Bandy

Just checked out Hyperlobby myself: dated March 1, and yes their forums are still offline as of writing. BUT other question, what version of FE will be used, and what mods will not cause issues? Peter's FMs? Jan's terrains?

Shamelessly lifted images. 1. Likely from a movie still, so reality of smoke produced is unknown. But even the small rubber tires on all WWI aircraft would produce a lot of black smoke I would think. 2. Most WWI crash images from a simple online search (over lunch at work) turned up trashed aircraft with no evidence of burning. Hopefully I, and others, can add more images later... 3. Is that a Nieuport 11 or 17 judging by the square fuselage frame and tail? 4. image looks heavily retouched. 5. a modern crop duster, thought I should include it just for comparison. 6. crash smoke from IL2. THIS is the effect I was going for initially, then saw what I could do with the wind effect and really liked it. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

There is a smoke particle weight variable. In Laton's effect he has it very light so the smoke particles go straight up for the most part. I made the smoke more dense so it crawls along the ground more and only occasionally goes straight up with the random direction variable. Unfortunately the smoke particle weight variable cannot be changed over the course of time, and there is no variable to turn off the smoke emitter itself say after 5 minutes (which would be perfect). My take on the mid-air aircraft explosion and the continuing smoke hanging in the air is that the emitter is created at the site of the aircraft crash, whether it is in the air or not. In the case of a burning balloon it falls and burns the same as an aircraft falling and burning, leaving smoke behind. When the balloon hits the ground there is no emitter coded for a continuing crashsmoke or crashfire, so that is why it disappears.

In reply to the last two comments from TS and Helmut. I do believe the sim wind takes the smoke in its path! The only things I changed to get it to be affected by the wind more was to increase the smokeweight variable (name escapes me), and increase the chance of the smoke particles being affected by random changes in direction. AFAIK the wind is a constant force in sim and does not generate any gusts, this random chance variable only simulates wind gusts on the smoke. In my opinion it looks really nice. As far as smoke intensity goes, I agree this is not an industrial fire, but it is an intense fire fueled by petrol, wood, canvas, dope, paint, an engine, rubber tires, etc. since airplanes are composed of a range of materials, and then the fire will spread to ground materials which indeed would produce more gray smoke in time, but this change in smoke colour cannot be modeled. Nor can the particle emitter be turned off once it is started, it is a code limitation. As mentioned I did reduce the length of time particles "survive" and made it more diffuse at the terminus of the smoke column (I hope that is obvious), and will endeavor to meet your suggestions to keep it more real, just keep all the other variables in mind too. In fact I'm going to see if there are any period images of crashes and smoke to try to find where the reality is. If somebody has knowledge already, please share. Thanks gents, all good food for thought!!!

OK you say you tried the Effects folder already. Hmmm, have a look in there to see if you have the stock files, or Laton's modded files, and if so make sure you back the regular ones up. Try the download again perhaps. OK, I just downloaded it myself, unzipped or unpacked the file with Stuffit (or you could use 7-zip, both are free unzipping utilities that you need to download) and I got a folder (named "For posts") that contains the ini files. These files are what you need to put in the Effects folder. Sorry if this is not working for you, or if my description of unpacking utilities is not relevant. @ ANYONE: It has been so long since I implemented Laton's crash smoke mod that I can't remember, is there a need to include the crashsmoke.ini in the effect.ini list??? I'm at work (shhh) so can't check right now. This could be the issue JFM. Thanks for posting.

Good point TS, I saw that visible distance variable but left it alone. I'll see what that can do to help resolve it, but it will result in pop-up if you happen to be looking in that direction as you cross the threshold. This was always an issue with FE, at least in the early days, and especially with the horizon band being so wide. You could see bomb blasts hovering in the haze, etc. If you use Stary's tweak to reduce the horizon band this is ameliorated for the most part. As far as wind direction goes, the variable that provides the natural "smoke blown-in-the-wind" effect (sometimes looks like a slow snaking motion) simply provides a chance for the smoke emitter to change it's direction slightly from what it was prior to the "challenge". I do not know if the default emitter is actually tied to the wind direction, that would be cool attention to detail, though I wouldn't rely on the smoke path/direction for navigation .

I hear you on the distance issue. I noticed that as well. And no worries, constructive criticism is great! It certainly is better than no comments; that sort of leaves you wondering... The terrain has aerial perspective (colours wash out, things are less defined as they approach the horizon) but the crash smoke effect does not. It is the same with all aircraft smoke effects, bomb blasts, etc. AFAIK (i.e. in sim aerial perspective does not affect them, they are not terrain objects), so there are inherent in-game limitations. Smoke that is diffuse enough not to stand out like-a-sore-thumb at a distance looks pretty d@mn weak up close. It is a balancing act but I will endeavor to try to reach a compromise. I'll ask TK if there is any way to get smoke effects to behave like the terrain.

