Figured we haven't had one of these in a while.
For the benefit of our newer screenshooters, rip this image to shreds.

Tell me what you would change and why. I do not want to hear positive things about this image at all.
I only want to hear constructive criticism. Doing this will help any newcomers that see this know what to focus on with their own images, and how to make a stunning debut in our screenshot forums, as some already have!

Have fun. 

Cars would be nice.

There is a car. Look to the right of the vandalized building, behind the bush!   

And I must say, the new screen name "Mincepie" threw me off at first....why the change?

If Shane is talking about what I think he is, that would certainly be interesting: an animated gif image.

Ok, not quite a "edit the shot" contest, but this is what I should do:

Added depth of field blur, add a bit of fog, and adjust the color levels, and finally, desaturate and add sepia filter....

the result:

ShaneG wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2010 at 6:05am:

Dammn! Where is the undo button?

I agree with Jakes on the blurring and fog addition needed, but don't like the orange colours he has added.

ShaneG wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2010 at 7:27am:

Make sure that the next one is easier to "rip"!

I really like it. Very creative. It is something we don't see often or at all so nothing to rip.

I hope it's not too late to "rip it." I think this is a great idea to help new people take better screenshots. I hope I don't come accross too harsh, but its for the betterment of all. Right?

My comments/rips:

1. No real subject

Not necessary in landscape, but I feel something is missing from this particular shot. In landscape type shots, its bets to frame background elements with foreground elements. There is this to some degree, but I still feel like it's lacking something to focus on. You could say that the fence leading to the airport/tower creates motion to the focal point. However, the focal point (tower/ buildings) don't seem significant enough to me.

2. Low angle to ground

Nothing wrong with shots from ground level in concept, but I don't like them in general. Because this is a computer game/simulation, the rendering of textures at extreme angles suffers. The ground textures seem blurry and jagged (sp?). Anisotropic filtering helps with that, but in general the ground textures in FS don't look great from the ground level.

3. In the area between the road and fence, there is a hard edge that appears to be some anomaly in the texture that takes away from the realism.

4. Snow looks cheesy

From lessons in photography, it is generally advisable not to take pictures of falling snow. Snow looks cool in motion, but generally it takes away from a still image.

5. Scenery models

In general, Flight Simulator scenery is best viewed at a distance. The low detailed models look fine from the air, or a distance away, but up close their flaws show. Also, the same tree is repeated over and over. I know that you can't control that, but it takes away from the realism of the shot.

This shot isn't terrible, but I don't feel it is that great. It doesn't play to the strengths of Flight Simulator. Objects in FS are meant to be viewed from a distance/the air. Rendering of textures at extreme horizontal angles to the view plane suffer from blurring. While the concept of the shot is unique, execution suffers.

Like I said above, I hope I don't sounded too harsh. These are just things I feel are drawbacks of this image.

Markag, you brought up some interesting points there, I was wondering though, had this shot been taken in an area of high quality, payware scenery, would some of those problems have existed? In which case, would you say this shot is suffering from "default low-res" FSX problems rather than FSX problems in general?

My comments/rips:

1. No real subject

I think he threw us on this one by not having a plane in the shot... pretty evil trick if ya ask me. 

2. Low angle to ground

It's not the viewing angle that causes the problem, more the resolution of the texture. Close up textures are generally magnified, and therefore have to be filtered, causing them to blur. At ground level, shallow viewing angles brings closer textures into view. If you look at the plane in this thread http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1267487778, the wing markings are pretty well defined, even though they are at a shallow viewing angle. If you had ground textures at the same resolution, they too would look sharp.

3. In the area between the road and fence, there is a hard edge that appears to be some anomaly in the texture that takes away from the realism.

I think again, this is a failing in the generic texture quality of FSX.

4. Snow looks cheesy

Can't argue with that, FSX snow is pretty poor.

5. Scenery models

Again, with better quality, payware for example, would you get the same problem? Like here http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1267598146 , that's pretty decent quality ground scenery... (I did see one the other day which I thought was fantastic, I can't find it again though) You also wouldn't get the same tree problem with an area that has had the trees chosen and manually placed.

I think what you have said is right, but are these things that can be cured with add-on scenery? In which case, does having better quality scenery open up more options for the type of shot that is available? Or should we accept that not everyone has the add-on scenery, and we should take that into account when assessing the quality of a shot, and consider the artist/creative more than the technical quality?

I'm new here, so I would be interested to know just what people consider to be the priority when judging a screenshot.

Lee,

To begin with, this image was created in FS2004. 

As far as a critique of this image, pretending that I didn't post it......

The most apparent fault with it that I see is the blurry road textures. As markag mentioned, more variety in the trees would have been nice too. Also, I would consider adding an approaching or departing light aircraft to the skies on the left side of the image, and removing the snowfall. Lightening the image a bit may be beneficial as well. 

Quote:

I see a lot of stuff in FS2004... I'm starting to wonder if I bought the right flight sim in FSX.

Interesting how people can approach a critique session in different ways. I sort of accepted the game limitations and looked at the image as a whole, I never really thought about the texture problems, repetetive scenery etc... because I accept that a game will suffer from those problems anyway, so mentally discounted them.

markag, maybe one day, we'll all be flying in a sim with perfect ground textures and photo-realistic scenery... I'll buy it the day we do, that's for sure.

I think it's been a great thread this. Certainly for me, as a newbie to the whole creative simming scene, it's given me a better idea of how the whole community functions and what they expect. I guess with spending all day on the development side of games, I try and switch off that part of my brain, and try and just play them a bit more than create with them. There's only so much creative juice in my brain, and come the end of the day, it's usually all gone. 

Edit: Just found that payware screenshot I mentioned earlier... http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1267665294

It's Cloud9's picture in that thread, very nice scenery in there. If everything looked as good as that, I'd be happy.