Howto:Make nice screenshots
In this howto I will explain how to make nice screenshots in FlightGear. This is helpfull for those who want to advertise FGFS on other sim-related forums or on booths around the world.
Basics to know
Good pictures has to appeal us in some way: like telling a story, an unexpected subject of the photo, interesting point of view.... Good pictures let us look more than 1 second on it, let us search for more details, let us think about how the photographer made it, maybe inspires us to make it ourself.... Good pictures are done technically mostly correct, when the qualitity is correct, the colors are right, the composition is good....
The part of to composite a picture is difficult to explain- so I suggest you to read instead tutorials and explanations given on many thousands sites on the web like this Composition_(visual_arts.
Qualitity
A good virtual picture needs a good quality. That means:
-use of AntiAliasing
-appealing/ true colors
-size of the picture- not too small, not to big
-no Gui/Menu/ FrameRateCounter etc. visible
-full effects
This means you need a decent computer with middle - good specs. At least you should able to run FGFS with fluent fps with high AA-settings. Some people don't have this, so there is another solution proposed by Melchior Franz:[1]
How to get some unusual/ interesting views
To get some ideas, I suggest to look on the many Aircraft Image Pages around the web like Airliners.net etc. It will give you some ideas.
Air to Air
-Helicopter View: This assumes that you are in a virtual, not visible helicopter beside the aircraft. You are alway flying level. With the mouse you can choose the position of the "helicopter"
-Chase View: This assumes you are chasing the aircraft. It is very similar to the first one.
-Chase View with jaw: also chasing the aircraft, but the virtual camera doesn't turn with the aircraft. Try and switch between them to see what you more like. (I prefer Chase view). Play with position of the camera. As an example if the aircraft is turning and banking make shot from the wing to the aircraft to the ground. Or while approaching the rwy from behind the aircraft.
Ground to Air
For this we use the Tower view and Tower View look from. This assumes that the virtual camera is on the Airport Tower, ca. 30ft above the airport level. You can choose via the Menu which airport is used. That's nice, but limited.
Anders Gidenstam made a nice little helping nasalscript, with you can choose the tower position on the ground via mouse-click. You can grab it here. Copy the code between the <property-list>-tags and put in somewhere of your preferences.xml. Now with Ctr + LMB-Click somewhere on the scenery you can set the Tower-view position. It is still ca. 30ft above the airport level- assuming you are virtual walking in the scenery, you can change the line
setprop(tower ~ "/altitude-ft", 30 + MtoFT * click_pos.alt());
to
setprop(tower ~ "/altitude-ft", 6.5 + MtoFT * click_pos.alt());
Panorama
Panorama is a wide-angle view. With this you can show large areas of sceneries or interiors like flightdecks.
For this use the Cockpit, Passenger-view or Tower-view, and position the virtual camera at the point you want. Now while panning the virtual camera save many screenshots so they all covers the pan. Now use your favourite Panorama-Software and stitch it! No Software yet? Use Google, as there are several Freeware-programs outside. I can recommend this: Hugin,it is OpenSource, Crossplatform and used by many professional photographers.
Factor of View (FoV)
You can change this by pressing X/x-key or using the Mouse-wheel in View-mode.
The FoV is per default set to 55 (degrees).
Increasing the Factor you get wide angle up to 120 degrees. That's interesting as it covers a whole part of the scenery but also seems to make Objects appear far away. So use it for showing large parts of sceneries, or long Aircrafts etc...For an higher wide angle make a panorama.
Decreasing the Factor you get a narrow angle and a Zoom-Effect. This means you can take far away objects virtually close to you. An interesting effect is, that it also makes the background more "dense".
Lighting and Daytime
The most appealing photos in RealLife are made in the morning or evening. The light has a warm color, the shadows and ambient colors are soft and long which gives fantastic impressions. The noon gives hard shadows and strong contrasts, hard to deal with.
This applies for FlightGear as well. So play a bit with the daytimes, especially Dawn/Morning/Afternoon and Dusk. Play as well with the seasons and locations. In the winter near the poles the sun is low, while near the aequator the sun is standing high in the sky. As an example this gives nice effects with the shaders on the water.
Weather
Our weather has improved much in CVS and upcoming release. Much more realistic clouds, better sky and ambient colors and the possibility to set your own METAR, clouds etc. makes it more easy to create a stunning weather background for your picture.
Locations
The choose of the location depends a bit what you want to show. So what want you to show? Do you have already a theme for in mind?
As an example for showing an aircraft just for presentation, use an "empty" background like the sky, sea or desert. If you want to show the Aircraft during operation you could choose some or our better airports like EHAM, LFPG etc. as background, or some of the more detailed sceneries like our Custom Sceneries.
Colors and whitebalance
As in RealLife, in FGFS the pictures has often to be corrected in colors and whitebalance.
Conclusion
Combining all this, playing with all this you should be able to create some stunning pictures. Try and play with as much you can, look at real images to get hints or try to copy a RealLife in FlightGear- this all will help to make you make a good picture!