Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Wishlist => Topic started by: Brooke on June 05, 2018, 04:27:38 PM
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People use the film viewer to set up pictures and make videos. But the film viewer is buggy and cumbersome to use, which makes this hard, and results in people doing less of that than they otherwise would (which is free advertising for Aces High).
Here are some things that would make it look nicer and/or be easier to use. A lot of them are probably hard to do, so I don't expect they will happen, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
-- Render clouds correctly. Current ones look like this in film viewer (weird dark ones):
(http://electraforge.com/brooke/flightsims/scenarios/201806_FjordFury/pics/frame1/002-attackTirpitz-SNAG-0004.jpg)
but look like this in actual game play:
(http://electraforge.com/brooke/misc/aces_high/2018FjordFury/lanc.png)
-- Make it easier to do "field of view" zoom in external view. Currently, if you are in internal view, you can press "z" to toggle zoom and "[" and "]" to zoom in and out. You can't do that type of zoom when you are in external view. Z works, but [ and ] don't zoom in and out and the "field of view" slider does nothing. So you have to go internal, get the zoom level you want, go to external, if it's not what you want, go back to internal, zoom in and out, etc.
-- Make fast forwarding faster. It is painfully slow currently to get to a time point you want.
-- Make it so that reverse works. You can't reverse back from an explosion, smoke trail, destroyed enemy plane, etc., as they give visual problems when you reverse to a time point before they happened. Makes it hard to set up shots, as you can only approach the moment you are trying to take a picture of from one direction, and if you go past, you have to stop the film, fast forward to just before where you wanted, slowly creep up on it so as not to pass it, then take your shot.
-- Graphics are not as good as in the game. If you are making videos from the film viewer, they don't look as good as if you made them while flying in the game.
-- Formation planes jitter around in the film viewer (when they weren't jittering in the real play). Like here:
https://youtu.be/Xk9V66e88eI?t=152
-- Moving ships don't behave in the film viewer as they do in the game. Makes it hard to make videos or pics of attacking moving ships.
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+1
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+1
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+1
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He's not wrong. +1
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Are there any 3rd party programs in this age of online gaming that address all of this through capture because films from games are so popular on Youtube? Or are your observations tied to moving about in the ahf film format from an immersed 3D perspective? I still cannot figure out how to move around in a film like I was in CMeye independent of the pilot origin perspective or, is that not available.
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Also, trails from aircraft appear behind far-away clouds (which they shouldn't). Like this:
(http://electraforge.com/brooke/flightsims/scenarios/201806_FjordFury/pics/frame2/010-tradingWings-SNAG-0033.jpg)
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The film viewer in Aces High is an orphaned stepchild. It contains no instructions on how to use it. If you try and access the Help files for instructions you will get a message that Windows 10 does not support .hlp files any longer. How difficult can it be to take the files and convert to a PDF? Next step was to try and search the forums for information which is sketchy at best. Found an older video but it was for an older version of this program. After a few weeks of trying to make this work, I have admitted defeat
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I still cannot figure out how to move around in a film like I was in CMeye independent of the pilot origin perspective or, is that not available.
In the film viewer start then pause the film, press F8 key and use the arrow keys and number pad keys to move about and change your point of view. F1 or F2 gets you back in the cockpit.
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The film viewer in Aces High is an orphaned stepchild. It contains no instructions on how to use it. If you try and access the Help files for instructions you will get a message that Windows 10 does not support .hlp files any longer. How difficult can it be to take the files and convert to a PDF? Next step was to try and search the forums for information which is sketchy at best. Found an older video but it was for an older version of this program. After a few weeks of trying to make this work, I have admitted defeat
That old video you found will be of some help, the film viewer really hasn't changed and pretty much works the way it did 15 years ago. There is a thread devoted to film and I'm sure there is help there, also a number of how to youtube videos. Don't give up.
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I have found the film viewer clunky at best. Mine crashes often, sticks "base textures" in the air and a number of other abnormalities. Cutting, or rewinding the film causes crashes so it makes selecting small parts of film almost impossible.
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Lots of crashes and after taking a screen shot, your view goes out of plane to ground level - with no way of recovery. Rewinding is a no-no. You have to stop the film and start from the beginning to find where you left off.