The Beergarden

Huzzah!  I’ve finally gotten a video to 800 views!  My previous record was 734ish views, and that video was really old.  So, I was rather surprised that a rather dull, in my opinion, M2000-C landing video actually got 800 views!

I believe this has to do with the timing of the videos release.  I put it up almost immediately after the M2000-C was released.  I mean the video quality is pretty good in my opinion, but I did mess up the in cockpit sounds.  It’s so quiet it breaks the immersion in my opinion.

I just find it odd that it is currently my best video on YouTube, and I must laugh about it.  It isn’t really a tutorial, but I saw it getting hits from ‘landing tutorial’ searches.  I didn’t add the tutorial tag for it.  It just shows a good landing.  Although if you watch it to the end, you do see me screw up and almost taxi into the grass.  I made a mistake and left nose wheel steering activated.  It didn’t help that I did it while in external view so I hadn’t realized I was turning until it almost too late.

I’m a little more excited for the DCS World JTAC Bombing video.  It has only been up a month, and it is about to surpass 800 views itself.  I know for a fact part of this is because of the time stamps.  I had seen on a tutorial video that if someone clicks on one of the time stamps, it will count as another view.  So I did it partially to make it easier to find some action in an hour long video, and partially for the extra views I knew it would bring.  I’m really excited to see how many more views that one will get.

On a side note, I’d like to thank the nation of France.  You fine people are responsible for the majority of my views with the USA just a bit behind them.  I’m going to assume that is mostly due to the video showcasing a French jet, and I can totally get behind that.

I know I built this rig to make more videos, but there is only one thing I want to record at the moment.  That ‘thing’ is the SA-342 Gazelle helicopter from Polychop Simulations.  I’ve been following the development of this module from the start, and I’m a little amazed, in a good way, that it’s actually being released.

I remember from way back when the good sir at Polychop announced that he would be creating a free mod for DCS featuring the Gazelle.  I kind of thought it was a joke until he started to put up screenshots.  They were some good looking screenshots and I began to believe it would actually happen.  There have been plenty of teams who have come and gone away after announcing a new aircraft for DCS World.  Polychop was not one of these.  They did the opposite, and they actually incorporated while expanding the team.  (Hype Intensifies)

Now, I know it was supposed to be free.  However, I’m not bothered at all knowing I’ll have to pay for it.  I know that the development has taken years, and a lot of hard work went into coding the helicopter.  That hard work and dedication should be rewarded.  Although, I’d imagine that for everything to be proper in the business sense, they would need to license the aircraft.  I’d also imagine that licensing is not cheap.

So, I’ll be sure to get some new videos up as soon as I can get my hands on the Gazelle.

Be excellent to each other, and stay awesome.

Well, it didn’t take me long to begin fussing with the new hardware.  I’ve tested it out on a good deal of my game collection, and I’ve been loving the added performance.  It didn’t take me long to see how it handled recording, streaming, and transcoding.  It has exceeded every goal I was hoping to achieve.

It took under two minutes for it to render a 48 second 1080p @ 60FPS video.  I’m liking this ratio and I hope it keeps up when I’m finally able to squeeze more video quality out of Sony Movie Studio 13 Platinum (Steam sale buy).

I’ve tested out the new hardware in Open Broadcast Software, and I’m just in awe at how much better it can do video work.  I can now use OBS to record, have it look really good, and not kill my CPU power!  I’m pretty stoked about that, but I can finally live-stream DCS World and not have it look like garbage every time I move my head in freetrack.  Seriously, the pixelation that would happen just looked awful.  I hid most of those streams on Youtube.  Ah well, the latest DCS live-stream looked fantastic and ran just as well.  I could use a better mic for them, but that’s not an immediate concern.  I know it’s important, but it’s not going to happen for a bit.

Anyway, here is my first render on the new hardware.  The footage quality should be improving from here on.  The OBS recordings look a bit nicer in my opinion.

