Andrew_McP

I *really* like the cropped empty swing shot. The curve of the chains echoes the sides of the mountains in the background. Tension is created by the swing, which looks so fixed in space and time. The seat is almost parallel with the fence in the background. It all "works" for me. Excellent shot! Sometimes I'm surprised at how satisfying photography can still be when we can so easily shoot movie footage instead these days. But there will always be something special about being able to capture and study moments in time. Andrew McP... currently waiting for the Pentax K100D to be released, and always grateful for some inspiration with which to justify the cost of a dSLR which he doesn't really need. :-)

Nice movie, and I love the transitions from real to virtual footage. Nice touch. Just a technical point though (which I'm sure you're already aware of) the in-sim footage seems to have been rendered in widescreen stretch-o-vision. I've been caught out by that before when trying to find the right render format. Anyway, well done everyone involved. Andrew McP

I'll be honest and say that while I love ED's eye for detail (it's what captured my imagination in the original DOS demo for Flanker... I can still remember the first time I saw the highly detailed ships) I couldn't even be bothered to watch the Ka-50 start-up vid all the way to the end. Someone appears to have stolen my attention span. I guess I'll just have to go back to working on my book. 20 years and counting. Some folk just don't know when to give up. ;-) Andrew McP PS Nice looking Harrier though. Imagine flying that with an AFM! <sigh>

Great movie! Excellent music, well edited, and it left me wanting to see more of your work. Well done. Andrew McP

It has little to do with the media and much to do with human nature. Bad news sells newspapers, always has, always will, and there are sound reasons why our fascination for bad news might be genetically hardwired. It's part of a survival strategy; we pay close attention to bad things that happen in case they help us survive ourselves in the future. Of course modern mass media, like so much of the modern world (food, consumerism, etc.) is probably far too good at appealing to our baser instincts. However we don't *have* to consume the bad news/large fries/latest gadget... we just usually choose to. Anyway, glad the aircraft made it down ok. Andrew McP

Ok, this thread cost me £26 and -7 hours' sleep! With the weather so nice and Sunday being my night off, I gambled today's sleep on a trip to Biggin Hill. Didn't make it to the end thanks to drooping eyelids and the prospect of a long, slow journey home if I left any later, but it was still worth the effort.... even if only as a good excuse to sit in the sun for a change being buzzed by aircraft. The following link is just a quick "diary" compilation of a few of the better clips I managed to take with my digital camera. Didn't take any really good photos due to the shutter/focusing lag on my Canon S1 IS. It's a nice little all rounder, with a very useful movie mode, but it's no digital SLR when it comes to taking pictures exactly when you want them. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=550123712658902773 Andrew McP

I was only just beginning to get the hang of it when I stopped visiting airshows. My camera, lenses, and technique still needed a *lot* of work, but now I've gone digital it ought to be a little easier to learn *during* the day rather than waiting for the slides to come back and trying different things at the next show. But then you look at sites like http://www.steehouwer.com/ and think... why bother, I'm never going to take pictures like THAT! :-) Still, back then I was mainly putting the pics up as an airshow "diary" for guys on the Flanker Mailing List who lived a long way away from the nearest show. It gave me an excuse to waste money on film and next day developing... oh, and a stupidly expensive slide scanner. What a waste of money that was! Mmm... now I'm almost tempted to wander off to Biggin on Sunday. It's a bit tricky after working all night though; that's the main reason I gave up... I'm ok till about lunchtime then I need bed and I need it badly, and it's hard to grab 40 winks when there are Tornados flying around. :-) Andrew McP

Absolutely stunning work! This is a Movie with a capital "M", even without subtitles. GA & LOC might be the masters of the short, snappy, adrenalin-packed genre, but Lucio (and his team of assistants! :-) is the movie maker's movie maker! So many ideas, so many clever details, so well put together. A masterpiece. Congratulations. Andrew McP PS I cannot believe Dobberman manages to get 25 minutes of *very* high quality movie into only 400Mb!

