Accessing parent object camera

Unity Engine
1

I need to set the clear flags of the player’s camera to black when I display the sniper sight. I have written a script however it throws the exception ’ The name `cam’ does not exist in the current context’.

script;

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class awpScopeIn : MonoBehaviour {

    public Texture scopeGUI;
    private bool _isScoped = false;
    public Color color = Color.black;
       
    void Start()
    {
        Camera cam = GetComponentInParent( typeof(Camera) ) as Camera;
        cam.clearFlags = CameraClearFlags.SolidColor;
    }
   
    void OnGUI()
    {
        float width = 600;
        float height = 600;
       
        if (_isScoped) {
            GUI.DrawTexture (new Rect ((Screen.width / 2) - (width/2), (Screen.height / 2) - (height/2), width, height), scopeGUI);   
           
        }
    }
   
    void Update()
    {
        if(Input.GetButtonDown("Fire2"))
        {
            _isScoped = !_isScoped;
            cam.backgroundColor = color;
        }
    }
}
2

“cam” is a local scoped variable in Start. Try something like this:

    public Texture scopeGUI;
    private bool _isScoped = false;
    public Color color = Color.black;
    private Camera cam;
   
    void Start()
    {
        cam = GetComponentInParent( typeof(Camera) ) as Camera;
        cam.clearFlags = CameraClearFlags.SolidColor;
    }
3

This threw no exceptions although the camera’s clear flags didn’t change?