Smoke Affect

[f4nutter]

i'm trying to work on a smoke affect for the red arrows/patrouille suisse e.t.c. is it possible to make this affect come on above 5,000ft and off below that, also how do i make each aircraft have a different smoke ? is it possible.

[MIKE JG]

Ray you can tie a smoke effect to an individual aircraft through the smoke system .CFG entry or the lights .CFG entry. Using the lights entry gives you a little more choice in the matter.

To have a different smoke effect for the same AI model, you will need to have multiple aircraft folders for that same model so that you can individually define each aircraft's smoke effect type.

The only way that I know of to tie an effect of an AI model to a certain parameter would be to attach a timing mechanism to each effect and through trial and error get it to come on about when you want. But it's not like XML where you can define exactly when you want the smoke on or off. If you use the lights as your effect trigger, you can use the parameters that control the lights on or off as a trigger for the effect.

[f4nutter]

thank's for your reply mike, i sort of guessed i would have to make 9 red's folder's to have 3 different smoke affect's.
the only thing i dont know how to do is the timing on/off affect ?. if anyone knows how this works can they give me a rough example to work with so i could learn

[Firebird]

Well Ray, in simplistic terms the effect comes in to play as soon as the aircraft is spawned in the system, whether cold on the ground or already in the air. This is why sometimes you will get an afterburner effect on and AI aircraft as soon as you load up, if its airborne.

The effect is triggered by an event, which is normally a light switch. The type of light determines when the light is on. The effect itself can be delayed, i.e. so many seconds after the event is triggered and you can set it to last for so long as well.

This is how we are able to get the burners to come in after lining up and, hopefully, not before and how we get them to switch off after takeoff. We have to do several test flights to get the timing correct.
With what you want to do I think that unless you want the smoke on all the time, including landing, you are not going to be able to do what you want, in AI. Oh yes, one last thing, the effect is a once only thing as the lights only come on once in an AI flight.

Does this help you?

[f4nutter]

thanks steve yes it does help me, the affect i want is not possible oh well thanks anyway

[bismarck]

Hi Ray, I use the LAGO MB-339 Frecce Tricolore as AI. They have the smoke effect associated with light but I have the effect showing starting from taxing to landing.Not so real but the effect in flight is quite good as you can see if you search for a post "Frecce Tricolore" on this forum.
To obtain the three different colours, I have three AC directory, one per colour.

Ciao, Giorgio

[f4nutter]

thanks giorgio, thats where i'm up too now, smoke on all the way, looks good in flight but....................well you know ?

[nickblack423]

If you set the smoke as a strobe light instead of a nav light it will only come on on the runway before departure. Then some clever AFCADing you can put the Hold SHort on the runway instead of the taxiway. Mike MacIntyre did some good work with this in his Thunderbirds AI package if you check it out.

Nick

[f4nutter]

cheers nick i will look into it.

[f4nutter]

thanks to nick's input i now have smoke on only on the runway and off when roll out has stopped

[bismarck]

Nice...
I think that you have to share the session of the aircraft.cfg for that effect....at least.....

Giorgio

EDIT: Please....

[MIKE JG]

Just add a line in your lights section and make it a value of "2" which is for the strobes.

Here is an example for you. This is from an AI model's Aircraft.cfg file

[lights]
//Types: 1=beacon, 2=strobe, 3=navigation, 4=cockpit, 5=landing, 6=taxi, 7=wing,
light.0 = 1, -15.69, -0.35, 4.60, fx_shockwave_beacon_rotating_red.fx,
light.1 = 1, -15.69, 0.35, 4.60, fx_shockwave_beacon_rotating_red.fx,
light.2 = 2, 9.40, 0.00, -3.50, fx_beaconb.fx,
light.3 = 2, 9.40, 0.00, -3.50, fx_f16_strobeh,
light.4 = 3, 7.35, 0.00, -3.43, fx_f16_navwhih,
light.5 = 3, -6.69, -12.06, -2.40, fx_f16_navredm,
light.6 = 3, -6.69, 12.09, -2.40, fx_f16_navgrem,
light.7 = 3, -6.69, -12.06, -2.64, fx_f16_navredm,
light.8 = 3, -6.69, 12.09, -2.64, fx_f16_navgrem,
light.9 = 3, -17.00, -0.20, 5.29, fx_f16_navwhih,
light.10 = 3, -17.00, 0.20, 5.29, fx_f16_navwhih,
light.11 = 2, -21.5, -0.90, -1.75, fx_t38_ab,
light.12 = 2, -21.5, 0.90, -1.75, fx_t38_ab,
light.13 = 2, -21.5, 0.90, -1.75, fx_redsmoke,

All you need to do is figure out which smoke effect you want to use, then add a new line to your lights section. In this case, the line in bold is the one I added. You have to number the new line in numerical order and you can only have lights.0 through lights.18 for a total of 19 entries which is the FS9 maximum. So if your lights section already has 19 entries, you either have to replace one of the lines or do without the extra effect.

So in this case "light.13" is the new line number, "=2" tells FS9 that this effect is set to use the strobe light parameters. This means that it will come on once the aircraft has been cleared onto the runway and will go out once the aircraft slows back down to its taxi speed either on the runway or taxiway. "-21.5, 0.90, -1.75," this part is simply the Z, X and Y coordinates that you want the effect to be located at. To add a smoke effect the easiest thing to do if the model already uses an afterburner effect is to simply copy the coordinates that the afterburner effect use as I have done in this example. If there is no afterburner effect to use as a guide for the coordinates you might use the white tail nav light to get you an approximate location and then have to fine tune the coordinates until you get the location where you want it. There is also another trick you can use. Search your Aircraft.cfg file for this line, "[GeneralEngineData]". Underneath that should be a set of Z,X and Y coordinates that tell FS9 where the engine exhaust is supposed to be. So you can reliably use those coordinates although they usually have to be moved backwards just a little bit to simulate where the smoke would form coming out of the tail pipe. Finally the "fx_redsmoke," part is the name of the effect from your FS9/Effects folder. Note you do not include the file extension (.fx).

That's all you have to do.

[bismarck]

Thank you Mike, now I've understand what was my error when I tried yesterday.....

Giorgio

[f4nutter]

i have now put a "SMOKE ON" red arrows update on my site for anyone wanting it.

[zsoltfireman]

Great Work!