Prolonged smoke & fire for crashed aircraft mod/Smoke & fire for destroyed static aircraft mod

[Stonehouse]

Believe no changes required for this mod post 5.105

[Stonehouse]

Reviewing (when I have spare time) for post 5.106 changes but believe it is fine to use as is.

[Stonehouse]

On 9/21/2023 at 11:25 AM, Stonehouse said:

Reviewing (when I have spare time) for post 5.106 changes but believe it is fine to use as is.

This mod is fine to use as is post 5.106

[Stonehouse]

Don't believe this needs to be updated and I believe it will be fine post 5.107.

[Stonehouse]

I believe this mod is fine post 5.108

[Stonehouse]

I believe this mod is fine post 5.201

[Stonehouse]

Believe ok post 5.202

[sevenless]

Excellent MOD. Really adds to the atmosphere! ?

 

Any chance you can extend this effect to successfully strafed and destroyed ground targets (planes) ?

Edited April 4, 2024 by sevenless

[Stonehouse]

29 minutes ago, sevenless said:

Excellent MOD. Really adds to the atmosphere! ?

 

Any chance you can extend this effect to successfully strafed and destroyed ground targets (planes) ?

Maybe.........it's likely that each type of ground target has a separate setup. Type here could be category like static planes or individual unit types like a PzIV (I think tanks have things like this individually defined rather than a global category of "tanks" burn x secs) 

 

Did you have specific types in mind? You have written "planes" after ground targets so I'm guessing static planes is one?

[sevenless]

24 minutes ago, Stonehouse said:

Did you have specific types in mind? You have written "planes" after ground targets so I'm guessing static planes is one?

 

Yep, as I am currently playing a Mossi career and intruder and airfield attack/bomb missions are a thing, I thought it would be nice to have your new and prolonged smoke effect also on destroyed parked planes, if possible. I would be grateful if you could find the time to look into this.

[Stonehouse]

Well, I've isolated the two effects involved. One for single engine statics and one for twins. See what I can do but no promises sorry.

[Stonehouse]

Ok so perhaps this is overdone but I've done some googling for pics of aircraft that are burning on the ground after being strafed etc and it seems fairly representative. WIP anyway but thought I would run it past people. Lol I may have to revisit the crashed aircraft effects.

 

Some FYIs for current WIP version:

• Effect loops - similar issue to the crashed aircraft effect that I can't get around so far. 
• Smoke and fire lasts the mission due to the effects I ended up using. Slightly different situation to the crashed aircraft effect. Essentially the two cases are put together a bit differently as one is a dynamic situation and the other static.
• Smoke will always blow north. I've pinched the small city fire smoke and darkened it up but inherited the issue of always blowing north
• Flame is borrowed from an aircraft fuel tank explosion.
• Actual static aircraft destruction effect is a combination of 6 building demolition effects but only the first 3 are actually used as it appears to be based on the size of the object being destroyed. Essentially all static blocks seem to be set up this way. A single engine/ small twin uses the first 2 effects and a large twin like a HE111 uses the first 3. I have replaced the 2nd and 3rd in this WIP mod. Not 100% sure but I think this combination of effects is why you occasionally see the smoke get greyish white sections even though I've only used very dark smoke in my 2 modded effects.
• The target statics are a P51D, a P38 and a HE111

 

 

Edited April 8, 2024 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

Assuming people don't object to the dimensions of the smoke and fire I'm close to releasing the destroyed static aircraft smoke and fire mod. 

 

Question for users - do you want it separate to the prolonged smoke and fire for crashed aircraft mod or is it better to bundle it up with it and rebadge it so you have less mods to worry about?

 

Easy either way from my viewpoint.

 

Example real life pics

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 8, 2024 by Stonehouse

[Youtch]

Maybe better to separate it to give more flexibility.

 

What about the impact on FPS?

[Ghost666]

Separate, please. 😶‍🌫️

[Vamandrac]

Looks good, but separate please.

[czech693]

Love it.  Either way is good for me.

[Stonehouse]

Ok separate it is.