Actually, not to nitpick, but hockey is not Canada's national sport, lacrosse is. Hockey just happens to be what we're most successful at exporting, well, that and all our natural resources... Pam Anderson Neve Campbell Evangeline Lilly... Oh h_ll, here's the website link

Yes, FE is getting to be a porker isn't it? I got rid of a lot of skins that I just never use, including many early ones that just don't look good compared to the more recent efforts. In poking around inside Jan's new 'Seasonal Tile' and the various Terrain folders, I noticed Jan left behind a large 'backup' folder. I removed them all to desktop and the sim has no issue with this. Get rid of them, they are composed of old files anyways. Also noticed that there is A LOT of duplication of tile files between the seasons and the terrain folders, for example the FRTown tiles are repeated in each folder but they do not change except for the winter version. Now, I do understand why Jan did this, because if a tile is missing it causes some bizarre visuals at that tile location in game that are hard to trouble shoot. It would be a bit of a pain to track down all the unnecessary duplicates and eliminate them, but I think it would result in a savings on HD real estate if interested. Just an observation...

Monoplanes suspect structurally, now really... To my count there are 23 guys up there! Looks like towards the end of the war the Germans were sure thinking laterally to overcome shortages.

Thanks for reply Bucky, I fully acknowledge the inspiration of Laton in my first attempt, thank you! No I don't own FE2 yet, so this was modded in FE, but should work in either version AFAIK. Please, somebody confirm though. The only difference will be that FE2 will have that crash LOD at the base of the smoke and fire. Just to my eye this version looks a little more natural to have the smoke a bit heavier and closer to the ground. It looks less like factory chimney smoke when a few AC are burning in the same area. It is difficult to get the smoke to disperse in a visually realistic way and still not put a strain on the CPU/GPU. I'm not entirely satisfied with this version, but it was the end of the weekend and I was hoping for feedback. What I also did was lower the frequency of the emitter (fewer smoke particles but bigger and more diffuse) and shortened their life span, so there is "room" for increasing the effect without excessive load. Please let me know what you experience. Not that I need to say this to anyone, but back up original effects ini files please just in case!!!

As you point out, much the same could have been said about FE when it came out in Nov 2006, and OFF1 and 2... Potential. As somebody pointed out sims are now incredibly expensive to produce (thus the terrible DRM, not to defend it though...) and thus almost require them to be released before they are truly ready. Almost like buying a promise of what they might turn into. H_ll, IMHO FE has only now matured to a great sim with Peter01's flight models, all the other 3rd party mods, skins and AC, and now Jan Tuma's terrain, 3+ years later! That is a long time to wait, but it was worth it. Cheers!

Pre-betas! Frisky and "friskier" Camels! I can't keep them straight anymore, but the alternative is --well-- let's not go there. I shudder to think how this sim would feel without your FMs Peter. BTW, you have FE2 right Peter? Are the FMs you are working on now using that generation of flight engine?

@Tamper, I apologize for my earlier impatient and unfortunately trollish comment(s). As acknowledged earlier, the poll is unscientific and the data open for debate. Unfortunately any number of viable scenarios could be dreamed up, none of them can be tested with this methodology to see where the "truth" may lie. The limitations of volunteer polls are such that anything can be read-between-the-mile-wide-lines. It just isn't worth the speculation unless you have a point to make. The context/question of the original post (to paraphrase "RoF on retrospect" poll), given the documented limitations of these polls, must be approached in a non-quantitative way, i.e. through anecdotal first hand accounts. There are many of these threads in almost all flight sim forums. Unfortunately I'm getting tired and irritated by them, but that is no excuse for the negative tone I used. By all means, please do have a great weekend of simming whatever you fly.

First page of the thread "FE Bug hunt" at the FE2 forum @ Thirdwire: Now, does TK mean there were problems with getting it into Vista/Win7, or player issues not liking it???

Give it a break. Why don't you look up limitations of volunteer poll results.

Well, it wasn't easy, not like the 'old days' when you could loose the entire top plane and keep dogfighting. You can see from the screenie I had full aileron and rudder to keep it level, but I did fly it like that for several minutes before I quit the mission. I didn't try to land, and doubt I would have been able to, though on retrospect I should have tried. It could be the circumstance of conditions, i.e. an AI craft collided with me while I was not in a particularly challenging position to recover from. Just thought I'd point it out if this happened to others inadvertently. N11 is very spritely! Good FM Peter, thanks!

I've uploaded a bunch of screen shots from the cockpit of an N11 illustrating the ground fog/haze line that some people are having issues with. You can best see the line when the pics are full screen, especially the sea horizon jaggies 3rd image... Have not seen anyone mention this observation so am posting, but maybe I missed it along the way, as I seem to be prone to that... I noticed on a mission that if I sit back in the "cockpit" (i.e. my body and head against the backrest of my overly comfortable chair in front of the monitor, complete with single malt...) with TIR giving me a wide view that the ground fog/haze line, as well as the horizon line, is very noticeable and jaggy (screenies below). Then as I was approaching the front and leaned forward/zoomed in to scan the horizon for specks and flak bursts, I noticed the ground fog/haze line was almost non-existent, it only occurred along the very periphery of my monitor (other screenies below), and stayed in the periphery when I turned even further around to check 6. If you adjust the virtual pilot's head position forward with the reset key of TIR (i.e. lean back and hit F12 I think, mine is set to *) then the haze line is ameliorated, though it is a bit tougher to see the gauges quickly. I also noticed that the ground haze line doesn't matter a hill of beans when you're in a furball... PROBLEM: SITTING FORWARD IN COCKPIT:

I have not made the jump to FE2 yet, though I will likely buy it very soon (if the Aldis gets replaced in a patch ) simply to support the vendor The juxtaposition of the port side Flanders screenies 3 and 4 above really are the proof. I paused the sim and looked at the same spot in two cockpit positions, so everything else remains equal. Look at and compare the scale of the cockpit gauge to get an idea of where my virtual head position is. This also explains why I wasn't experiencing this artifact as bad as you were Mike (and others) in the last thread. I always futz about in the cockpit and reset the TIR head position to get it just right on each mission. Head rest issues on check 6 are a real PITA in SE5 and SPAD. It changes from a/c to a/c. Though it seems only a few of us are bothered by it

N11 will still fly missing one wing.

Tailspin, are you shamelessly promoting your own tweaks? Thanks brother, I missed that, and the post is dated 2008! My bad. Think of all those single Vogesen missions I could have enjoyed that much more... It is tragic. ANYWAYS, can I get any confirmation that the water looks better for others? I did notice that the water tweak does produce a performance hit, dropping my lowly FEG from 50 to 60 fps on the grass to 35 to 40 on the grass (all settings maxed out), but at altitude most fps were recovered. I have not isolated the water variable(s) producing the fps hit since my system, fortunately, can take it.

Since quack opened the "bugging me" flood gates... :yes: If it didn't involve the Terrain Editor I'd also give a go at spinning some of the Vogesen airfields so that the tents and hangars were on the dirt part of the field. Also, there are at least 3 or 4 trench border tiles in Flanders that need to be rotated, and at least two in Cambrai. These are really old and in the grand scheme of issues minor, but what the h_ll, complaining is cathartic.

OK, implemented Stary's tweaks and the trees look awesome, they fade a little bit more into the distance, and most of the buildings don't shimmer in Vogesen. Some of the unique castles and walled cities still do, so maybe they are z-buffer issues elsewhere. Will keep looking. BUT THEN the water looked absolutely terrible, so futzed about with old ini's and got the water moving and looking better. Not perfect, but better. Works good in Vogesen thus far, don't know yet about the others, but should be fine AFAIK. If interested try this in each terrainDATA.INI (includes Stary's tweaks for convenience) apologies for my code comments, I suppose everybody has their own style. The code line following //Stock is the baseline, which is also commented out // followed by the effective change and whitespace to easily find each of them. . . . [WaterTextureMaterial] UseEffectShader=TRUE EffectShaderName=WaterEffect2.fx DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=FALSE RenderedInOrder=TRUE AlphaTestEnabled=TRUE //STOCK //CullMode=NO_CULL CullMode=CLOCKWISE LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=TRUE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 SpecularColor=1.000000,1.000000,0.900000,1.000000 SpecularPower=1.000000 //STOCK //ZBufferOffset=4.000000 ZBufferOffset=6.000000 BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA NumTextureStages=2 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=FALSE //TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE //STOCK //TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE //STOCK //TextureStage[02].TextureName= TextureStage[02].TextureName=ref_color.bmp TextureStage[02].MipMap=FALSE //TRUE TextureStage[02].FilterEnabled=TRUE //STOCK below --other INI's have no ReflectionMapping //TextureStage[02].ReflectionMapping=TRUE //STOCK //TextureStage[02].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_BLEND_TEXTURE_ALPHA TextureStage[02].StageColorOp=TEXTURE TextureStage[02].StageAlphaOp=DIFFUSE [solidObjectTextureMaterial] DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=TRUE RenderedInOrder=TRUE AlphaTestEnabled=TRUE CullMode=NO_CULL LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=FALSE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 ZBufferOffset=0.000000 //STOCK //BlendOp=BLEND_DST_ALPHA BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA NumTextureStages=1 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE [AlphaObjectTextureMaterial] DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=FALSE RenderedInOrder=false AlphaTestEnabled=TRUE CullMode=NO_CULL LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=FALSE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.00000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.00000 ZBufferOffset=2.000000 // STOCK BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA NumTextureStages=1 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE //FALSE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE //STOCK //TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE //STARY's Suggestion follows... TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE_BLEND_TEXTURE_ALPHA Fade=NORMAL StartFadeDistance=50.0 EndFadeDistance=50.0 . . .

Looks like a bimodal distribution to me; those who really like the sim have voted as such, and those that don't have done likewise. Thus I'll forward an hypothesis, for arguments sake, and say that the hidden majority --those that fall in between-- are likely not represented. It is very common for that group not to vote. Also, if you are not willing to provide a link to the public site hosting the poll (and why wouldn't you?), then all the figures stated could simply be your mental masturbation, and then you're simply wasting our time and forum space. Don't mistake my comment as being uncivil, but would you believe a news story that was unvetted? Too many people do... "Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear"

Sounds extremely interesting and will try out this weekend, many thanks. Quick question, are there any noticeable performance degradation side effects of having all those extra sounds going in a furball?