CFS2 opening movie refuses to go away

[TARPSBird]

It's been over 20 years since I've had to ask this question, but after installing CFS2 in Windows 10 last week here I am.
How the heck do you suppress the opening movie that plays before the CFS2 splash screen appears? I've tried changing the values for ShowMovie and ShowLogo in the cfs2.cfg file, that didn't work. I tried removing opening.mpg from the CFS2 main folder, that didn't work. The sim is playing the movie from somewhere but I can't figure out where. And I no longer have a previous install of CFS2 that I can check to see what I did to stop the movie. Any response is appreciated, and thanks again to the members here who helped me get CFS2 up and running.

 

[aussie]

That's strange,

ShowLogo=0 will turn off the opening.mpg

If you remove the opening.mpg cfs2 will rewrite the .cfg to read ShowLogo=0 even if it was set to ShowLogo=1 before starting the program.

How many installs do you have of cfs2? Maybe the desktop icon is pointing to a different install location.

Cheers
Aussie

 

[Captain Kurt]

There are 2 ways to do this:
1) open the CFS2.cfg; look at the top:
[LANGUAGE]
DLL=english.fll
[MAIN]
ShowLogo=1
ShowMovie=1
change to:
[LANGUAGE]
DLL=english.fll
[MAIN]
ShowLogo=0
ShowMovie=0
2) or simply delete the movie from the main CFS2 folder - saves 20MB
Your choice.

If it is still playing it has to be as Aussie says and you have a separate install or partial install somewhere that is linked (alliased)

 

[TARPSBird]

Aussie and CK, thanks for the suggestions. I found where the opening.mpg was playing from: the disk 1/2 install files and still had on my desktop. Only problem is, in my install the movie seems to be linked to the sim booting up. If I delete the movie and the sim doesn't find it elsewhere, the first screen after the splash screen opens with no text (Free Flight, Quick Combat, etc.) and if I click an empty box it crashes. The ShowMovie/ShowLogo entries in the .cfg file don't prevent this - if no movie, sim crashes. I'm out of ideas so I'll just mouse-click through the damn movie and be happy that my CFS2 is working.

 

[Allen]

Make sure you edit the CFS2.cfg with CFS2 NOT running.

You could just replace the video with something like attached that is just 1 sec video to replace the stock opening.mpg.

 

[UncleTgt]

Make sure you edit the CFS2.cfg with CFS2 NOT running.

You could just replace the video with something like attached that is just 1 sec video to replace the stock opening.mpg.

That's a very creative workaround Allen, great suggestion

 

[TARPSBird]

You could just replace the video with something like attached that is just 1 sec video to replace the stock opening.mpg.

That's a good idea, Allen. I'll convert some of my airplane pics into a short .mpg clip to replace the movie.

Update: Found an online .jpg to .mpg conversion tool and converted this pic (see below) to a short .mpg file. Worked great as "opening.mpg" in CFS2!

 

[Dirtman]

Yo TB;
You seem to be having some unusual problems my friend.
My experience & testing today indicates something very odd?
- I am using Win11 for this today

Personally; the only things I have ever disliked is the Gawd Awefull "opening movie" & ALL the "cartoon" based screens.
Thus I have removed or replaced them in all my 11 theatre installs since 2006.

If you delete the opening movie file - it never pays again. Because it is not there.

Altering the CFS2.GFG (show movie) HAS NO EFFECT once the opening movie is removed.
- several of my installs have the movie deleted; some CFS2.cfg - Show movie enabled as "1" with no ill effects.

In the main CFS2 folder, locate the "opening.mpg" file.
Just delete it - problem solved



Restart CFS2 - does the movie continue to play?
It can't if it's not there (deleted)

As previously stated, far above:
Make sure all copies of CFS2 have been deleted from Local Disk (C) Program Files (x86) Combat Flight Simulator 2
And all previous shortcuts have been removed/deleted.

Actually, delete them all and start again: Create a new shortcut to CFS2

Right click your desktop, select "New" - then "Shortcut".
From the next screen, select "Browse", then "This PC", then "Local Disk (C)" then "CFS2".
Click on the cfs2.exe, then "next" then "next" again.
New shortcut appears on your desktop.

This will repair your problem if you follow the procedure.

 

[Dirtman]

This just hit me ... probably the base reason ... simple boo-boo:

When you alter the CFS2.CFG ... you MUST HIT THE "SAVE" BUTTON (upper left corner of the file) because it is just a "text document" and any changes must be saved.

 

[TARPSBird]

Hi Dirtman,
I tried all of what you suggested, and on my install if I simply remove the opening.mpg file the sim will boot up only to the screen after the splash screen where you select what you want to do (see my comment above) and there's no text on the selection buttons. Try to select Free Flight or Quick Combat and you get a "CFS2 has encountered an error..." message and you're done. I do remember being able to kill the opening video by just tweaking the entries in the .cfg file but back then I was running CFS2 off the disks so that probably was why it worked. My substitute opening file with the quickie shot of the F6F's is working OK so I'm satisfied with the fix.