I finally put all the parts together for my new build.  It’s an i7 4790k with an AsRock motherboard.  The video and sound cards came along for the ride.  I’m waiting for the new NVIDIA cards before I upgrade my old 770, and I still like my SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatality.  It works great with my headset.  I’m sure on-board sound has improved immensely since the old IBM PC days.  However,  I’m old school.  I like my soundcards.

I did jump in head first into the world of the m.2 SSD drive.  I had no idea what these things were when I first saw it on my motherboard.  A close friend of mine asked about them, and I was pretty dismissive of the whole thing.  They were tiny, but I didn’t see any advantage over a SATA SSD.  The read speeds seems about the same.  I only saw them in the 500 MBps range.   My friend looked deeper into it and found an m.2 drive with a 2200MBps read speed.  Read speed has been a bottleneck for as long as I’ve gamed.  Cassette tape drive old school.  This could be a great thing.

I had to check this out for myself.  That kind of speed is amazing, and I’m loving it.  I’ve built a awful lot of PCs over the years, and I never was able to have something for myself that I considered to be the best.  For once I can say that my machine is a fucking beast now.

It loads faster then it takes my keyboard to power up so I’m having trouble getting into the BIOS.  Ha!  It’s amazing!

I finally bit the bullet and installed Windows 10 on one of my personal machines, and I’m not hating it.  I still haven’t figured out how to search for things as quickly as I could in 8.1, but I’m hesitant about using Cortana.  However,  A big thank you to the Microsoft Overlords for the entitlement licenses program.  I like fresh installs, and my Windows 10 install went absolutely flawlessly with the old 8.1 Key.

It’s kind weird how well it went down.  I figure it took me 3 hours from teardown to patching Windows 10 on the new hardware.  Hell, it assigned the drive letters to the old HDs exactly how I wanted it to go down.  I’ve never had a build go so well.

Benchmarks compared to the old i5 build?  Well I figured the m.2 was too radical of a change to the variables.  So outside of comparing the CPU usage, I have no hard numbers to give yet.  DCS World usage is down 50% and the game loads freakishly fast now.  It’s one of the few games I’ll make room for on the m.2 since it doesn’t have a lot of space.  Eh, I’m learning how to offload document, music, and movie data to other drives to keep the m.2 clear for now.  Although I can install a few more things on the SATA SSD now.  🙂

Now I need to see how much it improves transcoding times.  I justified an i7 for moving making, right?  I better put something out!  It is most certainly a good thing I’ve been practicing a lot in the DCS World Mirage 2000-C.   😉  DCS was the the first game I made sure I had working correctly.  HOTAS and FreeTrack (via FaceTrackNoIR) are working well, and I have a working mission with an AI JTAC so I can use GBU-12s to bullseye some T-90s.

As Clint Eastwood said in FireFox, “What a machine.”.  I highly recommend the Samsung m.2 Pro.

Well after trying many different methods to improve my video creation methods, I’ve broken down.  I got myself an i7.  I still standby saying that most people do not need an i7, but if you want to do video editing, you probably should get one. Waiting 4hrs to render a 13min long 60fps HD video was part of it, but I really want to get a better quality live stream.

Audio quality will be the next thing I tackle, but video quality is the priority at this time.  Hopefully, I’m not messing this up.  I plan on doing the switch next week after I’ve taken some notes on FPS performance in a few games.  If I’m going to recommend i5’s all the time, I might as well get some hard numbers to back it up.  So let’s see how many more FPS I get in Star Citizen, DCS World, Naval Action, and Battlefield.

That’s all for now.  I had a neat IT adventure last week I need to share, but I have not the time to type it right now.

I picked up a couple of really good games during the latest Steam holiday sale.  Warhammer Vermintide had been on my wishlist since pre-release.  However, I noticed Dying Light for $20.  I knew absolutely nothing about the game other then zombies were in it.  Now I used to love me a good zombie stomp.  Red Dead Redemption’s zombie DLC was fantastic, and I have fond memories of DayZ during it’s early days.  Left 4 Dead 2 is also a great time.

