VRC Documentation

Navigating the Scope

VRC provides a few different ways to alter the view presented to you in the Display Windows. The scope can be smoothly panned using the mouse, zoomed in and out, or instantly recentered using keyboard commands. See the sections below for details:

Recentering the Scope

There are four ways to change the center point of a scope. The most common way is by panning. To pan the scope, click and hold the right mouse button, and move the mouse. The radar display will move along with the mouse as though you were sliding a map around on a table.

The second way to recenter the scope is by double-right-clicking on any point. The scope will instantly recenter on that point. This is handy for taking a quick look at a certain spot such as a cluster of aircraft in order to get a closer look at their tags.

The third way is by using the .center command. To use this command, enter it on the command line followed by the name of an airport, VOR, NDB or intersection. The scope will instantly recenter on the specified fix. For example:

.center KBOS

This command will center the Primary Display on the KBOS airport.

Finally, you can also recenter the scope by recalling a bookmark. See the section on bookmarks below for details.

Zooming the Scope

There are three ways to zoom the scope in and out. The first and most common method is by rotating the mouse wheel. While doing so, if you are holding the CTRL key down, the zooming will be much faster, allowing you to very quickly zoom in on a small area such as an airport, if you were previously zoomed far out working a large sector.

The other method for zooming the scope is to use the F11 and F12 keys. These keys zoom in and out respectively.

You can also change the zoom level for the scope by recalling a bookmark. See the section on bookmarks below for details.

Bookmarks

While working just about any position from Tower on up to Center, you will find yourself needing to zoom and pan the scope a lot in order to get a look at different parts of your airspace. When it gets busy, especially in the larger sectors, this zooming and panning can get tedious and repetitive. For this reason, VRC provides a feature known as bookmarks. A bookmark is a way of telling VRC to remember the current zoom level and center point for the scope, so that you can very quickly "snap" back to that view by recalling the bookmark. Bookmarks also include the center point for the range rings.

To set a new bookmark, press CTRL+ALT+n where n is the bookmark number you wish to save. You can store up to nine bookmarks in a single profile. To set your first bookmark, press CTRL+ALT+1. To set your second bookmark, press CTRL+ALT+2 and so on.

To recall a bookmark, press CTRL-n where n is the bookmark number. The scope will be instantly recentered to the point where it was centered when you set the bookmark. The zoom level will also be set to match the zoom level from when the bookmark was set. Also, the range rings will be recentered on the same point where they were.

Note that bookmark 0 (zero) is a special case. You cannot manually set bookmark zero. It is automatically set whenever you recall a previously-saved bookmark. That way, you can use a bookmark to take a quick look at a certain spot on the scope, then press CTRL-0 to return to the exact view you had just before you recalled the bookmark.

Note that bookmarks only work in the Primary Display. Remember to save your profile after setting a bookmark in order to retain the setting for the next time you use the profile.

Organizing Datablocks

Note that you can reposition an aircraft's datablock by clicking and dragging it. This only applies if the aircraft has been "tagged up". (See "Tagging-up an Aircraft".) This is very handy when there are a lot of aircraft on the screen in close proximity and their tags begin to overlap.

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