 

9 hours ago, Youtch said:

What about the impact on FPS

Haven't seen any impact, I guess if you had hundreds of burning static aircraft it could hurt fps but 8 or 10 or so doesn't matter. Similar to the Dynamic effects and units mod, if you make the probability of spawning fires, units (particularly units, which is one reason I only spawn effects like fires) etc too high and have hundreds spawned and spawning you will see a fps drop but in a typical airfield attack you might destroy at best 10-20 static aircraft, and I doubt there is any issue. Even if it was a dogfight server and you hit several airfields I don't think you would see a problem. I've also removed the "always visible" attribute on the smoke and fire so once you get far enough away it will not be visible and I believe it stops being generated by the graphics engine at that point.

[Stonehouse]

Smoke and fire for destroyed static aircraft now available in first post.

[Stonehouse]

Believe both are fine post 5.203

[RedeyeStorm]

Hey @Stonehouse, love your mods so I was wondering if it was possible to make ground targets stay on fire/smoking as well? I mean when bombers attack some facility there is a exploison and then only desroyed buildings but no fire and smoke. Would be awesome.

 

[Stonehouse]

4 hours ago, RedeyeStorm said:

Hey @Stonehouse, love your mods so I was wondering if it was possible to make ground targets stay on fire/smoking as well? I mean when bombers attack some facility there is a exploison and then only desroyed buildings but no fire and smoke. Would be awesome.

 

Usual response, maybe. I'll take a look. A lot will depend on whether I can isolate the effect and whether it is a global level thing or whether it involves editing hundreds of files. I kind of got myself into trouble that way with the AQMB and career AAA attack range mod. There are hundreds of files in that mod and it makes it hard and time consuming to update and also increases the chance I'll stuff something up and ruin someone's fun. I can only really find time for keeping one such mod current. 

[RedeyeStorm]

No problem it’s just an idea. 

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, RedeyeStorm said:

No problem it’s just an idea. 

All good, I didn't mean anything negative in my response. Just there are a few places in the game where (if it was any kind of a relational database behind it) I'd say they've really denormalised parameters. So, you get repeated data blocks in files rather than holding the info at a global level. e.g. AI dogfight parameters that I fiddle with for AI Gunnery. Each individual aircraft has the same set of parameters identically. It creates a lot of work when say the range the ace AI open fire at needs to change. You get 105 edits rather than the 1 you would have if they were global values. I can only assume they did what they did for performance reasons or perhaps inherited it from ROF. I would hope in the new game they would make them global so they are read once at mission start and then just used. As they are now, I imagine they are read for each aircraft type/skill level in the mission. Possibly even each aircraft/skill each time they fire, however from our side you just can't tell.

Edited April 20, 2024 by Stonehouse

[RedeyeStorm]

Man what you are doing might as well be magic as far as I am concerned. I always appreciate it when someone like puts in this effort!

 

👍

[Stonehouse]

On 4/20/2024 at 6:45 AM, RedeyeStorm said:

Hey @Stonehouse, love your mods so I was wondering if it was possible to make ground targets stay on fire/smoking as well? I mean when bombers attack some facility there is a exploison and then only desroyed buildings but no fire and smoke. Would be awesome.

 

Started doing analysis on this, going through block definitions and epl files to see what efx and text files are used. Looks promising so far. Generally, all blocks (buildings and statics) seem to use the same 4-6 different emitter files. So, from a maintenance of a mod point of view that is generally good as anything done to those files impacts pretty much everything in the block category. The downside is that unless I change each block definition's references to those 4-6 files, I can't limit that impact and it could go unintended places.

 

Keep you posted.

Edited April 22, 2024 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

Believe both mods are fine post 5.203b

[Stonehouse]

On 4/22/2024 at 3:07 PM, Stonehouse said:

Started doing analysis on this, going through block definitions and epl files to see what efx and text files are used. Looks promising so far. Generally, all blocks (buildings and statics) seem to use the same 4-6 different emitter files. So, from a maintenance of a mod point of view that is generally good as anything done to those files impacts pretty much everything in the block category. The downside is that unless I change each block definition's references to those 4-6 files, I can't limit that impact and it could go unintended places.

 

Keep you posted.

Just an FYI that this is still WIP along with adding some other setups to the EMG more realistic AAA environment mod but simply haven't had much spare time. 

