How do you zoom out further?

How do you move the camera further back from your character to get a bigger view? The mousewheel only goes so far, but not far enough.

Solution 1:

Hit Esc to open the Game Menu, select Preferences, then under Controls, increase the Camera Max Distance slider as desired

Solution 2:

If the previous answer does not move the camera back far enough you can increase the max distance by modifying a .ini file

this is a cut and paste from http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1068010-Extend-Max-Camera-Distance-to-200-or-More! posted by JonniRage

I looked around in the INI files and saw the max camera distance and decided to manually change it. The result was a doubling and even tripling of the maximum camera distance. When you have it set to maximum in the UI settings, the INI file shows that as a value of 25.

So to be clear, ini value of 25 = 100% camera distance according to the UI settings. That means changing the value to 50 inside the INI file would give you a 200% max camera distance. You can manually edit that to a much higher value and get the camera to pan way back. This is excellent for PVP since you can pretty much see the whole map. The majority of WoW players do something similar to this, and it makes for a much better gaming experience.

Make sure the game is NOT open, since the file may be in use or revert back once you close the game. This is for Windows 7 and Vista users only, since Windows XP puts it in a different place. To do this you need to find this folder: C:\Users\YourProfileName\AppData\Local\SWTOR\swtor\settings

Obviously, YourProfileName is whatever your Windows profile name is, which is most likely your name or your pet name for your manhood. Whatever, I am not here to judge you on your Windows user name.

The AppData folder is hidden since it's a system folder, so you can either manually type that folder address into your RUN command line or change your Windows Explorer settings to show hidden folders.

Then find the file named: LoginName_Account.ini and open it.

For example, if your login name is DarthBumpkin then the file will be DarthBumpkin_Account.ini.

After opening the file look for the line that says: Controls_CameraMaxDistance = 25.0

Change that 25.0 to something else like 50.0 or even 75.0. Make sure to keep it as decimal number (ie Don't take the .0 off at the end, because I'm sure the game is looking for it. I don't want to be responsible for game clients crashing.)

Then SAVE the file and CLOSE it. Then start up the game, log in, and enjoy a much more expansive SWTOR gaming experience!