Andrew_McP

Yes, I realised what you meant, it's not an ideal solution. I try to save the original movie in very good quality from my movie editor, then re-compress with Movie Maker 2 because MM2 has a setting which allows you to force the output to be a certain size. I have 50Mb of webspace, so I can set MM2 to make a movie of about 48Mb to make sure it fits. It's very useful, but -- as you say -- recompression is never a good idea. That's why some of my earlier movies have looked *very* poor compared to the high quality of other people's movies. If I had more webspace life would be easier. But my ISP allows me 'unlimited' bandwidth (as long as I don't make a movie every week :-) so I cannot complain too much. Andrew McP

Trident: > Seriously, by using some unique sequences you manage to turn > a rather plain plot into an exciting movie I always think it's best to have a great idea and then execute it to the best of your abilities. But great ideas are very rare! Well, they are in my house anyway :-) So the next best thing is to take an average idea and work it until it looks a little less average. That's where ED have helped a lot. Their camera options are very, very flexible. So with a little effort and a lot of patience (ok, and some half speed recording... that helps ;-) it's possible to capture some rather nice footage occasionally... and a lot of really average stuff as well. I usually use about 10% of what I capture. Rogue6g: > The camera angles combined with the classical music made me > want to fly again. That's exactly what I hope to inspire, so that's high praise indeed. Thanks. > BTW ,what was the name of that song used? Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Dance of the Knights. I should've put it in the credits. That particular recording is by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa... unless their publishing company is reading this, in which case it was recorded in my living room by me & some friends... honest. I hacked the music around a little, reusing the first passage several times back to back. The full version has quieter passages which might have been very useful if I'd tried to develop a decent 'plot'. > Maybe the next one will feature "Flight of the Valkyries"? Wash your mouth out! ;-) Ok, I did use Carl Orf's 'O Fortuna' in an earlier movie, so I can hardly call the cliché police on you. But I have promised myself I'll resist the Valkyries. Apocalypse Now used it so well it'd be a shame to poach it. I have an idea for an Elvis-backed movie though. If you're lucky it'll never see the light of day :-) chp: > was it a default payload (AAM and bombs on inner pylons)? No, I made the payload myself (in LOMAC, not a special payload editor) > The picture is fine, but it's a pity it is a re-compression :^/ I still have a lot to learn about codecs and compression formats. Sometimes I get it very wrong, but this movie is better than some I've made. If I had enough webspace (and bandwidth!) I would upload the high quality, 339Mb DivX version. But that's a *big* download :-) Andrew "all shook up" McP

VVanks: >What should I do with the rest of the time? You can tell me why that AA missile battery kept firing in entirely the wrong direction, with the missiles exploding after a few moments of flight. I only noticed that some way into filming, by which time it was a little late to redesign the mission and start again. Besides, it took me ages to fly the damned thing without getting shot down even *with* the AA missiles going astray much of the time ;-) Andrew McP

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate it. Blaze: > What are your system specs and settings???? This movie was flown at 800x600 and Fraps recorded it at the same resolution, 20fps. (25 would've been better, but the extra recording strain sometimes shows up as stuttering). I can fly at much higher resolutions when not recording, but Fraps struggles to handle that extra data. The PC isn't anything too impressive by current standards. AMD Mobile 2500+ @ 2.2GHz, 1Gb pc3200 @ 166MHz (for rock solid stability), a fast 80Gb, 8Mb cache/7200 HD (very important for Fraps), and a 256Mb ATI X800Pro. Ok, the vid card's a bit of a luxury, but it doesn't help recording much. The 256Mb probably helps cache more textures, but that still doesn't seem to help those annoying stutters when explosions etc occur for the first time in a mission. Oh, my in-game settings are maxed *except* for viewing distance. Cranking that up to max still hurts frame rates too much. More CPU power required... about 2GHz more, probably! Hope that helps, Andrew McP

http://www.andrew.mcp.dsl.pipex.com/lomac.htm 38Mb or 10Mb Sometimes the Su-25 seems like a pretty boring ride. But maybe appearances can be deceptive? Andrew McP

The Cougar is undoubtedly the best looking and feeling piece of hardware available to the sim pilot. But it made me fly almost as elegantly as a blind tank driver on acid. With a CH stick I can put the aircraft exactly where I want it, when I want it. Sadly neither setup allows me to fly like Tigrou :-) In a perfect world I'd upgrade my Cougar with the very best pots and user-made gimbals to replace the awful (IMO) default design. But buying a whole new CH setup is much cheaper, and leaves me with a spare TM setup which makes an interesting* ornament. Andrew McP *ok, interesting if you're a bit of a flight sim geek ;-)

Superb flying from a man with more flying talent in his little finger than I have in my whole body! Excellent movie making work as well. Some movies make me want to make better movies. But Tigrou's movies also make me want to be a better pilot. Totally inspiring. Andrew McP

I remember my frustrating modem days well :) Despite all the checks, it's still possible to spend a long time downloading a big file only to find it does not work for some reason. That's a nightmare for the user and a potential support headache for ED. Splitting the download means that if a segment is corrupt in some way, you don't have to DL the whole thing again. 300Mb seems like a huge figure though considering the whole game plus the 1.02 patch is only 640Mb. Hopefully we'll soon find out, I've waited nearly ten years for realistic landings from ED, that's worth $100 all on its own for me! :) Andrew McP

Unless I've been asleep (it wouldn't be the first time!) we don't know how large the file will be yet. It's a "super-patch" after all, not a new game, so I doubt it will be huge (by modern standards anyway). It would be nice to think that ED have anticipated the modem issue and will offer segmented downloading. It might take a while, but slow downloading is better than no downloading. Andrew McP PS While I'm in the thread, my thought is that ED is a small company with very limited resources releasing what's going to be -- when all's said and done -- a product with pretty limited sales potential. Costs have to be kept to a minimum, and using Paypal makes a lot of sense because it isolates them from the complexity of setting up and supporting multiple payment methods. Paypal's not ideal, and CD distribution would be nice, but in an ideal world many things would be different. For a start I'd be flying Tornado-2, Longbow-3, and EECH-2. And 1.1 would have an enhanced Su-27, not a 25T :-) I think us military flight sim enthusiasts have to get used to jumping through a few hoops to get our fix. This is a niche hobby and the niche is getting smaller and more expensive all the time. I wish ED luck trying to get the best bang for buck out of this 1.1 release.

With Lomac a faster graphics card will buy you higher resolution (at 1600x1200 Lomac is often stunning), and more consistent frame rates (256Mb onboard for texture caching probably helps a lot here), but not necessarily appreciably *higher* frame rates, especially over built-up areas or in relatively busy missions where you want it most. For that you need more CPU power as well.... much more probably. But at the moment CPU speeds seems to have stagnated, so throwing 6GHz at Lomac isn't an option. Last year I blew a lot of overtime on an X800Pro (flashed to XT) and while it's been a fun upgrade (allowing his res, hi fsaa gaming in everything from Lomac to Doom3), the 9700Pro it replaced was very capable indeed, and I wouldn't spend the money again. It's very nice icing on the cake, but that's "all"... for me anyway, others may have seen a more significant benefit. Andrew McP

:D :D :D Andrew McP