By introducing additional camera lensflares, I created a very hard and brilliant tiny sun surrounded by a large glare. In optimizing the brightness of the sun and glare, I was pushed to deeply modify much of the Enviro file more than I thought was needed. One result has been the development of a different philosphy on aircraft lighting and its relation to terrain, sky, and cirrus clouds, appropriate to early Cold War strategic operations at high altitude. Another result has been a focus on improving terrain shading at low sun elevation angles.
Included are a number of Enviro files with varying levels of changes, two grafix tga files, and instructions to get started. This is an experimental mod and will be continually developed for my own use, but with some work can be adapted to any taste for any use by anyone. I don't know where to start here, as this goes far beyond just the sun effect. I've started a thread at the ThirdWire webboard with screenshots and will try to describe what I'm doing. If any are interested, it would be helpful if you poast your changes to your Enviro system and screenshots in the ThirdWire thread.
ThirdWire Siberian Sun thread ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=25572#25572
Several topics will be covered as listed below; all of them related to each other which requires a tricky balance among them to optimize the overall environmental effect.
Sky colours.
Intense sun and large sun glare.
Terrain shadowing at low sun elevation angles.
Sun glare effect on cirrus clouds and new contrails.
Ambient lighting, and direct sun lighting and sun reflections on aircraft.
Appearance of aircraft, objects, and exhaust/weapon effects against the terrain and blue sky.
Moonlight effects on all the above.
* INSTRUCTIONS *
The project assumes the latest SF1 version (currently, v.08.30.06) and the WoV/WoE equivalents.
Extract into a seperate folder for downloads. Then copy the 3 Enviro files and the two tga files into the sim Flight folder. To select an Enviro file to test with, rename it Environmentsystem. In the game grafix options menu, Camera Lens Flares must be turned ON for the Siberian sun to work, although in each Enviro file listed below at the location of the lensflare data, there are instructions on how to turn OFF the normal camera lensflares if desired while still using the new sun effect. The included Enviro files are...
Environmentsystem-0 --- Fully modded Siberian Sun Enviro file as developed currently, with full functionality of the stock Enviro file except the old sun.
Environmentsystem-1 --- the stock ThirdWire Enviro file with only the Siberian sun added, and the ThirdWire sun taken out. The hard intensity of the Siberian sun effect is rather washed out by the bright sky colours of the stock Enviro file, so...
Environmentsystem-2 --- the above Enviro-1 file with my current changes to the sunheight environment colour blocks (...[Day], [Day1], [Twighlight2], etc...). This offers darker sky colours so allows a relatively more intense sun effect.
In the fully changed Enviro-0, I use a new star tga file (ss-Star), and added changes to the stock [stars] data block. One may easily return to the stock Star tga file or the stock star Enviro data if desired. If you are now running a modded Enviro file, re-name it Environmentsystem-sav or otherwise BACK IT UP so you still have it.
This mod is an extension of my original cirrus tests from 2006 and produces multiple large layers of flat clouds at varying high altitudes, scattered across a map, and that can move with the wind defined in mission file. There are two methods of cirrus creation:
(1) A terrain target object that generates cirrus effects. This was derived from the stock power plant generator and the smokestack effect. This may be more suitable for the campaigns. Once installed in a terrain, it will be used automatically in all missions.
(2) A moving ship, with beginning and final waypoints, that generates cirrus effects during ship motion. This was derived from the stock Tanker ship and the ship movement effect. This method is useful in hand made missions, and I hope to extend this to large scale moving weather systems.
The cirrus are most brilliant with the Siberian Sun mod where the deep blue sky offers great contrast with the white ice crystal cirrus, and the large sunglare causes the cirrus to shine bright around the sun.
I will explore this in detail, probably on page 7 of this ThirdWire thread ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4964
....this is version 1.0 until I discover one of my standard mistakes in installation or content....
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Original test cirrus mod from April 2006 here ~> http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=2471
Update 1.3 fixes a titanic blunder in 300kt late cloud effects -- the flat clouds spread across the map at weapon detonation, which is badly wrong. More in the update details section below. The B-47 screenshot shows 300kt late cloud effect as it should be.
Updates 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 are listed at the bottom of this page.
Included are nuclear weapon grafix effects from the initial double peak pulse to simplified late cloud development, and most major things in between, spanning a time of about 1/20 second to several hours, depending on yield. No weapons are included, but only visual grafix to be set up for use by your weapons.
Surface targeted warhead effects (for bombs, ASMs) are modelled for 3kt, 30kt, 300kt, 3Mt, and 30Mt. Low airburst only -- see the weapondata "Add To" file.
AAM and SAM airburst effects are modelled for 300t, 3kt, 30kt, 300kt, and 3Mt.
** The latest Bunyap Weapons Pack is required for the use of two grafix files contained in that pack -- the SMOKE3 and SMOKE4 tga files . This pack is found here at the CombatAce.