[Stonehouse]

Had a small amount of time to do some more analysis on the idea of fire/smoke of destroyed buildings. Pretty much everything block wise has the same set of links to destroyed effects and the effect used is based on the radius of destruction of the object. EG large building uses effect B small building uses F. Ditto with static aircraft and lots of other things. There are 6 bands for radius ranging from 1m to 80m. The 1m effect is pretty much a small burst of greyish smoke. The larger radius effects are combinations of several effects and textures. Anyway, the thought occurs to me that only the large radius objects might generate continuous smoke and fire. 

On 5/8/2024 at 10:38 AM, Stonehouse said:

Just an FYI that this is still WIP along with adding some other setups to the EMG more realistic AAA environment mod but simply haven't had much spare time. 

 

[Stonehouse]

On 5/25/2024 at 11:59 AM, Stonehouse said:

Had a small amount of time to do some more analysis on the idea of fire/smoke of destroyed buildings. Pretty much everything block wise has the same set of links to destroyed effects and the effect used is based on the radius of destruction of the object. EG large building uses effect B small building uses F. Ditto with static aircraft and lots of other things. There are 6 bands for radius ranging from 1m to 80m. The 1m effect is pretty much a small burst of greyish smoke. The larger radius effects are combinations of several effects and textures. Anyway, the thought occurs to me that only the large radius objects might generate continuous smoke and fire. 

 

 

Bands + 2 as I found a 120m radius effect as well as ones for cathedrals specifically

 

The other issue - similarly to the mod for static aircraft but more noticeable - is that simply looping the effect for the buildings will mean the cycle of several effects will repeat. So for a 30m radius destruction you get a lowish approx 2-3m high expanding cloud of greyish smoke as whatever it is destroyed, followed by a flame effect, followed by a dark greyish smoke column which eventually dies out leaving a distortion effect representing the heat from the burnt out whatever. The cycle lasts about 60 secs and I so far have no control over the length of each section of the effects cycle. Simply increasing the duration impacts all sections. ie the low expanding cloud will last longer as will each other section of the effect. Makes things look quite odd as for example the rate of expansion of the grey cloud changes.

 

So if I just loop the 30m effect without changing the duration you will see the cycle of effects repeat fairly often breaking immersion. 

 

I think I will likely have to replace the effect for > =30m or maybe >=50m with something else - this would probably mean that you lose the initial cloud of grey smoke representing the collapse of the building and initial fire effect. It really depends on what other effects I can find that might be able to be tweaked and substituted.  

 

Depending on how this is implemented it may impact more than just building fires, however I am hoping that the filtering of effects by radius will isolate the substitutions to things of suitable size thereby keeping it believable.

Edited May 29, 2024 by Stonehouse

[RedeyeStorm]

Seriously appreciate your efforts 🫡

[Stonehouse]

Some more fiddling here and there in odd moments. I thought that perhaps I could change the duration of the overall effect and then perhaps alter the range numbers to control the length of the stages in the overall effect. IE I thought the range numbers might be proportions of the duration. 

 

See eg of buildingdemolition50.txt below. Since the ranges were consecutive, I theorised they might be proportions of the overall duration. I know that the duration is in secs not frames due to comments in other effects files. However, so far changing the duration and ranges doesn't seem to work per my theory. I'm now thinking perhaps they are argument ranges for each layer in the overall effect. If you recall earlier comments the epl below is made up of an efx file (which I think is the grey expanding smoke) plus several other emitters/textures. The overall effect is:

• A low grey circular smoke cloud expanding from a central point. I assume this represents the object being destroyed. The 10m plus destruction effects all have this although in increasing size. Although I know from the static aircraft smoke and fire mod this part looks wrong for non-building objects like aircraft and static vehicles as static aircraft etc make use of the 10,30 and 50m effects.
• Some fire/s without smoke
• Smoke column starts with fire continuing to burn (perhaps more so) plus an ambient glow on the surroundings
• Fires die down, smoke begins to thin
• Smoke slowly disappears leaving a heat distortion effect. 

Stock duration is 60 secs with I believe the distortion taking 20 secs to die out.

