As Wii said, it's all about composition, and using the best quality stuff you can find, for the subject you wish to portray.
The plane is a very high quality visual model made by SCS, and the scenery is also very high quality, by another third party.
Weather also is an important factor in my shots, and I spend a lot of time now tweaking the parameters in the weather menus to customize the weather to what I wish it to be.
Finally, just use your imagination and try to come up with new ways of portraying an object or aircraft.
With this, I wanted to portray what looks like snow spray coming up from the runway in that last shot, so after liftoff, I decreased my angle of attack, bounced the mains off of the runway again, and then pitched up, and got a convincing result.
I'm at the point now where the only thing that limits me from posting more shots is my lack of ideas. Once I get a rough scenario thought up, I'll add the basic elements, and kind of let the shot come to me.
Example: With my post "Snowy Ramp" in this freeware section, which I currently think is the best shot I have taken yet, I did the following.
I was on a flight from Tomsk, and after landing in Tolmachevo, I noticed the abundance of AI traffic on the ground, more than what I usually see for that time of day, so I took advantage of it.
I had the plane selected, a Tu-154, and I simply had the idea of capturing a busy ramp scene. I then got the plane and camera into a position that best highlights the overall area, and then experimented with the weather. When most people think of Russia, and Siberia, they think of snow.....so I then experimented with snowfall amounts, and the visibility, as well as the position of the sun for the proper lighting....and came out with that shot.
The weather in that shot was the critical factor in setting the proper atmosphere and making the shot look real, rather than "simmy".
It doesn't take a super computer to get shots like these. Just the addons, and a unique idea for a shot.
by Sean_TK » Thu Oct 23, 2008 2:42 pm 
