Flyby PC

I'm not sure how you could stop recording them in the first place, but if you used Virtual dub, you could mask out the lower screen with a band of flat dark colour, export it to Windows Moviemaker and write your own subtitles on top. Not perfect, but it would work. Alternatively Virtualdub could also crop the image size to lose the subtitles, but that risks distorting the clip if you're not careful. I do it all the time to lose the guages in OFF clips, I always fly OFF with no guages or flight targetting tags because I'm hard. I've not gone through Gwar's list of links which I'm sure will provide a better answer, but right now, knowing what I know, that's what I would try.

Thanks Baldric. Not just mine, but also my three excellent apprentices. It's OK, but has a few errors, but I'm pretty chuffed on the whole. We plan more of the same, only better. Just wish I could afford more land. The day will come.... http://www.stenhousestonemasonry.co.uk/

I've got my own Stone business which is really demanding right now. 3 Apprentices needing training, our own commercial unit to build, paperwork to keep the taxman happy, and that's pretty much a 7 day week. It'll be worth it though.... Hobbies have taken a bit of a kicking though. I used to SCUBA dive, but my ear stopped equalising pressure as I came up, & pressure made me dizzy. Passing out at 30m risked dying horribly, so I had to stop. Doc said I could try a stent, but then I'd leak, and die in a different horrible way. I used to fly multiplayer with the Boys of 60, & make CFS3 movies. Boys of 60 squadron went down the IL2 path to avoid the CFS3 gremlins, but I couldn't get in to it. I was getting busy, and couldn't get time to adjust to Il2. I stopped making movies because copyright issues made me uncomfortable, but good music makes all the difference. It might be different now, but IL2 just didn't look as good either. I used to watch rugby, but since it all went pro, the Scottish Rugby Union as been doing all it can to wreck the club game in the South of Scotland. Happy to watch club games, but the 'Scotland' team is just full of ringers who can't get a game for their own country. Touchy subject... I used to keep tropical fish but a heater malfunctioned and killed 80% of the poor little fellas. The rest lingered a few weeks not looking well at all. Sounds sad, but I love my work. I often dress stone for fun, or for my unit, and for work naturally. I'm pretty lucky that I like what I do that much. I also have all the tools and machines to look after too. Hoists, drills, grinders, fork lifts, etc I've built a few stone saws and general bits and bobs, making and mending with steel. It's work fixing stuff, but fun, so does that count as a hobby? I'm also trying to get into glass etching, and stained glass. Trying, but finding time is tough. I'm ok at it, but I want to get a lot better. I also do architectural drawings for folks, but usually only for friends. I know what I'm doing, but find the admin tiresome. What keeps me sane are my dogs. The big fella could walk for Scotland. Oh, and I like to read history/non fiction books, usually War related.

I love reading stuff like that. Especially when the language is so concise but tells you everything. My favourite VC is Major Robert Cain's while surrounded at Arnhem facing everything from snipers to Tiger tanks. What strikes me most is sometimes bravery just happens as circumstances unfold, but Major Cain had every occassion to think about what he was doing. His bravery extended over several days, but he never took a backward step, always thinking about his men before himself. All the more extraordinary was that Major Cain survived the war, but yet his daughter never even knew about his VC until after his death, and that kind of says it all. My next favourite VC, and I'd have to research for his name, was a Gurka, who was covering his mates from attack by the Japanese. With his machine gun, he held off the attack, not only to save his mates, but to hold the whole position. When relieved, he had injuries so bad that he lost both legs, an arm and if I remember correctly, the sight in one eye. He had kept firing regardless, and after the action, the bodies of something like 38 enemy soldiers were found in front of his position. I'm sure he survived to a ripe old age too. Those VC's don't come cheap. When they're postumous, as they very often are, in spite of the heroism, or rather because of it, I'm always struck by the hollowing waste of such a fine human being.

That's most excellent news Nio. For some reason I can't log in to the Boys of 60 forum, but it's good to see it's back up. I remember the old advert that Lucozade aids recovery, but obviously it's Diet Pepsi that does the trick. Think it's high time I dug out the goggles and reported for duty again.

I don't know if this has been posted before, but I stumbled across it by accident and thought it might be of interest. The lyrics are Harry Patch's own words. Rest in peace Harry. Hope you're back with your mates now. http://www.youtube.c...player_embedded "I am the only one that got through The others died where ever they fell It was an ambush They came up from all sides Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves I've seen devils coming up from the ground I've seen hell upon this earth The next will be chemical but they will never learn."

