From what I understand, these are the options.
1. Record track as .trk file while playing . This can then be played back later, in-game, by yourself or anyone with the same version of the game as you. When watching this track you can change views or just let it play as you saw it while recording it.
2.Re-record as a new .trk file the original .trk file being played . This lets you edit to some limited extent by letting you change views on-the-fly as you replay the original.trk file. As far as I know this process can be repeated over and over again, so that every time you re-play the track you can keep introducing and recording new changes of view. It's a form of live editing that could be useful in some cases. Again, this will result in a .trk file recording that can then be played back later, in-game, by yourself or anyone with the same version of the game as you.
3. Record track as an AVI video file while replaying a .trk file. This feature is very buggy at the moment. As far as I know there are only two of the default video codec options that will give a decent looking or sounding result, and one of them results in AVI files that are so huge as to be unuseable in most cases. The other one still results in files that would usually be considered too big for uploading to video-sharing sites like Youtube, so you'd have to run them through a separate video-conversion program to compress the image down to a manageable file-size. From what I can tell it's also limited to producing AVI's of only a short length before the files get corrupted and become unplayable. If you do get it to work though, you can do live editing as it records, like you can re-recording it as a new .trk file, but chances are it will be rendering at something like 1-2fps, which makes view-changing limited to those that can be done just by pressing buttons (eg. internal to external views or FOV changes, not panning or zooming.) Also, the fact that it renders at such a slow speed means it can take a long, long time to actually produce a video (@30fps, a 1fps render speed=approx 30mins rendering to get 1 min of video), if it works at all. At the moment, it seems to be a pretty limited option/feature.
4. Recording with a video-camera straight off the screen. Has it's uses sometimes.
5. FRAPS or some other third-party video-capturing software. This would be the easiest way to record the game. FRAPS can halve your frame-rates, but you can adjust in-game settings to compensate for that in various ways.
So, yeah, all in all, nothing's really changed. FRAPS is easiest, and as far as I can tell, nothing new has been added to make the actual playing or recording of the .trk files any easier. In fact, in some ways it's more clunky now than before.
As I understand it, the AVI rendering part of the game, if not the whole replay system, is a third-party application that Maddox Games have licensed for use in the new IL-2 series. It's something they've had difficulty getting to work themselves, so whether that means it's something they might get around to fixing or increasing the functionality of, or if it's something they're more inclined to throw in the too-hard/not worth it basket, is yet to be seen.
In the meantime, for the end-users, it's business as usual, recording live with FRAPS, or recording .trk replays if they're not too buggy, and leaving it at that, or running the FRAPS recordings through video-editing software for compression or effects.
|
04-16-2011, 10:08 PM
Linear Mode
