Andrew_McP

The Fighterstick's extra hats are well worth the money. I use an X-45 for the throttle, throw the stick round the back of the PC, and using a Fighterstick for flying. It's a good combination IMO, and it saves me having to mess about with pedals as well. I only get those out for my occasional GPL fix. :-) Andrew McP

Actually none of them are pre-planned. :-) I "simply" play back a track many times, recording different clips and views each time. When editing I form a rough idea of how I want the action to fit the music, then throw lots of different clips into the editor, juggle them around repeatedly, and try to fit them in with the music a few bars at a time. Of course during that lots of changes occur and it's a fairly fluid process. Luck plays a big part... though as we all know we make our own luck to an extent. Generate enough raw material, spend enough time messing around with it, and sooner or later a few things will fit together nicely. As usual with me there were plenty of scenes which mouse shake or LOMAC stuttering spoiled. I've tried just about everything I can to solve both (including using a joystick and joy2key for panning shots), but eventually I run out of patience and just work with what I've got. It's only a LOMAC movie after all, and the days when I got thousands of downloads are long gone. :-) However I'm now debating whether to try and shift from a 2.4GHz AMD x2 to a Conroe 6600. If I could guarantee it'd overclock to 3.4GHz I'd probably break into my savings tomorrow, but these things are never guaranteed (especially with so many combinations of CPU/motherboard & DDR2), and I've wasted quite a bit of money chasing ultimate LOMAC performance already, and I keep saying I won't fall into that trap again. Well, not until BS is out anyway. :-) Sound editing is quite tricky, especially when using fairly quiet music. That encourages people to turn the volume up... and then regret it when the fireworks start. :-) It's also hard to strike a balance when overlaying loud sounds over music. Make them too loud and they mask the music, Make them too quiet and they don't match what you're seeing in front of you. Actually I was watching some of my early movies again at the weekend and I think I prefer the ones where I just used music and nothing else. It certainly makes editing simpler, that's for sure! Movies can also sound quite different depending upon the speakers being used. I edit using some rather expensive headphones on my games PC, but things sound rather "muddier" through the cheap speakers on this internet/work machine. So, just as music meant for broadcast used to be mixed to play well on cheap radios, I should probably check all my stuff on a pair of cheap PC speakers before release. :-) I'm glad you enjoyed that. I did actually go back and boost the sound in some of the action in order to emphasise the peace & quiet in the final section. I may well have over-done that, but as long as that final section works well I'm happy. I originally planned something rather different, but it was another one of those "make your own luck" moments and, even though I say it myself, I'm very pleased with it. Thanks for the feedback, its always useful. Andrew McP

Absolutely. Variety is the spice of life! Andrew McP

Oh, I see. That's serious bandwidth. :-) So far though I've had no complaints about people having trouble downloading the movie. If I do I'll take you up on the offer, thanks. Andrew McP

One man's need is another man's who-gives-a-damn, and it's unfortunately true that flight sim enthusiasts have no choice whatsoever but to be grateful for whatever we get these days. Gaming has moved well beyond the time when flight sims could command significant publishers' attention, and earn a place at the top of the marketing & development budget. Given the rather strange economic world in Russia these days (it's the wild west frontier of capitalism) I'm always surprised ED still manage to exist at all. So while I'm not very excited by BS at the moment, whoever is sponsoring the development of the BS project is doing us all a favour and we have to be grateful for that. Because as long as ED are still working there's always the hope that we can all get what we wish for... eventually. Mind you, I'd feel a lot happier saying that if I was 24 and not 44. Time's running out for some of us with dodgy genes. :-) Andrew McP

Blur it a bit more and you might be able to squint and pretend it's a *real* aircraft! ;-) Andrew McP... running away very quickly.

Thanks for the comments, those who I haven't replied to specifically. It's always nice to know what people think. If LOMAC's sound didn't fall apart in complicated external views I'd be happy to use the in-sim stuff exclusively. Having to painstakingly rebuild the soundtrack and make it halfway convincing is a real PITA, and I've used non-LOMAC sounds before. As for the glow... well, you know I'm not a huge fan of special effects; I like LOMAC movies to look like the sim they're promoting. But there's no harm at all in spicing things up a little. I just think it's important to use a teaspoon to add that spice, not a bucket. :-) Otherwise the only changes I made visually were boosting the saturation slightly to improve the colours, a light unsharp mask, and a bit of sharpening. Oh, and the now compulsory explosion camera shake! I wasn't going to do that because it's not something LOMAC models, but having seen movies like yours even *I* expect to see a bit of camera shake now. You and others are slowly corrupting me! ;-) Andrew McP

If you ask me it just reflects the fact that the graphics people have to be kept busy while the codies struggle with the tricky stuff. :-) Not that modelling etc. isn't tricky in its own way, but coding something like BS with all the ancient code in LOMAC must be a nightmare. Andrew McP