As the sim does not yet support physical nuclear explosive effects, use conventional high explosives and experiment with very high warhead powers. The Weapon Editor can use exponential notation, and 1E+11 is a good start for experimenting with physical yields.
PROJECT USE PRE-REQUISITES:
(1) Know how to work the sim's conventional weapons and the Weapon Editor. This editor and some basic tutorials are found here at the CombatAce.
(2) Know how to work the Cat Extractor to extract several encrypted text files for editing. This extractor is found here at the CombatAce.
This project is designed and optimized for gameplay of hypothetical early Cold War era strategic strike and air defence operations on a massive scale, and will require a few simple, but very profound, adjustments to the sim to work well. One example why: Visible ranges to grafix effects can approach 1000 kilometers, and in one effect, far beyond.
This project works with the stock original game fully patched. However, this project was designed with the author's personal Environmentsystem file and a CRT monitor. I have no clue what this project's effects look like on LCD monitors during day or night missions.
Possible future tweaks, possible bugg fixxes, discussion of modeling methods, answers to questions, improving the effects and their ease of use for others, and discussion of what is being modelled can be found at the ThirdWire webboard at the link below.
ThirdWire thread ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3970
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*UPDATE 1.1 CONTENTS*
Fixed some faults in the KT/MT FireBall to HighCloud-1 transitions, especially for KT030.
All Pulse and SkyGlow emitters are set to 50% larger in the effects text files (no changes were made to any tga grafix files).
Tweaked some Visibility Distances.
Tweaked some later HighClouds for KT/MT effects.
Made FireBall particles turn a more deep red near the end of their lifetime. Too red? Tell at the ThirdWire thread.
Set the FlightEngine.ini's FarClipDistance to 5000000.0. This fixes bad flickering of large yield SkyGlows seen from very long distances.
Doubled the rate of GroundCloud emission.
And, a few other minor tweaks I don't recall right now.
Additional modding tips in the Install text file.
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**UPDATE 1.2 CONTENTS**
Removed all files for my personal Enviro mods, as the New Sun effect did not seem to work properly when I recently patched up to the latest
Patch (new sun caused black hole in the sky for example). Enviro mod and *new* new sun and star effects will have to be offered seperately
for better download support. This has taught me a lesson to be fully Patched with everybody else before releacing any mods.
I seemed to have found that the sim's custom Effects Details grafix option must be set to MEDIUM or HIGH. At the LOW setting, some
important nucular effects will not show.
Fixed a minor but potentially confusing Flight Engine file instruction regarding FarClip distances.
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**UPDATE 1.3 CONTENTS**
Fixed a devastating error in the KT300 flat clouds that I failed to catch. I had it working fine, but used the KT300 flatclouds to "experiment" with the flat layers as general weather clouds spread wide across the map, and becoming visible just after weapon detonation. I "forgot" to change it back to normal before uploading at CombatAce. This was sloppy. It works correctly now...I think.
*** Note added August 2013: Decrease the particle generation rate in case of slow flying launching platforms, such as helicoptors or WW2 fighter bombers, to avoid too high density of smoke particles which look bad.
**
June 2010. Updated to include the ancient Smoke3.tga. I had always thought this was game stock. I was wrong. Somebody, I don't know who, made the Smoke3.tga for the old Weapons Pack but that pack seems not used much today. So I include it now, finally.
**
I'm using 7zip as file compression. I first saw it at Column5's Cold War downloads pages, so I tried it and love it.
7zip ~> http://www.7zip.com/
This project is part of a planned series of grafix effects that may be used in an attempt to simulate classical era strategic strike/interception (Siberian Sky).
In 3D Rocket Exhaust, large numbers of 2D images combine to form 3D flame and smoke trails. The goal is immersive smoke/flame seen from the cockpit, and long range visibility of flame (night) and smoke (day). There can be a cpu performance hit with large numbers of missiles firing off within the defined MaxVisibility distances. Description, development, limitations, and possible employment or improvements of this and future grafix effects are at the ThirdWire webboard thread below...
ThirdWire thread ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4964
PROJECT USE PRE-REQUISITES:
(1) Know how to work the sim's weapons and the Weapon Editor. This editor and some basic tutorials are found here at the CombatAce.
(2) Know how to work the Cat Extractor to extract encrypted text files for editing. This extractor is found here at the CombatAce.
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V 1.11 has Smoke3.tga included.
V 1.1 has...
(1) One additional step smaller rocket exhaust effect, and two effects for smaller unguided rockets -- U1 and U2 are made with greatly reduced particle density in expectation of large rocket volleys.
(2) Better naming system .... R1 (the new smallest effect) to R8 (the old R7 of v1.0).... also U1 and U2.
(3) Hopefully better instructions.
<< "I spotted an afterburner plume at twenty miles." >>
This is the only quote I recall from a Vietnam War air combat book I read back in hi~school and I forgot the title and author. The author spotted the afterburner at night, against the stars if I recall, and said it was a MiG-21. They (F-4 crew) locked it up and downed it with a Sparrow.