These days though, the zombie games were just getting to be a bit much.  I started to look past zombie games as I did WW2 shooters.  There were just too many of them!  This was an ignorant way to do things.  I overlooked Dying Light.

It’s a parkouring zombie madhouse.  You get to run around in a rather detailed world completing missions for random people, or you can follow the story line.  I’ve been doing a bit of both, and I’ve been enjoying it.

So, ‘what’s the twist?’ I’m sure you’re asking.  Well, things get interesting at night.  The big baddies come out swinging for the fences, and the safest way to defeat them is to run like hell.  Unless one wishes a rather graphic up close view a Reapers from Blade 2, you should run to a safe house scattered around the map.

You get a 1 hour warning.  They will remind you on the radio continuously to get safe.  You then start to hear screams in the distance, and your watch starts beeping.  The screams get louder and much angrier.  Ohh myy, is it pretty spooky to experience the first time.

I’ve not played Mirror’s Edge, but I sure do like how the parkour works in most of Dying Light.  It’s pretty close to how it works in Assassins Creed, and it works well.  However, I still have those accidents where I overestimate a jump and die though.  Eh, playing in Co-Op helps with that.

A useful advantage of the parkour is that you rarely have to fight any zombies.  A majority of the zombies are pretty docile in the early game.  You can run right past most of them and scamper up a building with little worry.  If you make too much of a racket though, the zombies become a bit more aggressive, and it attracts faster moving zombies.  It’s a nice system that lets you plan out your fights.  Just don’t get surrounded as the game mentions.

So, how is the smashing zombie part?  It is a real treat.  The damage model on the zombies is some of the best stuff I’ve seen.  The damage is local to where your weapon impacts.  So you can smash off parts of a zombies face, skull, or whatever really.  If you like the Evil Dead series, this should be right up your alley in terms of the splatter factor.  I should note that head damage of some kind seems to be the best way to put down zombies in Dying Light.

It does have weapon lifespan thing, and I hate that feature in games.  However, the weapon repair isn’t that bad since you can run past most zombies as I stated earlier.  You can also find an huge amount of weapons fairly easily.  So when one weapon is ruined, you should have a good lineup to choose from.  In addition you can mod them, and you can create some pretty cool stuff with the options given.  Electrify your pipe wrench so it stuns people?  Huzzah!  Exploding Ninja Stars?  Hell yeah!  Most importantly, you can craft your own Molotov Cocktail.  You are going to want to stock up on them.

The story and voice acting are alright.  It’s not doing much for me, but it doesn’t hurt the game really.  I’m still watching the cut scenes at least, and I was rewarded by viewing a rather annoying character die.  So, that was a pretty cool part.

Co-Op play is yet another part the Devs nailed with this one.  It works well.  I can’t say it’s been flawless, but most issues are due to not being able to join a game during a cut scene.  The majority of the Co-Op gameplay I’ve done has gone really well, and been a lot of fun.  It really does help when you can warp all players to a mission critical spot when needed.  It’s easy to wander off in Dying Light.  A second helper is how Co-Op players ghost through each other so you can’t knock your friend off a building while performing parkour.  I’m so glad they have that feature.

Problems in game have been few with me clocking up about 20hrs into it.  There are a few odd character glitches, and I’ve had one co-op mission go REALLY wonky until it we had to restart it.  Overall, bugs have been few and far between.

So I’d give this one thumbs up.  I was lucky to grab it on sale for $20, and it’s a steal at that price.  I believe it’s currently $60, and I would say it’s worth full price.

**I’m sure there are some typos up there.  I’ll read it over later.  Who knows, only bots read all this anyway.  Haha!

I was very happy that the Mirage 2000-C was released on Christmas.  It was a nice surprise for a DCS plane to be released on time.  Props to RAZBAM Sims.  I know they’ve made aircraft for Flight Simulator for awhile now.  I hope they bring on a bunch of new things for DCS.

