it is doing — Paused, Recording, Stopped to talk — press Continue — so you do not have to work it out from the buttons.

Clicking in the 3D view while the tour is playing takes the camera back and ends the tour — useful when you want to break out and look at something. While the tour is paused, clicking navigates normally instead (see below).

Playback runs to the clock

A path plays at its real duration, measured against the project frame rate — not at whatever speed the display happens to manage. On a heavy scene the picture skips frames and stays on time rather than sliding into slow motion, so a 60-second path takes 60 seconds on every machine. This is what lets narration stay in step with the picture, and what makes a preview a truthful rehearsal of the recorded movie.

Pause and look around

Pausing is not the same as stopping: the tour stays open at its current position and the camera is handed back to you.

1. Press Pause (or the Play button, which becomes Pause during playback).
2. Navigate freely — orbit, zoom, pan, fly with W A S D Q E (Vulkan view; see Navigating the 3D view). The pivot is re-anchored on whatever you were looking at when you paused, so the first drag behaves the way it does anywhere else in VRGS.
3. Press Resume. If you moved the camera, it eases smoothly back onto the path over about half a second rather than snapping, then playback continues from exactly where it stopped.

Press Esc at any point to abandon the tour and keep the camera where it is.

Stopping to discuss is the point

This is the core teaching interaction: fly to an outcrop, pause, talk about what is on screen while your audience looks around, then carry on. Scrubbing the timeline while paused works too — resume picks up from wherever you left the playhead.

Vulkan only

Pause-and-look-around requires the Vulkan renderer. In the OpenGL view the Play button still stops rather than pauses.

Recording a movie

With the flight path active, choose Record Movie, pick an output file, and set the resolution, frame rate, motion blur and render quality in the settings dialog. VRGS then renders every frame of the path off-screen and writes an MP4.

Recording is offline, not a screen capture: each frame is rendered to completion however long it takes, so the video is smooth even where interactive preview would struggle. A progress dialog shows the frame count and has a Cancel button — cancelling still finalises a playable file containing everything captured up to that point.

Render quality

Offline capture can supersample — render larger than the video size and downsample — which is the only thing that removes the shimmer on finely textured outcrops. It costs render time proportional to the square of the factor, so try a short path first.

What a recording shows

In the Vulkan view a recording, like Copy Screen, carries the view's 2D overlays: the compass, the scale bar, the attribute colour key, the stratigraphic column and the attribution Cesium and Google imagery have to show. They stay sharp under motion blur. They are laid out for the movie's frame, not the VRGS window, so one Movie Size gives the same picture however big the window was. Labels behind the model stay hidden, as on screen.

A recording leaves out what belongs to a live window: the navigator pads, the GNSS block and marker, the digitising cursor, the selection marquee and the performance HUD.

Narration in the recorded movie

A guided tour records with its commentary, so a field guide you author in VRGS can be handed over as a single video file to someone who does not have VRGS at all.

Two things happen when you press Record:

• The stops become real time. A stop-and-talk clip costs the tour no time while the app plays it — the clock simply parks. A video has to actually sit there, so each stop is expanded into however many frames its commentary lasts, and everything after it shifts along. Keyframes ticked Hold Here are expanded the same way, and a keyframe carrying both gets both.
• The clips are mixed down into one soundtrack, each at its own volume with its fade in and out, and laid into the MP4 in step with the picture.

Nothing on the path is altered by recording: the expansion happens on the interpolated frames, which are rebuilt from your keyframes when the capture finishes. Recording the same tour twice does not compound the stops.

Vulkan only

Narration and holds are written into the movie by the Vulkan view. The OpenGL view records the picture with its own older pipeline and no tour audio — record narrated tours in Vulkan.

note

Movie recording itself works in both renderers. The Vulkan view writes MP4 as described above; the OpenGL view records with its own older pipeline.

Exporting

Export on the flight path's tree context menu writes its viewpoints to a CSV file — Name, X, Y, Z, Yaw, Pitch, Roll, Near, Far, Frames, one row per viewpoint, positions in project units and orientations in radians — for use in external tools.

Merging and splitting whole paths

Merging two paths into one, and splitting a path in two at its middle viewpoint, exist in the application but are not currently on any menu or ribbon, so there is no way to reach them in this release. To join two paths by hand, copy and paste the viewpoints (Selection → Copy / Paste Viewpoint Values on a viewpoint) into a single path.

This is not the same as Insert Viewpoint After, which splits a segment within one path and is on the viewpoint's Order menu.

Tips and troubleshooting

• Path won't build / "At least 2 view points needed". Capture at least two viewpoints before using Create Open Path.
• Motion looks jerky. Use the Smooth interpolation method, run Smooth All a few times, and check the Speed track for sudden spikes — or just press Constant Speed.
• The camera rushes one segment and crawls another. Press Constant Speed — it re-paces the whole path from the distance actually flown and leaves the total duration alone. Set Frames Per Metre and dragging keyframes on the timeline are the manual alternatives.
• The camera flies through the outcrop. Run Check Path (Vulkan), which finds the stretches that pass through rock and offers to nudge the surrounding viewpoints clear. Run it again afterwards — one pass does not always clear a deep pocket. Auto Generate's own check only proves the keyframes are clear, not the curve between them.
• Auto Generate put the camera behind the outcrop. The generator picks which side of the face is "outside" from where your camera already is, so navigate to roughly the side you want to film from before generating. On a strongly re-entrant face, raise Follow surface so each point follows its own local surface more closely.
• "Generating from the scene extent" in the Auto Generate dialog means the path has no points of interest — you will get a generic sweep of the whole model. Place some with POI for a path that follows the outcrop.
• A generated viewpoint I edited by hand disappeared. Auto Generate replaces the keyframes; the dialog warns when it can see hand edits. Ctrl+Z restores them.
• The "Keep the camera out of the outcrop" tick appears to do nothing. That check needs the Vulkan renderer. In an OpenGL view generation runs without it and says so in the messages panel.
• A scene isn't appearing when expected. Check whether it uses a spatial (ROI) or temporal trigger; on the Scenes track, right-click and snap the range from the ROI sweep, or set the start/end from the playhead.
• The recorded movie is the wrong length. The duration is computed at the project frame rate — confirm it matches the frame rate you are recording at.
• Nothing was recorded / "check that the microphone is not muted". Another application may hold the microphone exclusively, or Windows may be blocking microphone access for VRGS (Settings → Privacy → Microphone). The level meter in the recording dialog is the quickest check: if it never moves, VRGS is not hearing anything.
• A narration clip is grey and silent. Its audio file is missing — usually a project copied without its AUDIO folder. Re-import the audio and delete the grey clip.
• The tour does not stop at a "stop and talk" marker. Check the clip is actually marked (it draws as an orange pin, not a bar), and that you are in the Vulkan renderer.
• The recorded movie has no commentary. Tour audio is written by the Vulkan view only — the OpenGL view records the picture without it.
• A feature is greyed out or missing. Narration, guided tours, pause-and-look-around, the transport strip, Check Path and narration in a recorded movie need the Vulkan renderer; the ribbon's presentation-mode controls need OpenGL. Everything else works in both. Check which renderer the view is using.

See also

• Shaping, Timing and Scenes — the route, the timeline, timing and scene visibility.
• Narration and Presentation — guided tours with spoken commentary, and presenting with slides.
• VR / Headset User Guide — explore and present outcrops in virtual reality.
• Display Properties — control how objects are drawn in the 3D view.
• Building and Delivering a Virtual Field Trip — how a flight path fits into a whole trip.