The VOLCANO MOD attempts to address, or bring attention to, a long missing feature in all combat jetsims: long distance visibility of afterburners especially at night. To do this, we oversize the afterburners as the sim, along with every jetsim it seems, does not model the brightness intensity of afterburner plumes. The same philosophy was used in sizing the recent 3D Rocket Exhaust effects, making larger flame plumes optional for missiles on a sliding scale of selectable effects sizes.
With the smaller of two oversized afterburner systems here, I can just see a MiG-21's pixel sized R-13 afterburner flickering from a little over 20 miles using 30 degree field of view (FOV) and 1280x1024 screen resolution. I believe that higher resolution would allow longer visible distance for any given FOV. The full size screenshot shows very late twilight F-106 AI squadron takeoff to the South, using the smaller size afterburner system. The yellow arrows point to aircraft in full afterburner following the AI leader.
The VOLCANO MOD uses specific engine names in aircraft DATA files. Any engine afterburner can be done at any time with a simple calculation. A list of engines currently modelled here and simple formulae for calculating their afterburner data are in the instruction file. These are some of the engines that will be of use in a mythological strategic strike/intercept campaign (Siberian Sky), and include engines that were used, or could be used, by Strategic Air Command (SAC) and manned Soviet Air Defense (IA-PVO) from the 1940s to the 1960s.
ThirdWire thread discussing grafix for classical era strategic air warfare: Volcanos erupt on page 3 ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4964
"VOLCANO" was a name used by one or two of our Old Timer SF simmers some time ago who poked fun at an early experimental closeup cameo screenshot that I poasted (it looked pretty bad). The name stuck.
v1.01--------------------------------------
*** ADDED TO INSTRUCTION FILE, but the replacement Zip file does not seem to upload here. So...
Grafix position of the afterburner may need to be changed to taste. This is done by changing the vector ExhaustPosition=[x,y,z], where...
-x is left, x is right.
-y is back, y is forward.
-z is down, z is up.
The numbers are in meters. I prefer the burner flame as close to the nozzle as possible, but without interacting to cause flickering of nozzle/flame.
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Purely experimental effects for radical hardcore fans of generals Curtiss LeMay and Yevgeniy Savitskiy ONLY.
This is an exhaust effect mod that can change the large scale visual environment across a map, so I hope its okay to put this in the Environment mod section.
Included are experimental contrails that attempt to model both quickly evaporating and persistent spreading ice crystals clouds that shine brightly near the sun, and range in lifetime from 5 seconds to 1240 seconds, which is about 20 minutes. The contrail tga uses the same game grafix calls as my Cirrus clouds, which makes sense since contrails can become cirrus clouds over time. Best used with the blue sky and sunglare ideas in the Siberian Sun mold.
Instructions and advice on game limits of the longer contrails are found in the Instructions file.
Pics and words soon available at this ThudWire forum thread ~> http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4964
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UPDATE EDIT: Somewhat reduced max visible distances. Contrails 320 and 640 had 1000x too great a max visible distance for testing vs cirrus. Now reduced. Will update later if improved methods are found.
This is a prototype 12,000km tiled, but not textured, map called Baikal, for summer season. The downloaded file is Baikal.7z. Unzip it with 7zip into a new folder not in the game folder. Copy the unzipped Baikal folder into the Terrain folder. The 99MB download is mostly very large bmp files used for development.
I am using SF-1, patched to October 2008.
The files in the Baikal folder are alphabetically ordered. This is essential for easy viewing of the folder contents. Folder set to view "list" helps me see the whole folder in one screen.
Tiles are 3km on a side, which is a minimum for this size map. There are no "real" textures for the prototype map.
I can't texture. I tried, but...
Only blank colour coded tiles are here, for tile mapping development, and blank tiles allow easy viewing in Terrain Editor zoomed out view. This terrain is made for paleo-antiquity classical high altitude strategic operations, and terrain variation is over a vastly greater scale than normal SF maps -- which means less detail seen from the cockpit at normal low altitude SF gaming, unless one expands their horizon distance to see more of less. The good news is that 3km tiles allows a modest 1.5x increase in framerate or 1.5x increase in HorizonDistance over the SF standard 2km tile sizes. I am currently running 200km horizon distance with ATI 4850 video card, and other game tweaks.
Much more info is in the readme file called " = 12m3 notes " . Also, the Viewlist readme is useful for exploring the map quickly.
No tile was left behind.
1. found this at insky
2. all credits go to user named horse2010 , good work
3. not a f-15 expert but should be easy to match the skin , mod, package, skin structure ,mesh etc.... (also hint screen-shot 2seater)
4. don't know what the meaning of the red bull is to the f-15 but excellent artist work.
5. just want to give this user more credits than it is given at insky.
6. this rar/zip file is original .
enjoy
plaaf comrade xie xie ne (thank you)
1. found this at insky