Hi, nice work on AH Quick Shots. I've been working with HT on the film viewer's socket for a while, and we hit the see-through aircraft too. Here's what causes it and a fix that gets a solid picture first time.
What causes it. An aircraft's model fades in the first time it's drawn: invisible on its first frame, about half see-through after ~10 frames, solid after ~60. After a seek, the other pilots' aircraft are brand new to the viewer, so they fade in from scratch. That's why waiting ~2 s fixes it. The same thing hits the first second of a video started straight after a seek: frame 0 has a ghost aircraft in it.
The fix for stills: play the last 2 seconds through the shot's camera before you take it. With the camera already set (cams on), for a still at time T:
seek <T-2>
play
wait 5 repeat (checking `time`) until it's within ~0.3 s of T
pause
seek <T> a short seek forward: the models stay drawn
shot <file.bmp>
The aircraft are solid in the first shot, so there's no need to detect it and retake. On a 91st film (a B-17 seen from 170 ft, camera switched on after a seek), a shot straight after the seek was a dark ghost, 0.5 s later half there, and solid at 2 s. With the 2 s played through the camera first, it was solid at once. One side effect: smoke and trails carry on for those 2 s, so they show in the still, which looks natural.
The fix for videos: start the render 2 s early and trim it. video <T-2> <end> ..., then cut the first 2 s (for example ffmpeg -ss 2 -i in.mp4 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac out.mp4, re-encoding so the cut is frame-exact). From T on, the aircraft are solid. It works for the preview clips too.
Two details that help:
- Play through the shot's camera, not the recorded view. Each level of detail fades in separately, so a camera at a different distance (or a zoom) can show a model that hasn't been drawn yet.
- Waiting while paused fixes the fade too (that's your retake), but a burning aircraft's smoke keeps piling up while film time stands still, and it darkens the picture. Playing through avoids that.
Happy to compare notes.
PS : Mine is here if anyone wants a look
https://github.com/steelington/aces-high-film-companion
