Simviation Forums

Hello to all! When Clipper announced the new way for the Studio, I offered to write articles for it. This will be my first one. As always please cast your comments, suggestions and ideas.

Home ground advantage.


[size=12][font=Arial]As my first article for the studio I had to think of a subject to write about. The inspiration came after remembering a comment from one of our members about my first shots ever on Simviation. It was a two shot set featuring an F-14 and a Lockheed Constellation. He said that my shots were so much better now. And me having just did a new thread featuring the Constellation had a look back and saw the huge difference. There was a huge amount of difference in how I could make the aircraft look. Back then I liked just about everything. I think my major spamming of the boards back then proved that. Nowadays I post less but better.

So what I want to write about is something I ended up calling home advantage. I think this thread is useful for beginning screenshots artists especially. I have a rather outdated system and instead of completely covering the Simulator in new scenery add-ons and such I concentrated most on specific areas. These areas are The Alps, the U.K. and British Columbia in Canada. Now I

To each his own. Just do it the way that you're most comfotable with...

My way is kinda HDD space dependant.  :D

I used to have this tiny 12 GB harddrive that was always full, so I just paused the sim on the appropriate time and moved the camera around the plane for about 5 minutes. Then I chose the angle I liked the most and took the shot.

Now I have a 200 GB HDD and I just take a lot of shots. Afterwards I choose the one that I like the most.

I work by trial and error.....

I take tons of shots, maybe 50 or 100 or more, playing with angles and times... sometimes I have an idea, most often not. I don't take it so seriously, setting up, planning, optimising etc, though I do appreciate responses to those pics that I think are good enough to post.

I've discovered long ago that there can often be an inverse relationship between the amount of effort one puts in, and the amount of replies and feedback one gets. Take one sunset and the virtual applause is deafening. Set up a bunch of carefully crafted shots, choose the best, crop them carefully... and for a reason you cannot find, blinkered by your own preferences, no one cares. I've found that the pictures that appeal to me the most usually appeal to other people the least. So now I just do whatever I feel like.... and if people like them it's a bonus  :)

I usually go out with the goal of taking screenshots. I set up the sim with the weather and other settings how I want and then take about 50-80 shots. Most of the time I end up deleting almost all of them and keeping about 5 or 6 to post.

When I'm just flying for fun then usually I stop several times in the flight and take shots, ending up to be about 10-20 shots.  When I'm going for the competition, I know pretty much what I want so I download all the addons I need and fiddle with the weather and time for hours .

- Kevin

Either my shots are a by-product of a planned flight or I'm just showing off, but the latter doesn't happen that often.
I usually take a maximum of 20 shots (on a longer flight), since I'm thinking twice before hitting the "screenshot" key.

Im a bit of both, sometimes i go up with no intention of taking shots and then other times i go up with the soul purpose of taking shots.

When taking a shot, i try to only take the ones i will use, except in the monthly contest.  Ill pause and have a good look around until i get a good angle, reflection and background scenery.  The i may even mess with the weather a bit (see stu's view 2 )

I see you talk about taking anywhere fro 10 to as high as 50 shots in any one flight,
How do you get that done?
Is there a program or down load that I can get?

Now many will say that the above ways are rubbish and that their ways are batter.

My way is a very nice mixture used to make pancakes and also used to fry fish in

On a serious note, I usually either go on with the intention to take shots or go on intending not to take shots. I don't suddenly decide that i want to take shots halfway through a flight. For the competition I usually only take about 4 or 5 pictures (any more and I would spend hours annoying myself because i want to choose more than 1 )

.mic

I see you talk about taking anywhere fro 10 to as high as 50 shots in any one flight,
How do you get that done?
Is there a program or down load that I can get?

There certainly is its called fsscreen, you run it in the background and just keep pressing print screen, it then stores the shots to a folder for you