Fly by wire landings sure are easy, and have some quirks.

So I’ve been enjoying the HELL out of Fallout 4.  For all the shit it’s gotten from some groups, it’s a fantastic game.  It takes the best stuff from Fallout 3/NV while removing some of the things that were a pain in the ass to be honest.  Remember having to carry around three or more of the same weapon so you could repair it, gone! Screw that mechanic in any  game..  I hated having a weapon break on me after barely using it.  I can understand it’s realistic to have a chance of a weapon breaking, but those guns wore out fast.

The VATS system has changed a bit, and I didn’t like the change at first.  It no longer stops time.  This is not ideal when the enemy you’re trying to target is right next to you.  However, it REALLY does add to the emotions you’ll feel when playing.  VATS now causes a ‘bullet time’ effect where time slows down when activated.  So you can watch the Fat Man round slowly creeping up on your crotch.  Yes, you can die a bit easier with the new system. Although, It is pretty exciting to see the the danger coming your way.  A good game will provoke you in some way.  Fallout 4 sure does that in the right ways.

*ProTip – use vats to shoot enemy moltovs being thrown at you.  They will explode if you hit them.

Another new system has been added to Fallout 4 in the form of crafting.  If one wished, you could even craft whole buildings or towns.  Personally, I have enjoyed fussing with some town building, but the weapons mods are where it’s at.  You can really do some amazing stuff to customize your weapons.  You are free to blur and cross the lines between the types of firearms.  So your semi automatic pistol can become a revolver if wish and have the scrap.

The new crafting has changed the way I might play an earlier Fallout game in terms of bottlecaps.  You are no longer collecting junk to sell for the most part.  You’re mostly going to be using that junk to help craft and mod things.  You might need to save up the caps if you wish to buy a legendary item off of a trader.  However,  I’ve found that modded guns can be just as effective to get you through the game.

Foodies can rejoice in being after to craft your own meals now.  And while that’s a bad joke, the in game food crafting is not.  You can make some seriously stat boosting food items in game now.  Damage resistance, damage boosts, extra carry weight, and extra XP food items can be made.  You can save your stimpacks for serious injury and save lots of caps by not having to buy healthpacks all the time.  It’s great!

The story.  Eh, nothing really groundbreaking so far.  It works, but really brings nothing new to the table.  Although I’ve found the little side interactions to be more entertaining.  I guess I’ve been more focused on the gameplay and beefing my character up, I have not done much of the main quest.  Hmm, I do that a lot in Bethesda games, and that’s not a bad thing.  The world is more fun then following the main quest.

Bugs?  The giant bugs are a joy to gibb in the game.  As for the nastier kind that are hard to beat without a patch?  I’ve had it crash on me once in about 48hrs of play.  Although the game REALLY hates to be alt-tabbed.  The worst glitches appear after an alt-tab and require a game restart to remove.  Other then that, the bugs I’ve found have been hilarious.  Plant life ‘buzzing’ at an unnatural frequency,  cars vibrating across an area, and people being launched into a low earth orbit upon death.  I like these bugs.  I’d like to see MORE of these bugs.  However, I’ve only seen each of them once in my gameplay.

The graphics have improved a bit, but the damage model seems like a throwback at times.  The people in Fallout 4 are much improved, but when things go south and you get your critical headshot, the Gibs seem like stuff straight from Fallout 3.  Eh, they are still effective, they just do not seem as improved as the rest of the graphics.  I should note that the landscapes are beautiful by the way.

So, should you get it?  I would recommend it.  I feel like you’ll get $60 in gameplay out of it.  Although, it will probably go on sale soon enough.  I know I paid less then $60 using Greenman gaming.  I’m happy with my purchase so far.

Good luck Vault Dwellers.