Need help to grab a massive screenshot...

[=Hollywood= 0]

Hi guys,I'm hoping that posting here will get the best exposure for this question...I need to grab a massive 3600x3600 screenshot for a print article and I see a couple of possibilities in how to do it:1 - Somehow convince vista and FSX that a massive 3600x3600 monitor is attached2 - Force FSX to display a 'non-distorted at the edges' screenshot to create a series of shots that can be stitched together 360degree style3 - Take screenshots at 1 degree intervals and stitch them together in Photoshop (very time consuming)...Would anyone else have any ideas? I'm on a deadline for this project and need to complete this by Sep 10...Don't have money or access to get a TH2G at this point, that would help make life easier but I'm in the Philippines and wouldn't be able to obtain one before deadline...Anyone from ACES floating around?Dean.

[Guest fsxmissionguy]

Dean,This looks promising and is free as in beer:http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.htmlFrom the site: "Autostitch

[=Hollywood= 0]

Sweet, that looks perfect!!!Oh that has just made my day... I've been searching all day for something that can do what this looks like it can achieve... :)I'll have a play around with it, oh that looks perfect for another thing i've been wanting to do...Did you move the aircraft and snap a bunch of pics? Or just change the aircraft views to achieve that shot?That looks incredible, I'm sure others will be making use of it as well :-)Dean.

[Guest fsxmissionguy]

Dean,Here's another example shot ... this time of (I think) Mount Ranier:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/191906.jpgThis was made from 8 individual screenshots, and output at over 5,000 x 3000 (or some similarly ridiculously high resolution).You might be able to pick out from this reduced version (to fit AVSIM posting guidelines) that the Autostitch program automatically corrects for the round Earth problem you mentioned in your original post. (You'd need to take a little more time than I did here, but also I was trying to show the process and effect. With proper planning and cropping, the round effect is eliminated.)Also, you can see from this shot the 2D nature of the stitching. These are not merely left to right screenshots, but also two of them were up/down.Very handy little free program for making very high-resolution ingame screenshots. From start to finish, this took me maybe 10 minutes to make.Cheers,

[=Hollywood= 0]

You are my new hero...Very very very very very cool... :-)

[Guest fsxmissionguy]

Here's the process that I used (which could probably be improved on):1) Position yourself very close to the object you're trying to photograph to get max detail. In the example above, I was very close. The closer you are, the higher the final resolution is probably going to need to be, but also the more detail will be achieved. The more screenshots will be required also, so it will take a little longer.2) I took the screenshots systematically, from left to right ... top to bottom. Start at the top left and work your way to bottom right, and start taking screenshots, keeping yourself oriented to make sure you don't leave out any of the scene. Overlap them pretty good. The program will take care of the stitching automagically and I can't see the stitching at all ... it's that good. The program will take out the curvature of the Earth automatically.3) I put myself in the Trike, paused the game at the altitude and position I wanted (slewed), then used Ctrl-Backspace to move the eyepoint out of the aircraft in front of it (this removes the aircraft from the scene, but you could experiment leaving it in). Then, I just panned left-to-right, top-to-bottom, never moving my camera position.4) Since you're taking this photo while the game is paused, you want to amp up your Scenery sliders all the way to the right to achieve maximum eye candy. I used the Object Placement Tool to force a reload of the scene so that I didn't have to wait for the textures to load.After you've got all your screenshots, you'll then need to use Microsoft Paint (works fine) to resave the 24-bit .bmp screenshots in the .jpg format (the free program only supports .jpg, but I gather there's a paid version that might support .tiff).Once you have all your .jpg screenshots ready, start up Autostitch and select File/Open. Ctrl-select all your screenshots and the program just goes about stitching them automatically. Very fast. It uses whatever settings you've previously specified and auto-outputs the final result in a file called pano.jpg.Pretty awesome.Canon invented it for their digital cameras, but works great in FSX too!Cheers,

[=Hollywood= 0]

Yeah I just took 180 pics of a mountain range in Oahu and am stitching it together, gotta give the proggie a bit more RAM access I think...Used Photoshop to batch covert to JPG...This is very very cool...Thanks for sharing the process, I couldn't wait to try it so I was already well on my way, now i'll need to clean up the scenery a bit before taking the master 'production' shot :-)Mahalo!Dean.

[=Hollywood= 0]

Ok, here's a test shot :-) Shrunk down of course...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/191907.jpg

[=Hollywood= 0]

Oops I broke it lol...Will grab more screenies tomorrow...

[Guest fsxmissionguy]

Is that Oahu???Niiiiiiice!Cheers,

[Guest jshyluk]

I am a little late for this party. Still, for background info -- Generally, if you want to take a "screenshot" of a game and put in print media, game companies will use two sets of textures. One texture is the typical game texture. The other texture is a super-high resolution print texture. Sometimes, the artists will come up with a high detail model as well.You swap the game textures with the hi-rez textures. Of course, you get a slide show, but that's not important for a screenshot. Normal screenshots (with the resolution set as high as it will go in-game) will make nice postage-stamp sized print graphics. Look on the back of any game box to see what I mean. The Acceleration box is as good as any.Stitching the pictures together is a good quick-and-dirty method to put one single mega-graphic together, that's excellent advice right there.The other thing to do might be to contact Microsoft and see if they have any images you can have. Of course you're going to be very, very old by the time you penetrate their bureaucracy, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't suggest that. Jeff ShylukAssistant Managing EditorSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

[FalconAF 213]

>Oops I broke it lol...Now, now, Dean...that's not the kind of thing we like to hear from third-party FSX developers. :-lolMissionguy: Great heads-up on that program. Gonna try it for fun with my TH2G. :-beerchugFalconAF

[n4gix 4,947]

>The other thing to do might be to contact Microsoft and see if>they have any images you can have. Of course you're going to>be very, very old by the time you penetrate their bureaucracy,>but I'd feel remiss if I didn't suggest that. Jeff, why whould Microsoft have hi-res images of Dean's custom scenery, which is presumably what he's wanting to showcase... ;)

[=Hollywood= 0]

Thanks Jeff,The stitching approach worked after lots and lots of coaxing and breaking the program a few times just to get the right shot...I now have a most excellent 3600x3600 screenshot which is ready for print... ;-) It sure took some work though to achieve...I just had a request for a special sized image specifically for print of one of the products and it has turned out very very well...Now for that Quicktime VR I've dreamed of doing sometime, now that I have the right toys...Word to the wise, don't change the RAM settings on that program or you'll OOM...