If you love to fly a flight simulator, you can now be your own movie producer, director and actor producing a unique collection of 'flight simulator movie clips' using a free flight simulator software.

For example, you can create a movie clip flying as the Blue Angel or Thunderbird aerobatic team performing in an airshow or a movie clip of an air-to-air dogfight scene and then view the movie on your PC or even on a VCD player like any movie CDs you have. I will be showing you how you can do all that.

Now, before you begin, you need to install a flight simulator software that you can download for free.

This flight simulator software - YS Flight Simulation System was written by Captain YS (Mr Soji) from Japan who has kindly made this software free for all to use.

I was informed by him that the software is updated twice a year, so it is pretty updated in terms of free support. It has a good number of features below which I have noticed :

• Easy to install and use. (I take less than an hour to install and understand how the whole thing worked.)

• It has a wide selection of airplane simulation models and predefined scenarios you can choose from. Eg. you can choose a Thunderbird formation scenario to enjoy flying as a Thunderbird formation team leader.

• Reasonably good engine sound that adds some realism to the flight and so you can be sure that you are not creating silent movies.

• You can record, playback and even edit the flight recordings.

• The flight controls are also easily learned : eg. G for Gears, B for brakes, F for Flaps and you can fly it with your joystick or even with your mouse.

• Best of all, it does not require a high end PC to run the software. It only requires a PC with minimum Pentium 200MHz CPU or faster, 64 MB RAM or larger and runs on Windows95/98/Me/NT4.0/2000/XP and Linux with DirectX 3.0 or later. So you do not need to spend money to upgrade you PC hardware (although I would still recommend you to get a good video card)

Steps to Get Started

To begin, you can follow the steps below :

Step 1 : Download and installed the software into your PC and familiarise yourself with the key controls and HUD (Head-up-displays) symbology using the Help manual.

Step 2 : Next, plan your flight manoeuvre or mission (eg. landing approach or air-to-air assault) which you like to fly.

Step 3 : Fly your planned mission and manoeuvre using the HUD view (which is the default view). During the flight, the software will record every controls and 6DOF (degree of freedom) of your aircraft at periodic time intervals.

Step 4 : To stop the flight recording, just press Esc key twice. At this point the flight has already been recorded (but not saved in your harddisk yet - only residing in your memory).

Step 5 : Save the flight recording and review your flight to note down the sections of time recording that you like to edit. Then edit the recorded flight using the editing functions provided by the software and save your edited flight as a different filename.

At this point, your movie is completed as far as the shooting is concerned. You can now share this recorded flight file with your friends to view it using the same free simulator software. Just email the saved flight files (filename.yfs) to them. And they can playback your recorded flights using the same software which they can download and install for free from www.YSFlight.com

To view the recorded flight file, just load the file and select Replay Record to replay the loaded flight file. Then use the F2 key to toggle and view the flight from different viewpoints. (Try the fly-pass view and see yourself fly by, you'll enjoy it !).

Alternative, you can turn this flight recording into a mpeg movie clip and cut your own VCD or DVD movie to be played on a VCD or DVD player. Find out how you can Convert the Flight Recordings into Mpeg Movie Clips.