I've always been very good at applying myself to pointless, unrewarding tasks. :-) And when I'm working hard on a movie (not all the time, obviously!) I do virtually no gaming, flying, or sitting in front of the TV... the movie soaks up all that "wasted" time. If only I was able to invest the same amount of effort in learning the stock market or a career I might be in a position where I could pay GA to make my movies for me. :-) Andrew McP

Red Bear Rising Part 1 (mostly foreplay ;-): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBBVbAbydo8 Red Bear Rising Part 2 (hardcore action): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ATp8po2jGY Not ideal, and the timing badly out of sync at times, but hopefully accessible to all as a "taster". I'm hoping to upload a 300Mb version to Megaupload later, while I sleep. Andrew McP PS. Thanks a lot for the offer Roi D., but if past experience is anything to go by you'd need a *lot* of spare Gb. Someone did me a favour once with hosting and I bled him dry within a few hours, leaving him with nothing for the rest of the month. :-) Mind you, that was back in the days when LOMAC attracted a lot more attention. Maybe by now we could get away with hosting LOMAC movies on a server connected by 56k modem? ;-)

I'd rather not impose on anyone at this stage. They have to pay for their bandwidth, and these movies can suck an awful lot of it! My ISP's usually very good if I only abuse their bandwidth for a few days at a time, but I only have 50Mb, and the 50Mb version of RBR is truly awful. :-) Andrew McP

Thanks, I'm going to. I may even try a 300-ishMb 800x600 version. It really does look a lot better at 800x600. Andrew McP

Thanks. :-) Far too long. Far, far, *far* too long. And then a little longer. :-) The project occupies about 190Gb of HD space, and I worked on the final editing stage on at least 62 different days. (I change the file names every time I start a fresh editing session). Given the amount of time it took, and the effort I put into finding the right location, designing the mission, recording tracks, filming the results, and editing, the movie ought to be a lot better than it is! But I'm fairly pleased with the results. Andrew McP

I agree GA... which is why I posted in here as well as the movie section. I was trying to be ironic, posting here about not posting here... if you see what I mean. Probably not a good idea, on balance. :-) Andrew McP

I'd put it in the movie section, where it belongs, not spam all the sections! ;-) Andrew McP... off to bed because he has to be up for work in, er... oh, three hours! Excellent.

****************Update for sake of clarity***************** 300Mb (800x600) version here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=56GWIA0W 95Mb version (640x480) here: http://rapidshare.com/files/28222717/mcp12_95Mb_.zip.html 95Mb mirror thanks to the good folk at JaboG32: http://www.virtual-jabog32.de/index.php?section=downloads&subcat=28&lang=en YouTube version... Red Bear Rising Part 1 (mostly foreplay ;-): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBBVbAbydo8 Red Bear Rising Part 2 (hardcore action): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ATp8po2jGY *************************************************** In March I started work on a movie to promote and show off the 25T in Flaming Cliffs. It's set a little further on in time from my Tornado movie, and took just a little longer than I'd hoped.... because it was March 2006 when I started! But now it's *finally* time to kick the darned thing off my HD and out into cyberspace to fend for itself. To be honest I'll be glad to see the back of it. We've been through the lovey-dovey stage where we were never apart, gone past the comfortable 'finishing each other's sentences' stage, and have now hardly spoken to each other for months even though we've been forced to spend a lot of time together for the sake of the kids. Time for a divorce. ;-) The movie is over 17 minutes long (so you'll need a large bucket of popcorn and a toilet break half way through) and I've managed to squeeze it into about 95Mb on Rapidshare. I did upload a larger version to another free site, but the downloads were so slow I dumped it. This will do for now though; the quality's not as bad as I'd expected, given the length, and if there's enough interest I'll find somewhere with more elbow room at a later date (though probably not for the 900Mb version. ;-) http://rapidshare.com/files/28222717/mcp12_95Mb_.zip.html 95Mb http://www.andrew.mcp.dsl.pipex.com/project12a.jpg Andrew McP PS The main action in this movie was filmed from a single combat mission. I could probably have made a better movie if I'd cut & pasted several different combat missions together, but I'm a bit of a purist... I like to make movies which reflect the sim as it really flies (even if it did take me many attempts to get a track I was happy with!) PPS If anyone missed the Tornado 'prequel' it's still live at... http://rapidshare.com/files/17669387/mcp11_97mb.wmv.html Just remember that if you download one movie from Rapidshare, you have to wait an hour or two before you can download another. Sorry about that, but RS is the best free site I've found so far, and the downloads are always fast (for me anyway!)