Failed to mention it, but for those of you who don't know, Harry Patch was Britians last surviving WW1 veteran, who sadly passed away in July this year, aged 111. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6954937.stm

Here is the better version uploaded. Just noticed that YouTube will host 2GB movies!!! Wow, the old limit was 100Mb. Thanks for the embedding tip too Sitting_Duck. http://www.youtube.c...h?v=JTSthEjxecA

Yeeaayyy! Done it.

No Alligators in Scotland. Midges have eaten them all.

Sorry RJW, didn't have a lot of time before... Fraps is great for recording media, but the problem is theres nothing in CFS3 to assist you getting images. Il2 records your flight, so you can concentrate on the mission, and manage your video record afterwards. No such luck with CFS3. The word on that is CFS3 was unfinished when it was released, and the recording facilities are in there somewhere, but were disabled because they weren't finished. The bottom line is, you can only record what you see on the screen. This makes it a much bigger challenge to get good recordings of the action. For best results, you're better setting up shots, rather than waiting for them to happen in mission play. I've seen myself fly a mission once to record 'in cockpit' views, and fly it again (more than once) to concentrate on external shots. Mix it all together, and it can look pretty good. Once you've got your raw clips, in all their massiveness, you can either load them up with Windows Movie Maker, crop and edit as you like, add text and music if you like, and save it in a compressed format that doesn't fill up your hard drive. Unless you have unlimited space, it's often best to ditch the raw data. It's seriously huge, multi gigs. I add in another stage before I jump into Windows Movie Maker. If you download Virtualdub, (freeware), and associated filters, you can play about with your images, adding filters and formatting, and then finalise the amended raw footage into Movie Maker. Movie maker has some editing filters of it's own, but in my opinion Vitualdub's are better. Tip here is to edit the file in AVI format. Yes it's big, but you get better results if you keep the full format as long as possible, because you lose quality when you save it on a lesser format. So, it is a lot harder work than Il2, but once you get going, you can put together some some stuff that looks pretty good, and is all the more impressive because it is so tricky to capture. If you get stuck, or need advice at all, just ask away and we'll see if we can help out.

Keep an eye on what you record too RJW. Fraps records in real time, so doesn't have time to compress the data it records. This means the .avi clips you record are pretty big files, and it doesn't take long to fill up your hard drive.

Hi Dimus. Long time no see. Wouldn't you know it? I put up the low quality video on youtube, then promptly found the old hard drive with the full size versions. I was checking the wrong hard drive. It was empty, but thought I'd formatted it to try fixing a problem it had and lost all my backed up data. Not to worry. Got the right one now. Even found my big bad CFS3 from the good old days too. Wooohooo!!! Emailed PD to say hi, but I appreciate he's got other things to keep him busy. There's a lot of good guys fly with the Boys of 60, but we'd have got nowehere without Bob. Good times.

Fraps. - http://www.fraps.com/download.php Easy to use, but excellent. Have it running before you fire up CFS3 or OFF, (but remember which button is 'record'), and your screen image is recorded. The free version only gives 30 seconds of recording, with a Fraps watermark throughout, but if you get into it, it's worth getting the registered version.

Time factor for me. I'd love to master Gmax, but too many conflicting interests. I've attempted the GMax tutorial about 3 or 4 times, I've done the spikey mace thing about 3 times, and the ramped space base thingy, but then I don't get the time to go any further, and when I do, I've forgotten it all. Hopeless case I'm afraid. I hardly even fly at all these days, BhaH or CFS3, and even my multiplayer days are a thing of the past, - and that was a lot of fun. I used to make videos too, but haven't even taped any footage for donkeys years.... I once hoped to build a CFS3 version on the Eastern Front, with Stalingrads grain silo, tractor factory and Pavlovs house, the Kremlin, Gumrack and Pitomnik, but I don't see that happening. It's a full time job in itself. For a while I was quite inspired with OFF and MAW, and there seemed to be a real creative community out there taking an interest. Don't want to dredge up the past, but MAW seemed to take too much out of its people, and the stress fractured the whole community. The later add-ons, PTO and ETO etc have their moments of absolute brilliance, but collectively never quite hit the spot for me, .....but that's another story. OFF is unique in so far as it started out as the best, but every release gets better and better. It really is something pretty special. I'd even be tempted to start making vids again, but I immediately hit the buffers with my lack of knowledge about WW1. I'm working on it, but 'knowledge' is pretty superficial until you arrive at the same conclusions coming from multiple opposite directions. It all takes time, and I like to get things right. The film I'd like to make would also need the earlier planes too... I could improvise I expect, but there's no hurry while I'm digging deeper into WW1. It's good to see some encouragement for more Gmaxers. You don't have to be good before ideas start bouncing around, suddenly you have a community of builders all learning from each other, and who knows what that can lead to...

