I personally don't like FRAPS. I'd rather use the AVI tool.


I will redouble my efforts based upon your inspiring and encouraging message. Thanks very much for the show of support.

God, i just thought of something that, IMO, is very much needed in this sim (at least when it comes to movie making): The option to control the mouse sensetivity (external views, CTRL-F11 view, for instance).

When in CTRL-F11 view, and you zoom in on a plane, and you try to follow it with the mouse, the view is very jerky and not very smooth. If the sensetivity was lower, the view would look a lot smoother, and the vids would come out nicer.

Just a suggestion, which i feel is important (in my case anyway )

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agreed amraam, smoother panning, that would definetly help me

Is that not definable in the inputs section under options?



www.tacticalgamer.com

Ok first let me state something. I bought Lock On for 2 reasons.
1. To be able to fly my favorite aircraft, the A-10 Thunderbolt II
2. To be able to record above experience and transfer to DVD.
These to reasons are equal value to me.

Now here's my experience with video recording...it's useless...
Why is it useless?
1. 2GB AVI limit.

...and therefore...

2. Inconsistency between multiple takes on same track.
3. Inconsistency between video recording and audio recording when performing multiple takes on same track.

For anyone that wants to create high quality DVD movies from Lock On the AVI exported must be uncompressed (or use a lossles compression codec like HuffYUV). Even with HuffYUV you still wont get much more than 1:30 - 2:00 per 2GB file @ 720x576(PAL 4:3 DVD). You may as well forget about doing multiple takes as you will find things like cloud cover is different between takes, explosions are different, etc.
So you are basically left with one option; use bad lossy compression to capture any flight worth having...which will end up little more than a blured mess once its been through MPEG compression as well and you are still limited in time by the 2GB AVI limit.

So thats my point. It's useless for anything but crappy little wmv's that nobody wants anyway.

Now to get constructive. Here are two things that would go a long way to making this actually possible.
1. Divide AVI recordings into 1GB chunks automatically. I mean as the program is recording it should automatically create multiple AVI's if necessary. This way simulation integrity is maintained and 2GB filesize limit is circumvented.
2. Record audio as one single seperate wav file rather than embedding in AVI. Not only that but whilst recording AVI an audio 'track' should be simultaneously recorded that store information about sound sample trigering times, etc which is then used to buiild the wav after video recording. This would prevent inconsistencies between video simulation and audio simulation.

These changes (or something that achieves the same end) should be made available in the form of a patch as soon as possible. I do not believe I should have to wait and pay for another product which no doubt wont feature the A-10 (in which case I won't buy it) just to be able to do one of the things I bought this product for. The feature is broken, it's not just inadequate for the task I have in mind, it is inadequate for any task. I respectfully request that my concerns and ideas by taken seriously.

BTW for those that are interested in making DVD ready AVI's set the following section in the graphics.cfg file:

For PAL:

DisplayMode
{
resolution = {1024, 768};
bpp = 32;
fullscreen = 0;
aspect = 1.333333373;
Interface
{
resolution = {1024, 768};
bpp = 32;
fullscreen = 0;
}
Simulation
{
resolution = {720, 576};
bpp = 32;
fullscreen = 0;
aspect = 1.067;
}

For NTSC (havent tested but don't see why it shouldn't work):

DisplayMode
{
resolution = {1024, 768};
bpp = 32;
fullscreen = 0;
aspect = 1.333333373;
Interface
{
resolution = {1024, 768};
bpp = 32;
fullscreen = 0;
}
Simulation
{
resolution = {720, 480};
bpp = 32;
fullscreen = 0;
aspect = 0.9;
}

I have two graphics.cfg files. 1 for normal play and recording of tracks and one for recording AVI's set with the above info.

The 2 GB file size limit is a limitation with the FAT 32 files system (used by Win 98). Win XP can use the NTFS files system (and does so by default) which does not have this limitation. But if this does not pertain to the problem mentioned in the previous posts, then please forgive my ignorance.

NTSC is the format used for DVD's. I found that I couldn't codec w/mpeg2 at PAL settings.

Letterboy. You are partly right. The 2 GB limit used to be an filesystem issue with FAT/FAT32 vs NTFS. However that stuck into a different aspect aswell. There are two versions of AVI 1 and 2. AVI 1 is old and can only adress up to 2 GB worth of film. AVI 2 can adress a whole lot more.

Unfortunately, Lo-mac uses AVI 1 and cannot do videos larger than 2GB, Huffyuv or any other codec. This is a major limitation as it's not fun rendering a movie for 8 hours full resolution and then see it snuck 150 kb over the limit and you just wasted 8 hours.

Imho, this really could use some fixing in the next version/addon.

It's been a while since the last post and, to make matters worse, the topic starter, Carl, is not involved directly with LOMAC anymore. I was wondering if any developer is willing to carry on with this subject and give us some feedback about what's planned for Flaming Cliffs in this regard.

To make sure this information is accessible to them, I'll try to "transfer" this thread to Eagle Dynamics own forum. If you're interested, please show your support there.

Thanks,

Well, it's been here, but it seems nobody really cares...