External Camera View
Hop onto the tail of any aircraft
Getting into and out of External Camera View
The Aircraft Information Window offers a set of checkboxes at its bottom, the first one being Camera:
To switch to an external view sitting right behing that particular aircraft place a checkmark next to Camera. The view will change immediately:
You can open several A/C Info Windows and switch between the Camera views of several aircraft by checkmarking the one you want to see.
If you just remove the checkmark the view will return to what it was before.
In VR, the one Aircraft Info Window for the selected plane will follow you into the Camera view. Any other A/c info windows will stay in your cockpit. This one window cannot be closed because the only controlled way to return out of Camera view when in VR is to remove the checkmark from the Camera checkbox.
In non-VR, you could also just command X-Plane to show any other view of your choice by the usual menu or keyboard commands (see documentation). Tip: If you change to X-Plane's Free Camera view, e.g. by pressing [C], then you will basically stop the camera where it is right now and you see the plane moving away.
Controlling Camera Position
At the beginning, the camera sits on the plane's tail as shown above. But that can be changed using the same commands as in X-Planes Free Camera view allowing vistas like EK440 over Earth/Palm.
The following is a copy of table 5.1 from the X-Plane 11 manual:
All movements can be expedited by combining with the (shift) key.
The hat switch on your joystick has the same effect as the arrow keys: left/right/up/down.
There is currently no support for mouse commands.
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