Shocking quality. Thought I had a better backup version. Had to take this from an Ipod version. dXCjsQEogn8 http://www.youtube.c...h?v=dXCjsQEogn8 Don't know what I'm doing wrong with the embed option. Get Well Soon PD!

That's not so good. I'm trying to catch up Axgrinder, but the Boys of 60 forum is down. Meantime, if you could pass my best wishes to Bob. Think I'll upload my best Boys of 60 vid to Youtube. If you don't know PD already, you'll see what great fella he is.

Gets my vote for a stickie!! Thanks Lou. Failing that I'm going to keep bumping this until I've worked through the list. The properties link is a cool thing to know too! Who and why is it that mucks about with European internet access? (Ssssh! That'll be Echelon on to me now!!! )

The other factor in favour of the early stuff is the educational aspect. I've learned TONS of stuff about WW1 just by flying OFF, and I've also been inspired to read a lot more. Talk about bringing history to life... Big problem is that the early years saw all sorts of flying machines adapted for military service, but bar the French, little standardisation. According to Wiki, for all it's contribution, there were only 40 actual Tabloids built (though more variations were built too). It's a lot of work to recreate a 'token' gesture, but it depends on how 'token' you think it is. It's still a very fitting tribute to the early pilots. The other complication is having the correct 1914 context to fly in.

I'd like to see some early birds too. I'm not impressed with the arguments that early flights were dull affairs. There are all sorts of challenges which could keep you interested. First is control, and actually being able to fly the thing and land it. You could simulate early pilots waving to each other, and like Stiffy says, bricks, darts pistols, and all sorts to chuck around. You could also play with cameras, - build missions to screen capture mission goals. The Tabloid was the first British Aircraft to bomb Germany, and once also drove down a Fokker by chucking metal darts at it. And with regards to single shot weapons, I remember reading somewhere someone getting three 'kills' in one flight using a shotgun. -( This might even have been the Tabloid too???). Whatever comes forward from the team, I'm looking forward to it. They've already set the bar very high, and I think it's safe to say that future developments are in safe hands, whichever direction they take us. There's also the American factor to bear in mind too, in that early aircraft are perhaps of less interest to the wider U.S. flight sim community, for obvious reasons.

OK, I'm slow on the uptake, but I just found this in the Stickies. What an excellent read. Wish I'd found it earlier. Teach me to pay more attention. Don't know where you found it all Shredward, but I'm delighted you've gone to such trouble.

I like Spike Milligan's epitaph. "Told you I was ill".

I'd love to help out. I've got my old rig still kicking about, but it was underpowered and underspec, and when I say it's kicking around, I mean it. It gets the odd dunt now and again just as payback for all the grief and frustration it gave me. I would get rid of it, but it's hard drive was jam packed full of CFS3 stuff, and I keep it 'just in case'. It's a crime when we've got a man down, especially one in the GMax and effects production department, but there's not much I can do to help Stump. I've got a video card you'd be welcome to, I forget what type, Nvidia something, 256mb? - I forget. I can check when I get home. It's nothing great by today's standards, but it was ok. Say the word and it's on it's way. It's the older slot type if you know what I mean. If you want it, just Pmail me your address.

Don't know what it is, but if you look at the photo in post #10, it looks like some kind of intake for the balloon above.

I'm fairly sure it was Cecil Lewis in Sagitarius Rising who put it in perspective. Despite all the danger they faced, pilots often slept in their own beds and got regular leave back in Blighty. The poor sods in the trenches were his heros. Under fire night and day, seeing mates blown to bits and / or sinking in the mud. Gas attacks, shrapnel, and the ever pesent threat of being buried alive, eaten alive by rats or lice, or ordered over the top to walk into the murderous machine gun fire. All things are relative, but if I was an Observer in the back seat, I'd be busy navigating, or keeping my eyes peeled for bandits, but under my breath, I'd be counting my blessings too...