That's not exactly reassuring! It all seems rather isolationist, even though I can understand the desire to make people feel at home during their extended tours. Hopefully such bases won't be around much longer. I'm a bit puzzled why we still have a presence in Germany anyway. It's a bit late to be planning a takeover of the BMW & Porsche factories, and while it might put us within striking distance of the Russian gas pipeline, I don't think our power bills will go down much if we start a war with Gazprom. Andrew McP

I'm just down the road (relatively speaking) from Biggin Hill (their show's this weekend), but I haven't been since Kvotchur's Su-27 last appeared. My rule now is simple... no Flanker, no McP. While I like the usual Tornado/Harrier/Red Arrows/Parachute display team/<whatever Yank kit's free this weekend> style line-ups, without Russian hardware it's "just another airshow", and to be honest they tend to blur together after a few years of the same predictable aircraft. If I was going to stir my creaky bones for anything it would probably be http://www.airtattoo.com/ because you get a long day of aircraft there and some excellent international display teams. You often get a Mig or two as well. But again... no Flanker, no McP. :-) While we're on the subject, one airshow I will definitely never attend again is "RAF" Mildenhall (if they still do an airshow in these troubled times, which I doubt). I only went there once, but never again. You step over the boundary and it's like stepping into America. Now, there's nothing wrong with America (well, some of it anyway ;-) but I like my Amercia to be in... well, America. Their foreign airbases seem to be freakishly like little bits of American soil, and it just made me shudder as the bus drove in. No attempt at integration with the surrounding community, everything from the style of the houses, the road signs, everything, 100% America. Honestly, I've rarely felt so disturbed. It was like walking onto a film set. One moment you're in the UK, the next America. Weird. Still, there was at least one memorable moment during that mainly cold and very wet visit, a B-1b making an amazing low pass in the pouring rain. I was able to take a few lousy pictures as I peeped out from under my golfing umbrella... which was wedged into the ground with me crouched under it to try and shelter from the weather. But I didn't take many shots that day because my hands were too cold to operate the camera. :-) http://www.andrewmcp.50g.com/Milden00/mil00.html (http://www.andrewmcp.50g.com/airshows.htm if you're bored) Andrew McP

http://rapidshare.de/files/21752427/The_Chase.wmv.html There you go. Andrew McP

*Superb* advert, lousy movie... all money shot and no foreplay. I hope you treat your girlfriend a little better. ;-) Great editing, as ever. Thanks. Andrew McP PS For those wondering if LOMAC could ever look like that... the answer's yes. But not until we've had another five or more (probably quite a few more) generations of PC and video cards. It's not just a simple matter of changing the colours. The processing that goes into making scenes look like that takes an awful lot of CPU cycles. However it's amazing that we can do it on home PCs at all! Well, when I say "we", I mean GA and not many others. :-)

There's a 1 second-ish long shot at 4:51 which is totally breathtaking. Blink and you'll miss it, but it's a real movie maker's dream of a shot (a rear facing clip of the sun shining through very brief wing vortices). Superb. Andrew McP

I think we all appreciate that; it's a big nation with plenty of sensible folk as well as plenty of idiots. :-) The problem the USA as a whole has though is that many of its major cities need cheap oil to function well, whether that's because of *massive* urban sprawl or because they were built in places no sane person would normally live without cheap air conditioning or cheap heating. In Europe we *generally* have better public transport and cities that grew over centuries which still have the potential to operate well without people having to commute large distances (though often people do to have the luxury of living somewhere pretty while working somewhere uglier). Many US cities grew up in an age of cheap personal transport and were fundamentally designed around cheap car transport. Facing the challenge of increasingly expensive fuel will put severe economic stresses on the US economy, and the sooner that process starts the better for everyone. The whole world will have big problems because of increasingly expensive fuel, but the USA is right at the extreme end of energy (ab)use, and the higher you are on the economic food chain, the further you have to fall if not prepared for what's ahead. And in a global economy where we're all connected more than we tend to appreciate, it's not in anyone's interest to see the USA struggle. Andrew McP

It doesn't matter what we want anyway. Dynamic campaign, AFM for the 27, triggers in the editor, better AI, ability to cycle through different F4 view settings, etc, etc, etc. We'll get what ED decide we'll get. Nothing more, nothing less. It's the Russian way... and I think we must like it. Treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen. ;-) Andrew McP... showing masochistic tendencies since Flanker 1.0

