Skip to main content
Nine aircraft carry a camera on the nose, and from v0.4.7 it works. Sit in the pilot or co-pilot seat, press J, and you look through it instead of out of the cockpit. Where the camera moves, other players see it turn. Each camera can only look where its real turret can: the chin balls see all the way round, the Gazelle’s sight about 150° either side, the Merlin’s and the Blackhawk’s about 100° either side, and the Mi-24’s mostly to its left. The UH-1H, the CH-47D and the Barrel Helicopter have no camera.

​
Who can use it

  • The pilot and co-pilot seats only. Passengers cannot
  • The seat flying the aircraft can only use it while Auto Hover, the autopilot or an automatic landing is holding the aircraft. If they all switch off while you are looking through it, the camera closes and tells you why. The other cockpit seat can use it at any time
  • One person at a time. If the other cockpit seat already has it, you are told so
  • It closes on its own if you leave the seat, are knocked out or killed, or the aircraft is destroyed
  • It needs power — the engine running or the dashboard lights on. Without power it shows NO SIGNAL
  • Server owners can turn it off, or turn off just its thermal modes or its spotlight, with crew.chinCameraEnabled, crew.chinCameraThermal and crew.chinCameraSpotlight (Global settings). With thermal off, U switches between DAY and NV only; with the spotlight off, L does nothing and the spotlight key is not shown on the camera screen

​
Controls

Every camera key except left click can be changed in Options → Controls, where they are listed as Chin Camera: …. Marking uses your normal fire button. Server owners can choose the keys their players start on — see Keybinds. Night vision and thermal switch to a stronger setting at night, so they work in daylight and in the dark.

​
Target marker

When you mark a point with the camera — a hill, a tree line, a building, a vehicle — the pilot and co-pilot both see a TARGET marker on that spot with its distance, whether or not they are looking through the camera. It stays fixed on that place while you fly around it, until the camera user clears it or marks somewhere new. Passengers and anyone outside the aircraft never see it. You can mark a point up to about 8 km away, and a mark is not kept through a server restart. Opening the camera while a target is marked starts it locked onto that target; press middle mouse or Y to clear it. The camera also remembers where it was pointing and how far it was zoomed in for each helicopter, for the rest of your session.

​
Target lock

New in v0.4.8. Click on a person, an infected, an animal or a vehicle and the camera locks onto it and follows it as it moves, with a red lock box and LOCK PERSON, LOCK INFECTED, LOCK ANIMAL or LOCK VEHICLE on the camera screen. Click anything else and it marks a fixed spot, as before. The lock lets go, leaving the spot marked, if the target disappears or gets more than 8 km away. Servers can switch locking off with crew.chinCameraLock (see Global settings).

​
Spotlight

L in the camera shines a searchlight beam wherever the camera points, like a police helicopter’s. It reaches about 1 km and focuses itself like a real one — a wide pool of light on things close by, narrowing to a tight, bright spot on things far away. Everyone nearby sees it. It is separate from the aircraft’s own lights: while the camera is open, L works the camera’s spotlight, and the camera spotlight goes off when you close the camera. It needs a charged battery to switch on, uses the battery like the other lights while the engine is off, and goes out if the battery goes flat.

​
Thermal

In thermal, people, infected and animals show up by their heat against a cooler background — whatever they are wearing or carrying shows warm too, so a player in a bush, a wood line or the dark stands out. Buildings, walls and thick cover still hide them, as they would a real thermal camera. What shows up warm:
  • Players within about 1.5 km
  • Infected and animals around wherever the camera is pointing, and around the aircraft when it is flying low (under about 150 m)
  • Cars, boats and helicopters with their engine running within about 1.5 km. They stay warm for about 3 minutes after the engine stops, then go cold
  • Burning helicopter wrecks
Your own helicopter is never shown hot. Thermal only changes your own view — nothing changes for other players. Some animals, and vehicles that cannot be retextured, give off a heat glow (for a vehicle, over its engine and roof) rather than a full silhouette, and in black hot that glow does not show. A rework of all CZ Autoz vehicles, tiers and packs is coming in a future update to make them retexturable; once it is out, the chin camera will be updated so those vehicles show their heat properly, as a full shape in every palette.

​
When the camera is damaged

The camera suffers with the aircraft. On a worn aircraft the picture glitches now and then; damaged, it gets noise and scan lines; badly damaged, it is noisy, drops out often and thermal can cut out for a moment. A ruined or unpowered camera shows NO SIGNAL.

​
While you are in the camera

The camera has its own screen, so the aircraft’s HUD, the damage panel and the item bar are hidden until you close it. Your flying keys, the Pilot Panel, free look and the aircraft’s actions (ramp, landing gear, lights and so on) are switched off too. Press J to come back out and everything works again.

​
The camera screen

Around the picture the camera shows:
  • the mode and zoom, and SPOT while the spotlight is on
  • LOS while you steer it, or TRACK while it is locked
  • the range to whatever is under the crosshair, and its grid and elevation
  • the camera’s direction (AZ) and angle (EL)
  • the aircraft’s height above the ground (in metres), heading and speed — in knots or km/h, as chosen in the Pilot Panel
  • the in-game time
The camera only changes what you see (and where its spotlight shines). It does not fly the aircraft, and the flying seat cannot open it unless something else is holding the aircraft.