09.16.16
September
16, 2016 Uploads
Wow,
yet another entry discussing half a dozen videos! Night
Test After Heavy Rain and Thunder,
Asphalt
8: The Great September Max out!,
Walking
Around Simcoe Street United Church,
Asphalt
8: Test Driving The Cars From The Great September Max out!,
Pac-Man:
Not Gonna Let The Last Cut-off Stop Me!,and
Michael
Boyer GM Dealership Walk Around.
Those are the 6 videos that I'll be talking about, so let's get down
into the details right this minute! This is going to be a long
hardcore entry!
Alright,
so as mentioned in the video and description itself, this video was a
2nd
attempt in a different area to shoot better footage in the night. Not
exactly the easiest thing to do for a variety of reasons: one, the
camera might not simply be “strong” enough, as in not enough
pixels, aperture not the ample size, lenses and other technical bits.
Two, stabilization is an issue when there's no OIS and then there's
the whole trouble of simply walking around in the dark itself, which
can bring in a variety of complications. Despite these issues, I just
went ahead and determinedly shot another night video anyway. It was
originally raining and storming earlier that day, so I was under the
impression that I wouldn't be able to shoot a video, but surely, it
stopped later. After the rain subsided, I went out, found a suitable
area and let the camera roll. Well, it was initially showing blurry
footage, but I corrected it by adjusting settings and turning on the
appropriate modes. High humidity, hot temperatures, lightning, fog
and darkness aren't for the faint-of-heart! So, how well did this
video really compare to the other? That depends on your judgement. I
do think that this video is certainly better than the other, but I
still don't actually think it's good. Stabilization was still an
issue, but it was somewhat better than last time, and at least we can
actually see more of the surroundings this time. Would've been cool
to see some of the lightning that was still present in the sky, but
oh well. The camera isn't sharp enough.
All
Asphalt 8 players are aware of how hard and ridiculous it is to save
millions in this game, so legitimately saving up is lots of hard time
consuming work! Wait, is it even possible to hack the BlackBerry
version of this game? Who knows. Even if it is, I'm not up for that!
After saving up for a few months, I decided to make a video on my
upgrades to show what's been done, and what's going to be done next.
After rambling and rapidly flipping through my garage, I ended up
maxing out the following: Tesla Model S, Chevrolet Camaro GS,
Lamborghini Urus, Audi RS 4 Avant, Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione,
Ferrari Testarossa, Bentley Continental GT V8, Ford Shelby GT500,
Cadillac CTS-V Coupe Race Car, Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR-X, Chevrolet
Corvette C7, Lamborghini Veneno, GTA Spano and the ugly Ferrari FXX
Evoluzione! Wow! 3,231,396 sure covered a lot! More than I expected
actually. Now there was one obvious thing to be done after this: the
ultimate test drive! Read below for the full scope!
In
this grand episode of Asphalt 8, I race in Iceland with a Tesla Model
S, Monaco with the Chevrolet Camaro GS, Barcelona with the – whoa,
whoa, WHOA! Whoa. I am not about to seriously list all 14 cars and
their tracks like a repetitive, dry robot because it's just overkill,
and you already just read the list from above or watched the video
(if you were even brave enough!), so there's just no point in going
over all the nitty-gritty obvious details. Man! Playing on all these
tracks and producing and editing this video was a very big, time
consuming challenge, but I did it. I really wanted to take these cars
for a spin to test their full unlocked powers, while filming it, so
as stressful as I knew it would be, I still went for it. The end
results? Unfortunately not good because the earlier parts of the
video were very laggy. This was until I figured out that ScreenCorder
had been saving the videos to my phone's internal memory, which would
cause the videos to lag frequently whenever it came too close to
being full. This would happen a lot due to the size of the videos. I
switched the save toggle to memory card and it was quite the relief
to see an improvement, but it's too bad I didn't notice this earlier.
