Flight Path Ribbon Tab

Context-sensitive tab — appears when the Flight Path context is active.

Commands available on the Flight Path ribbon tab, grouped by panel.

The fastest way to a path

Add POI to mark the places on the outcrop you want shown, then Auto Generate to turn them into viewpoints — VRGS works out where to put the camera. Follow with Check Path to confirm the flight stays out of the rock, and Constant Speed to even out the pacing.

The timeline is where a path is edited

This tab creates and plays a path. Re-timing it, choreographing scene visibility, and recording or importing the spoken narration that plays over it all happen in the Flight Path Timeline panel, which opens automatically at the bottom of the window when a flight path is active.

See the Flight Path User Guide, and in particular Narration: guided tours for the audio layer.

Create

Add View

Tooltip: Add the current view

Save the current camera viewpoint as a new keyframe in the active flight path — its position, orientation, zoom and near/far clip planes.

Add Scene

Tooltip: Add a scene keyframe

Capture the current object visibility as a scene, so the same set of objects is restored whenever the scene becomes active as the camera flies. Scenes cover meshes, point clouds, tiled meshes and Gaussian splats as well as interpretations and annotations. Their timing is edited on the timeline's Scenes track.

Add POI

Tooltip: Click the outcrop to mark a place of interest for this flight path

Arm the placement tool and click the outcrop to drop a point of interest — a place you want the tour to show. Each click drops another, so a whole set can be placed without re-arming; Esc puts the tool away.

Points of interest are the input to Auto Generate: rather than a camera pose, each one marks the subject, and VRGS works out where to stand the camera to see it. They collect under the flight path's Points of Interest branch, where their type (Look At, Rotate Around, Traverse Anchor), standoff, dwell and orbit settings are edited. See Points of interest.

Auto Generate

Tooltip: Generate this path's viewpoints from its points of interest

Turn the active path's points of interest into its viewpoints. The dialog collects the pattern (waypoint tour, orbit every point, or face-on traverse), the default standoff and pitch, seconds per keyframe, how far each point's own surface normal bends the camera away from the overall face (surface blend), whether to close the loop or add an establishing shot, and whether to keep the camera out of the outcrop.

Pressing it with no points placed still produces a path — a generic sweep derived from the scene's extent. The dialog says which of the two inputs the run is using before you commit.

caution

Auto Generate replaces the path's viewpoints. Ctrl+Z puts them back, and the dialog warns you when it can see viewpoints you have edited since the last run.

The Keep the camera out of the outcrop check requires the Vulkan renderer; in an OpenGL view generation runs without it and says so in the messages panel. See Auto Generate.

Record from Game Pad

Tooltip: Record the flight path from a game pad

Navigate using the gamepad and drop a viewpoint automatically every x metres or after turning y degrees. The thresholds are Record Distance (m) and Record Angle (deg) in the flight path's properties.

Next VP

Tooltip: Next viewpoint

Go to the next viewpoint in the active flight path. OpenGL view only.

Previous VP

Tooltip: Previous Viewpoint

Go to the previous viewpoint in the active flight path. OpenGL view only.

Presentation

Tooltip: Show Presentation

Show the presentation slides for the active flight path. OpenGL view only — the slide billboards themselves are drawn in both renderers, but these presentation-mode controls are greyed out in a Vulkan view.

Create Open Path

Tooltip: Create open flight path

Build an open path that interpolates between the existing viewpoints. At least two viewpoints are needed.

Create Closed Path

Tooltip: Create closed flight path

Build a closed path that loops back from the last viewpoint to the first.

Show Path

Tooltip: Show the flight path

Toggle display of the flight path curve in the 3D view.

Edit

Smooth All

Tooltip: Smooth the entire path

Run a smoothing filter over the interpolated frames, damping residual jitter. The number of passes is Smooth Iterations in the properties.

Constant Speed

Tooltip: Repace the path so the camera covers the same distance each frame

Redistribute the path's existing frame budget in proportion to the distance actually flown along the interpolated curve, so the camera holds a steady speed instead of crawling through short segments and rocketing through long ones.

The total duration does not change, so a Set Duration already applied still holds and narration timed against the path stays put. Unlike Set Frames Per Metre, which measures the straight line between control points, this measures the curve that actually plays — which is what makes it right on a tight turn. Works in both renderers. See Pacing the camera.

Check Path

Tooltip: Check the whole flight for places the camera passes through the outcrop

Walk every interpolated frame of the path and report the stretches where the camera passes through the outcrop or too close to it, then offer to nudge the surrounding viewpoints clear (a single undo step).

This checks the curve, not just the keyframes — a spline between two keyframes that are both in open air can still bulge through a nose or a buttress. VRGS jumps the camera to the first problem before offering to change anything, and reports how many frames it examined, since a long path is sampled rather than walked frame by frame.

Vulkan view only, and it needs loaded meshes and a computed project extent to check against. See Check path clearance.

Motion Blur

Tooltip: Toggle motion blur

Enable 180°-shutter motion blur in the recorded movie. Toggling it rebuilds the path with more sub-frames, so the timeline and preview update immediately — but the path still runs for the same number of seconds, so narration keeps its timing.

Lock Centre

Tooltip: Lock camera centre

Open the Lock Rotation Centre dialog and pin the camera's look-at centre to a fixed XYZ, so the camera tracks a fixed target while flying. OpenGL view only.

Player

The same transport is on the Flight Path Timeline panel's strip, together with a live readout of the tour's position, its total length, and what it is doing — Paused, Recording, Stopped to talk — press Continue.

Go to Start

Tooltip: Jump to start

Move the playhead to the first frame of the path and snap the camera there.

Step back

Tooltip: Step back one frame

Move the playhead back one frame. A running tour pauses first, so stepping never fights the clock.

Play

Tooltip: Play the flight path

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. Pausing hands the camera back so you can look around, and resuming eases back onto the path. Esc ends the tour outright.

Step Forward

Tooltip: Step forward one frame

Move the playhead forward one frame.

Go To End

Tooltip: Jump to end

Move the playhead to the last frame of the path.

0.25x / 0.5x / 1x / 2x / 4x

Tooltip: Play the tour at 0.25x / 0.5x / 1x / 2x / 4x

Play the tour faster or slower than it was authored. The five buttons act as a group, so exactly one rate is selected at a time.

This changes only the rate of the current playback — nothing is written to the path and the recorded movie is unaffected. Use 4x to skim a long tour while working on it and 0.25x to inspect a fast move. Vulkan view only.

Record Movie

Tooltip: Record movie of flight path

Render every frame of the path off-screen and write an MP4. A settings dialog collects the resolution, frame rate, motion blur and render quality (supersampling). Recording is offline rather than a screen capture, so each frame is rendered to completion however long it takes; cancelling still finalises a playable file.

In the Vulkan view the recording also carries the tour's narration, mixed down into one soundtrack, and expands its stop-and-talk clips and Hold Here keyframes into real frames so the video actually pauses where the tour does. The path itself is left untouched. See Narration in the recorded movie.