Fun with Video

Last weekend I got a new toy... actually, a couple of new toys... and as a result I've been learning all about Windows Vista for the past week.  ;-)

One of the things I had to get with the new computer was the latest flight sim from Microsoft -- FSX.  And with the widescreen monitor and reasonably decent video card, I'm able to run that baby at a beautiful 1920x1200 resolution.  Pretty sweet.

I spent this last evening playing with video capture options for the program -- alas, trying to capture live video of my flights results in pretty craptastic frame rates at times.  However, I did manage to capture a reasonable sequence of flying around for fun in the aerobatic Extra 300S sport plane, which I've posted here.  Warning, it's a Windows format file (WMV) and it's pretty big at 109MB.  So I'd strongly recommend that you choose to download the link rather than just clicking on it.

But I hope you enjoy my efforts -- as I got to play around with Windows Movie Maker in assembling the final product.  I'm learning new stuff left and right!

I'm going to try to post a few screen caps tomorrow, showing some of the adventures I've had with the game.

UPDATE:  I've posted a slightly smaller (and lower-quality) video here, still WMV but only a little more than 43MB in size.

Comments

[Chris Snethen]

Mmmm....new toy. I picked up a new one myself. I finally figured out how to disable Aero and that damned User Account Control. Aero took up over 300MB of RAM! Bastards. I guess the answer is to boost the RAM, but in the short term, it's goodbye Aero. I haven't played with it much with the new configuration. It should speed things up significantly.

[David B. Wright]

Heh... the funny thing is, Microsoft FSX is not compatible with Microsoft Vista Aero, so when I launch the game it downshifts to "basic" mode.

And yet, thanks to an apparently intentional design philosophy with the FSX team, even with a quad core box and 512MB video RAM I still can't come close to moving all the sliders to the right. The game actually crashed at one point when I tried, and told me I didn't have enough video memory so I had to tone down the graphic detail.

Bastards is right.

Still, even at reduced graphic detail the game looks pretty nice. And the videos I posted don't prove it, but it's reasonably responsive under most all conditions, I can get 30fps most of the time and at least 17-18fps under the most demanding environmental conditions, which is plenty for the illusion of smooth flight.