Lagging aside, the next big issue was audio syncing. Syncing audio to
14+ video clips was not an easy task for someone who isn't a
professional audio and video engineer, but it was good practice, and
it turned out to be quite alright, though some parts of the video are
a little worse than others. None were actually horribly off, so
that's a good thing. While I'm on the topic of audio, I'd say that
the next issue that bugged me the most was the quality of the
recorded audio. It's pretty warbly and screechy at most segments,
making it very undesirably to listen to. Anyone watching this would
likely have to resort to muting it if they wanted to make it through
from beginning to end. So you might be wondering, “why would you
upload such a long, partly laggy, cruddy video?” Two words:
experimentation and progression. That's why. Remember when I thought
the processor
was the one that was mostly to blame for the lag, when it was the
save location that was largely at fault? Had I given up at the point,
I would have never made the discovery and allow myself to progress.
So as much as I hate the way some of my videos turn out, the only way
to get better is to keep going and looking out for improvements along
the way. This includes actually playing better too. You've seen that
Iceland race with the Tesla and the excessive, hard drifting with the
Corvette so you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, so I'm shooting
for better audio, less lagging and hopefully professional racing next
time.
I
visited the Simcoe Street United Church located in Oshawa and filmed
it. Old churches have so much charming character with their
architecture, that some of the newer churches are sorely lacking.
This makes them nice subjects for filming. Mind you, I'm not saying
that you should judge a church sorely from outside to determine
whether you want to attend it or not, but to judge it from the people
within and most
importantly the message of the sermon.
Are they actually speaking the truth from within the bible, or are
they just twisting things, speaking in tongues without a translator,
or conducting other activities that God wouldn't approve of? This
should be the most important decision in choosing a church, but of
course, if a church does look run-down and ghetto, then that would
likely send the wrong impression. Thankfully, most places do a good
job to make sure the outside looks presentable. So, what did I think
of this church overall based on my exploration of the exterior?
Great! It was a nice, sunny, warm day, but I did not appreciate the
excessive wind that caused my hat to blow off! Being located
downtown, it had a lot of other shops and sites within the vicinity
of it, but Simcoe United's tall steeple and historical looks makes it
easily distinguishable from everything in sight.
For
real though, why should I let that cut-off from the last time stop me
from enjoying some more retro fun? This time I actually got to play
and successfully recorded about 13 minutes of raw gameplay. I believe
that I made it to level 5 or 6, before restarting back to level 1.
Some will probably laugh, but Pac-Man is honestly not an easy game
when it comes onto level progression. Those ghosts speed up
significantly which makes me wonder how it's even possible to
actually make it to level 256? Seriously, has anyone ever actually
done that? No
one has ever done that!
Anyway, so should I discuss how the recording session went? Might as
well. 6.9 out of 10 I'd say. There weren't excessive hiccups present,
but the sound could've been a bit better, and my gameplay could've
have also been better! Still, I think most would agree that the sound
was much better than my Asphalt 8 video. I should probably record
another Flappy Bird spin-off soon. You may either rejoice or be
sorrowful.
What
an interesting dealership to visit! I really like it when GM
dealerships actually have all
of their brands present, as opposed to the usual GMC & Buick or
Chevrolet & Cadillac inventory that most go by. The video turned
out to look a little foggy when the time came to edit it, but that
did not stop me from enjoying the looks of the cars in person. It's
one thing to see cars on the internet, but seeing them in person is
just so much better because you get to see all the crisp details to
the fullest, and the actual size of the vehicle. I didn't get to see
much 2016 or 2017 Corvettes (surprise! They're exotic sports cars
after all!), but most of the other General Motors vehicles were there
in abundance. Because this is one of the largest dealerships in the
area, there was a lot to film which resulted in the raw video being
nearly 20 minutes before editing it. One thing I regret is not taking
enough pictures... I was very video focused during that trip, but at
least it was still a good trip anyway, but would've been a little
better if I took more pictures of some of my favourite General Motor
cars. Speaking of that, my top three GM favourites are the Cadillac
Escalade ESV, GMC Sierra and Cadillac XT5. The Chevrolet Bolt EV is
nice too, but I don't know why GM decided to cripple it by not
offering an optional All-Whell Drive version. Oh well. Hopefully
they'll change their minds very soon. Can you imagine something
farfetched like an all-electric Cadillac Escalade ESV? $275,000 CAD
is my prediction. GMC Sierra? Let's go with $250,000 CAD if were
talking a Denali with a crew cab and 4X4 drivetrain. Hey, if an
all-electric Corvette is rumoured, then it can't be too absurd to
discuss possibilities of these trucks eventually coming in an
all-electric drivetrain. LOL? We'll, see..............
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