I made some Flight Simulator videos

[panzerkw]

I've been a Flight Simulator freak for about 8 years, so now I'm in the process of making an aircraft for it.

Check out the thread on my little FS developer group forum. I made a little landing training video, my first attempt at doing so with FRAPS and Windows Movie Maker. I wonder what you all think of it? Thanks!

preview video thread (http://www.if-dg.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=gen3;action=display;num=1062891723)

[a2jfreak]

Do you do that all in one program or more? What/which program(s) did you use?

[panzerkw]

I used FRAPS 2.0 for the video capture, and then Windows Movie Maker for editing and putting together the final version.

[RWB]

It's a nice flick man. But I must make a constructive criticism POV on it. The transition effects were nice at the very beginning, but 1/3rd the way through it was not very clean in how the camera moved.

No ones perfect :) Just saying that one bit. Nice music, and you made me wanna buy a Flight Sim now, what is the best one for me you think?

Also, is this just a video or does it serve some kind of purpose? I noticed the title "Preview" and read a couple posts... what was this for?

[panzerkw]

Well the actual game is called Flight Simulator 2004, from Microsoft. It's a civilian flight sim, for those who dislike flying just to blow stuff up and would rather fly flights with realistic aircraft using real world procedures.

The default aircraft that come with the sim are a little lacking, so many people spend hundreds of hours modeling add on aircraft of their own. I myself have been working on a MD-11 (the large 3 engined airliner in the video) for about 8 months. The video served two purposes, to show off the MD-11 that I'm making, and to show people how to land it properly. There's alot of flight jargon in there (ILS Capture, Flare, Center of Gravity) that most people who aren't familiar with flight or flight simulator wouldn't understand.

It's impossible to make a good landing in flight simulator in the 3d person view, so I had to use the internal FS recording feature to record the video while I landed from the cockpit, but the playback is jerky. That's why some of the transitions aren't that smooth. But in the second half of the video, everything is smooth, because I filmed that as the simulator was actually running, not a replay. Movie Maker isn't professional level software so I wouldn't expect it's transition features to work seamlessly, but it still does the job pretty well.

I run a group of flight sim developers. I model the aircraft and program it's flight dynamics, there's others who texture them and create liveries.

Thanks for the comments though. Flight Simulator is a little limited in the view options it gives you. There's a program called Active Camera that gives you a ton more viewing options, but it's payware 30 bucks :shakehead

[danball1976]

panzerkw said
The default aircraft that come with the sim are a little lacking, so many people spend hundreds of hours modeling add on aircraft of their own. I myself have been working on a MD-11 (the large 3 engined airliner in the video) for about 8 months. The video served two purposes, to show off the MD-11 that I'm making, and to show people how to land it properly. There's alot of flight jargon in there (ILS Capture, Flare, Center of Gravity) that most people who aren't familiar with flight or flight simulator wouldn't understand.

Because of what my job is, I know what those are.

That was also a very impressive video you produced. My brother wants Flight Sim 2004 for Christmas (Computer has a GeForce4 440MX 62MB RAM if it matters)

For some reason, Windows Movie Maker 2 doesn't work on my system. If I chose an effect, the program closes - no error, no nothing.

[panzerkw]

My Movie Maker kept crashing too, until I did this:

I searched for the file divxaf.ax on my hard drive. After I found it, I renamed it.

Bingo, no more Movie Maker CTD's. I restore the name whenever I want to watch a divx.