 

Changing the duration just seems to spread the overall effect out over the increased time, looking very weird. 

 

I think in the end all I can do is to substitute completely other effects for the (tentatively) 50, 80 and 120m radius destructions. Currently I am thinking the village smoke loop for 50, small city fire loop for 80 and large city fire loop for 120. These effects are looped so don't go away. I think limiting things to the larger radii will mean other things that are not buildings will not be impacted although there is no guarantee to this as these buildingdemolition files are used for almost every destructible object within the "blocks" section of the editor objects. Possibly I may clone these three looped effects so I can point them at custom textures (eg darker smoke). I am not planning to alter each block definition to point to a custom file that replaces buildingdemolitionXX.txt as there are hundreds of edits to maintain if I do that. I would simply alter buildingdemolition50.txt, buildingdemolition80.txt, buildingdemolition120.txt and possibly buildingdemolition_cathedral.txt to use a different effect and this then is a global change.

 

So, what is lost by doing the above?

Essentially the three looped effects spawn fully formed. There is no gradual build up to a smoke and fire column as with the stock effects.  I haven't tested this so far but I expect that means once the bomb/rocket/munition explosion effect finishes and the object is replaced by the destroyed 3d shape that you would see one of the 3 looped effects appear. Obviously, this happens over the course of a very small number of frames so hopefully would look ok. It may not if the object is not a building but some other large "block".

 

Spoiler

//////    PhysicsBody properties
VisualImage=0,"graphics\effects\surf\BuildingDemolition-Big.epl",false

SoundScript="LuaScripts/Sound/explosions/Splash/Fire.cfg"
SoundStrength=0.2
SoundTime=2

duration=60
range=0,0.33
range=0.34,0.66
range=0.67,1
loop=false

destroy_pause=20

VisualRadius=3

 

[Stonehouse]

Ok draft version of smoke and fire for large blocks mod. I test using a custom version of the dynamic effects mod, so I really need people to try this out by destroying large blocks (eg buildings, cathedrals etc). The intent of the mod is aimed at buildings, and I am hoping that by only playing around with the 50m, 80m, 120m and cathedral demolition effects I have limited the impact to buildings. It may however go further than intended and it would be good to know this plus the details of the block destroyed that gets the modded effect that looks bad. This requires using the mission editor to identify the block/object.

 

So, I couldn't get the village smoke to work as it creates 3 dispersed smoke columns and I think that would look odd on blocks with 50m radius destruction. I ended up using just cityfiresmall01 and cityfire01. These are looped effects so don't go away. I did not make them always visible but did make them appear at "far distance" (I don't know what this is in km but essentially the graphics engine will fade these out past a certain distance) - I can change this to always visible if people want it.

 

The other downside of these two effects is that I believe they may ignore ambient wind and the smoke column will always be due north - I'm hoping people can test and advise either way. It could be my method of testing led to them going north so I would be very pleased to find out they use the ambient wind direction.

 

Due to the size of the efx files I was also forced last sec (I couldn't upload the zip to the forum as it was 13MB) to point 50 and 80m effects to the same file and ditto 120 and cathedral - so there are only 2 epl and 2 efx files instead of 4 of each. I believe I have done what was needed to make this functional (fingers crossed) - the net result should be the same as I tested but I like to keep stuff properly separate if I can as it facilitates future enhancement. I couldn't this time around unfortunately.

 

Let me know of problems so we can get to a release version of the mod.

 

 

 

Edited June 13, 2024 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

4 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Ok draft version of smoke and fire for large blocks mod. I test using a custom version of the dynamic effects mod, so I really need people to try this out by destroying large blocks (eg buildings, cathedrals etc). The intent of the mod is aimed at buildings, and I am hoping that by only playing around with the 50m, 80m, 120m and cathedral demolition effects I have limited the impact to buildings. It may however go further than intended and it would be good to know this plus the details of the block destroyed that gets the modded effect that looks bad. This requires using the mission editor to identify the block/object.