It sounds like you've been flying at 800x600 for Fraps recording and forgotten to change it back to 1280x1024 in the LOMAC graphics settings afterwards. 800x600 is pretty ugly in the menus, especially if you're on an LCD which doesn't handle lower resolutions very well. Andrew McP

Greb, if your download from RS gets interrupted you have to start again, no resuming. The trouble is that to limit free bandwidth you can't re-start the download for an hour or so after your last attempt (it'll tell you how long you have to wait if you try too soon). It's a pain in the neck, but it costs nothing except a little patience. You *can* pay for unlimited downloads, but you don't have to. Andrew McP

I'd be happy to buy Vista if it offered anything I want or need... but it doesn't. XP is a very good OS now, and security etc. aren't a problem if you have half a clue. So Vista's an expensive, DRM infected side-grade, not an upgrade. I do have a spare PC though, assembled from various cast-off bits and pieces, and if a DX10 game comes along which really interests me (Crysis might be it, but I think it'll still be great using DX9) I may buy Vista just to see if the DX10 features are worthwhile. It definitely won't go on my main, quiet work/internet box or my noisy games machine until after SP1 at the earliest. So, er... if money's not a problem I'd keep it for future use, but I certainly wouldn't install it now on a machine I care about. Andrew McP

NO!!!!!! :-) Sorry, those physics accelerators were a great idea but they have completely failed to take off (except for in very few demos and obscure titles). For LOMAC you want the fastest processor you can afford, then the fastest graphics card you can afford. I don't see that changing in the next year or even five years. Andrew McP

I think Fraps works the same for all of us, it's just that you have to make your expectations fit *your* PC and the software's abilities. Fraps is doing a staggeringly difficult job when you consider the fact that LOMAC pretty much sucks up all the CPU and graphics power you can throw at it. Even with a dual core, 2.4GHz AMD and a fast, PCI-E bus graphics card (both of which help according to the Frap's creator, but nowhere near as much as I'd hoped) I set Fraps to record at 15fps (force it in the options). I fly at 800x600 with x2/x4fsaa (no fsaa is better but I dislike it enough to put up with the potential frame rate hit). I have LOMAC set to maximum settings except for viewing distance, and when I record I slow LOMAC down to 1/2 or -- usually -- 1/4 speed. That way I can usually get the frame rate to be fairly solid at 14-15fps. When recording a clip pause the action, start Fraps recording, let the frame rate settle (it sometimes takes a few seconds), then start LOMAC again. Making movies is hard work, and it took me many, many hours and lots of dodgy movies to work out you only win if you stop trying to fight the hardware. No two PCs are identical and there is no substitue whatsoever for putting in hours of work to find out how to get the best out of *your* setup. You may have to cut down on detail in LOMAC. You may have to fly at a resolution you dislike. You may have spend far longer than you ever hoped getting a single clip recorded smoothly. You may even have to record at 1/8th speed, accelerate that x4 in your editor, render that at full quality, then put it back into the editor to speed it up to normal. But that's life... just when you thought it couldn't get any more messy, complicated, or annoying it does! The only things anyone needs to make a movie are patience and perseverance. It's the 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration thing again. Get used to it. :-) Here endeth the lesson. Andrew McP

I hope so too. However that will only happen if EECH2 sells well, so I'm hoping its fairly low release price will tempt a lot of people to re-visit this classic sim. Andrew McP

I use Vegas's little brother, Sony Vegas Movie Studio, which is a fraction of the price and has all the functionality most LOMAC movie makers could ever want... and plenty more besides! The 4 channels of video + 4 audio can sometimes be a little cramped when you try to be clever (Vegas has unlimited channels) but apart from that it's almost identical to Vegas as far as I can tell, and I'm always amazed folk will pay so much for editing software. Maybe if we were prepared to pay as much for LOMAC as some do for Vegas we'd have the flight sim we'd always dreamed of. :-) Andrew McP

Basically it's a fairly minor graphics update & very minor bugfix piggy-backing off the work of the community. If some of those community guys are involved (I've no idea) then that's fine, but I confess to being mostly unimpressed by EECH2 as a paid-for project. However there's something to be said for breathing life into a sim which still has plenty of strong points, and I'll still buy it even though the campaign engine needed more than minor tweaks to turn it from a good engine into a superb one. Having said all that, the EECH dynamic campaign is still the best sim campaign ever for me (including F4's because it's on a smaller scale in which I could make a bigger difference to the outcome). I'm hoping ED have added significantly to BS's capabilities, but I think -- based upon past performance -- it's unlikely to offer anything like the offline gameplay EECH has been serving up for a long time. Perhaps EECH2's graphical update will persuade more to take a serious look at EECH and realise what a gem it's always been, sitting in the sweet spot between hard core, OTT realism (eg the 25T's overheating laser!) and enhanced gameplay. Andrew McP

It took me longer to type this than it did to find an alterative location for that filename using Google. :-) Andrew McP