3rd Person Camera Modification v1.0
http://i.imgur.com/IBj9K.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/IOYet.jpg

This mod is modeled a bit after the cinematic style of the Mass Effect camera.
+Tested to work well with archery, melee and magic.
+Improves horse control and camera
+Improves 3rd person game play experience
+Disables the zoom out effect when drawing your weapon, to feel more natural

About the mod
I created this mod because I thought the combat in Skyrim could be better shown in a vanity 3rd person shoulder perspective. This mod will be improved and expanded, especially once the construction kit is released.
I spent a lot of time testing, re-testing this mod and tweaking it until it felt right. In my opinion, these camera tweaks improve the game play by a large margin.

If you try this, please leave feedback! Enjoy!

How to install
Edit your skyrim.ini in /My Documents/My Games/Skyrim
Add these lines to the bottom of the file (or inside the [Camera] section if you already have one).

Here are two Camera types, one with a left screen bias and one with a ride side bias, depending on how you prefer to play the game. Lefties rejoice!

Character to left side (default)

[Camera]fOverShoulderCombatAddY=0.0000fOverShoulderCombatPosY=100.0000fOverShoulderCombatPosZ=-2.0000fOverShoulderCombatPosX=42.0000fOverShoulderPosY=100.0000fOverShoulderPosZ=-2.0000fOverShoulderPosX=42.0000fHorseMaxUpwardPitch=45.0000fHorseMaxAngleBeforeTurn=25.0000fOverShoulderHorseAddY=-175.0000fOverShoulderHorsePosZ=80.0000fOverShoulderHorsePosX=42.0000

Character to right side (not fully play-tested)

[Camera]fOverShoulderCombatAddY=0.0000fOverShoulderCombatPosY=100.0000fOverShoulderCombatPosZ=-2.0000fOverShoulderCombatPosX=-42.0000fOverShoulderPosY=100.0000fOverShoulderPosZ=-2.0000fOverShoulderPosX=-42.0000fHorseMaxUpwardPitch=45.0000fHorseMaxAngleBeforeTurn=25.0000fOverShoulderHorseAddY=-175.0000fOverShoulderHorsePosZ=80.0000fOverShoulderHorsePosX=-42.0000

Enter and exit combat to see the camera changes! Save your game after to keep changes.

Cool. I'll play around with it and post a few screens later today.

Excellent, I look forward to them

This is a small part of an overall tweak/mod package I intend on releasing, which shows off Skyrim's cinematic combat experience.

Hmm... I tried them. They are not working for me. My character is still centered on screen in 3rd person view Any ideas why?

Yeah a couple of things to check...

Did you enter and exit combat to allow the changes to take affect?
Make sure you're editing skyrim.ini, and not skyrimprefs.ini
Make sure there isn't already a [Camera] heading in your Skyrim.ini

Let me know if that helps! Thanks!

Thank you! Works now!

Where did you find documentation of these settings? Are there similar settings for first person view?

Thank you, I agree that 3rd person combat would be a preferable way to fight in some situations, but the camera needs adjusting.

Edited my ini, about to launch and test out in game. Will report back here with any feedback I have.

I've been using a "shoulder" camera mod but I'll give this a go since it seems more dramatic! Thanks

I'll be testing this on FOV 90 however.

Excellent, thank you for trying it out! I look forward to your feedback.


I am curious how this works out in other FOV's, and if it improved immersion for you. Thanks!


I basically started playing around with the ini files. A lot of these settings were gained from searching google and what others have found. I managed to guess at a couple of them and they worked.

Also, you can type "saveini" in the console, and the game will save all of your current settings. (Be warned!!! This will make things a bit messy in your ini, so only do this if you want the full list of settings).

I am curious if any of you who have tried the mod, have any suggestions or ideas for further customization? Especially think about what we can do once the construction kit is out.

Howdy! I had a play about with these settings myself and about a week ago I uploaded some of my tweaks on the http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=528, after doing so I was hoping some more people would fun finding editing them themselves. I haven't experimented that much myself as I play in first person and have been offline suffering with the flu, poor me, so I just found a nice middle ground on some settings and let people get on with tweaking for themselves.

But I have a fair few requests in my comments topic and like you can't wait to get my hands on the CK and improve things a tad more. I was attempting to get some nice values for a fake first person horse combat but had a few niggles with horse then playable character transparency but I think I'm getting there if you have had any luck with that we should exchange some PM's once the CK is out and see what we can get going.

Would also like to comment on the hilarity that I sadly created my topic an hour after you, darned flu.

Hi there! This is actually great, we even have similar values in the configs. I also found the same problem with the horse, clipping becoming an issue with the horse disappearing when the camera gets too close.
I had planned on making a video as well, yours shows how it works rather beautifully. I agree, perhaps once the CK is released we can share some ideas and progress and improve on the shoulder-cam even more.

there are a bunch of other tweaks I have in mind to create a more Bioware-type feel to the action gameplay. For example, the walking speed should be slightly faster than it is, somewhere between the walk and the run speed.
I also use capslock to make walk my default speed, and shift to run. Feels more authentic, if not a bit slow on the walking.

Flu svcks, I recently got over that myself. Hope you feel better, and thank you for posting! I look forward to collaborating!!!

Yup, you need to add the tweak fActorFadeOutLimit=-100 to stop the Horse going transparent but this does mean the PC goes transparent when you zoom in real close, but it's the best value out there that I can find. Was playing about with that myself but in the positive values until a chap on the Nexus used a minus, so bloody obvious. I have tested other values but -100 seems to be the sweet spot.

Also thanks for the compliments, the video was a quick knock up, been meaning to make a new one with Vanilla against some other settings but real life got in the way, in the meantime I have some images here to be made into a .gif but again real life gets in the way.

Sweet! I will make this addition tonight when I get home from my day job. Thanks for the tip, I was looking for something like this.

Looks cool. Will try it out later.

tried to mod, but changed fOverShoulderCombatPosX=42.0000 to fOverShoulderCombatPosX=20.0000 and fOverShoulderPosX=42.0000 to fOverShoulderPosX=20.0000. Like it a little more closer to center. Tried 0 and liked how the character was in the center of the screen but found the crosshair being in the middle of my head to be rather annoying. I know you can change that, but didn't want to have to re enable and disable it every time I switch characters.

I played around with being a little closer to center, and found that often the bow (depending on type of bow), at the maximum zoomed in level would be in the way of the crosshair. 20 was the original number i'd used as well, after some playing I felt I had to move it further left. To compensate for this, I moved the Y value further to the negative to get closer to the player, it also had the added benefit of a more dramatic effect. Thank you for the feedback

would it be possible to alter it in a way to get a fake first person camera, so you actually see your legs in "first person"

I had actually tried to do this, problem is once the camera touches the player, clipping happens and your entire model disappears. I wanted to get a more cinematic look, in-close for the hard hitting melee combat... I found the shoulder cam to be pretty good in this regard.

If you notice, the camera is slightly lower than default, at -2 to give a slightly more dramatic look to the world.

Ah too bad, no way to force the clipping off or would that give more issues?
Im no expert at this stuff I just do modeling and texturing, but I really cant stand the fact that I have no legs or shadow in first person

Looks great on 90 FOV.

Looks good for me too! 70 FOV I believe.

Thanks for your work man

I tried it and I like it. Thanks!

Glad to hear it!

I have updated the main post with some minor tweaks to make the camera just that much better.

Enjoy!