More importantly, does anyone recognise that bit of coastline? :-) Andrew McP

Well, if the Yellowstone dome went up in the air tomorrow our CO2 emmisions wouldn't be an issue, I'll grant you that. But to simply say "we're insignificant compared to nature" is just embarrassingly naive. You can bury your head as far as you like into the sand, but all that changes is your backside gets scorched instead of your head. Andrew McP

Oil/coal/gas are *incredibly* energy-dense, which is why wind/solar/wave are just p*ssing in the, er, wind when it comes to satisfying current energy needs. The trick is to remember how much effort it takes to push a car when it runs out of fuel. Then consider how much effort it takes to push a fully loaded 747 across an ocean. :-) That's why I'm now, reluctantly, very pro-nuclear. I prefer the risks (Chernobyl was nasty, but entirely preventable) over living with electricity rationing as I approach retirement. The waste problem doesn't bother me. I mean, that's what Nevada's for isn't it? ;-) Andrew McP PS It also helps to remember that a human being on a cycle-powered dynamo can generate about 100w... enough to light a few low energy lightbulbs. Until you stop pedalling anyway.

As ever, it's hard to quantify human involvement given the complexity of atmospheric studies. But common sense says that releasing countless billion tons of CO2 back into the atmosphere in an infinitessimally tiny fraction of the time period it took to capture that CO2 has to have an appreciable effect. > Of our annual 27 billion tonnes carbon dioxide output; > 7 billion tonnes are absorbed by oceans; > 7 billion tonnes are taken up by forests, and; > 13 billion tonnes accumulate in the atmosphere each year. Andrew McP

Of course oil is made from organic matter + geology + time, that was never open for debate. I thought you were talking about something more contentious. Man made oil certainly isn't the answer unless we find an unlimited, cheap energy source to power the process. And that's just not going to happen, no matter what the conspiracy theorists say. Fusion might be the answer eventually, but even fusion's most devoted fan (and I'm certainly pro-fusion research in a big way) couldn't describing it as looking hopeful at the moment. Energy yields are truly lousy and not going anywhere quickly. Andrew McP

Care to point us at the proof? I thought it was just a theory based on one example of a field which appears to have "regenerated". It's far more likely that the geological conditions left in the particular field (in the Gulf of Mexico, I think) allowed more oil to leech out of surrounding rocks over time. It's not as if oil fields are some kind of underground oil barrel with clearly defined limits, after all. Anyway, it's peak oil that's the problem, not how much is left. There could be enough for a billion years, but if it's all in increasingly difficult locations or states (like the Canadian oil sands which require significant effort and energy to extract a low grade product) then supply outstrips demand very quickly and oil prices rise... and rise. The world is about to go through a very interesting phase. Well, interesting for future historians maybe. Whether it'll be so interesting to live through is a different matter, especially for those of us used to a high standard of living. Andrew McP

I have no problem with Rapidshare. It's free, fast and it works, so I can handle jumping through a few small hoops to get the download. :-) Anyway, nice movie, if a little slow throughout the first half. The visual quality's great though, and there are some nicely observed scenes in it. That sun worries me a bit though. Judging by the diameter it looks well on its way to red giant status. That means we probably have much less than a billion years to get off the planet. Better start building that ark. ;-) Andrew McP

LOL! :-) Andrew McP

Well, that managed to creep up under my radar! Thanks for bringing up the subject, it looks very promising, with plenty of tactical gameplay potential. As ever though, screen shots always promise a lot. What is delivered is often a different matter. However the cockpit shots remind me of an updated EECH, and I've been waiting for that for a long time. Ferrying troops around is something I've waited a lot longer for... ever since Hind, in fact! I suppose it might be more of an Operation Flashpoint style game than a flight sim, but there's nothing wrong with that, and as long as the flight models are halfway decent it could be a lot of fun*. Andrew McP *Warning, this post contains the "f" word. ;-)

So would all of us, but it's not something the AI is capable of doing. I'm *hoping* BS will have improved ground vehicle behaviour, but I'm not expecting it. Andrew McP