 

So, I couldn't get the village smoke to work as it creates 3 dispersed smoke columns and I think that would look odd on blocks with 50m radius destruction. I ended up using just cityfiresmall01 and cityfire01. These are looped effects so don't go away. I did not make them always visible but did make them appear at "far distance" (I don't know what this is in km but essentially the graphics engine will fade these out past a certain distance) - I can change this to always visible if people want it.

 

The other downside of these two effects is that I believe they may ignore ambient wind and the smoke column will always be due north - I'm hoping people can test and advise either way. It could be my method of testing led to them going north so I would be very pleased to find out they use the ambient wind direction.

 

Due to the size of the efx files I was also forced last sec (I couldn't upload the zip to the forum as it was 13MB) to point 50 and 80m effects to the same file and ditto 120 and cathedral - so there are only 2 epl and 2 efx files instead of 4 of each. I believe I have done what was needed to make this functional (fingers crossed) - the net result should be the same as I tested but I like to keep stuff properly separate if I can as it facilitates future enhancement. I couldn't this time around unfortunately.

 

Let me know of problems so we can get to a release version of the mod.

 

 

 

 

Ok doing some testing myself and found that I had some incorrect paths setup. Apologies

 

New version

Smoke and fire large blocks.zip

[RedeyeStorm]

Hey @Stonehouse, I am sorry to say that you have another mod to maintain! It is awesome! Escorted bombers on 

Normandy where they bombed some factory. Finally it actually looks like they hit something important. Big fire and a serious amount of billowing smoke. 
 

Should have made a screenshot.

 

🫡 👍

[Stonehouse]

7 hours ago, RedeyeStorm said:

Hey @Stonehouse, I am sorry to say that you have another mod to maintain! It is awesome! Escorted bombers on 

Normandy where they bombed some factory. Finally it actually looks like they hit something important. Big fire and a serious amount of billowing smoke. 
 

Should have made a screenshot.

 

🫡 👍

 

That's good to hear. If you happened to notice - was the distance the effect faded out ok? Does it need to be made always visible like the effects in the Dynamic Effects and Units mod?

 

Please do make a screenshot as I will use it (if that's ok) to show people what the mod does when I make it a release version. I don't have much time for flying these days due to R/L stuff, so you'll be able to make a screen shot before me most likely.

[RedeyeStorm]

On 6/15/2024 at 3:06 AM, Stonehouse said:

 

That's good to hear. If you happened to notice - was the distance the effect faded out ok? Does it need to be made always visible like the effects in the Dynamic Effects and Units mod?

 

Please do make a screenshot as I will use it (if that's ok) to show people what the mod does when I make it a release version. I don't have much time for flying these days due to R/L stuff, so you'll be able to make a screen shot before me most likely.

I’ll check the fade out distance and make some screenshots. I did notice that if your viewpoint is away from the blast area at some distance and you switch your (external) view back to the blast area you see the fire glow but no smoke. The smoke then fades in slowly.

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, RedeyeStorm said:

I’ll check the fade out distance and make some screenshots. I did notice that if your viewpoint is away from the blast area at some distance and you switch your (external) view back to the blast area you see the fire glow but no smoke. The smoke then fades in slowly.

That happens with a lot of effects - both stock and otherwise. May need the always visible parameter. I know it was mentioned in the dynamic effects thread so I'll see if I can find anything there to confirm my vague memory.

[Stonehouse]

2 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

That happens with a lot of effects - both stock and otherwise. May need the always visible parameter. I know it was mentioned in the dynamic effects thread so I'll see if I can find anything there to confirm my vague memory.

Ok found the discussion. It was in the original Random dynamic battle smoke and ground units thread before I took on the maintenance of the mod from TemplarGFX. MajorMagee and I were looking at the issue you describe. Seems like adding "always visible" mostly solved it as well as using cityfire01 and cityfiresmall01 (which I already am) - so will add the "always visible" parameter to each of the buildingdemolition files and also just check the smoke for destroyed static aircraft has it too. I believe I left it out as I people mentioned they were concerned about FPS drops but I really don't believe it is an issue for 99% of users. I can always talk the 1% through an edit if needs be so they can remove the parameter and see if they get back the lost FPS.

[Stonehouse]

Updated smoke and fire for destroyed static aircraft and release version of smoke and fire for large blocks in first post.