FS2004 Effects Tool?

[pilot2242]

Hello,

I am trying to make some new effects for flight sim 2004 but i dont understand some things in the documents in the special effects sdk from the microsoft website.

Is there any other tutrials out there or tools for effect creation?

Thank's in advance

2242

 

[ablitos]

Hey there

Unfortunatly, there are no tools for creating effects. The only suggestion i can give you is open one of the existing effects that is close to what you want to create, copy and paste and RENAME it then start changing some parameters and see what happens. I know its not what you probably want to hear but after you see the changes that are made, you get a better understanding with it. Perhaps if you state what you want to create, i can give you hand.

Dave

 

[pilot2242]

Thank's Dave.

I have been working on 1 effect for about 5 days and my main problem is the textures i cant seem to workout how to select 1 part of a texture for example in the effects textures fx_2.bmp say i want to select the object in the top left corner i type the parameters in uv1 & uv2 in the .fx file but it allways comes out wrong it sometimes shows half of the texture and sometimes nothing.

Could you please help me? this is my main problem.

I can workout how to do the parameters for the emitter and particle but it's just the textures.

Also could you please tell me how alpha works on a texture?

I hope you can understand that

Thank's

2242

 

[noshades]

Check out ( World of fireworks ) avsim and elsewhere

 

[ablitos]

for the upper left texture...the parameters should be...

uv1=0.00, 0.50
uv2=0.50, 1.00

Dave

 

[pilot2242]

Hi,

Yeah dave the special effects sdk says that but i couldent understand it but i can now Thank's to you.

I have made an effect now it took me a few hours to do mainly doing the the texture but it works it's sparks for the forest fire.

Thank's verry much for the help.

In the future might have some more questions but i think im ok for now.

Thank's again .

2242

 

[ablitos]

Glad to hear you got it working. I believe the SDK could have been written a little better to understand as it took some time for me to understand. Any other questions just post up here.

Dave

 

[Horst18519]

One more thing about half vixible textures:

If yozu place a vertical effect at the ground it will always be only half visible. That's because the center of the bmp (or the designed part of it) will be exactly at the point where you place it.
Meaning: If you want to place a vertical fx standing on the ground you'll have to double the size and assign a bmp that has two halfs: the upper half is the part that should be visible. The bottom half won't be visible as it vanishes into the ground.
Hard to describe... ...but some might find it useful to know.

 

[archtx]

Horst:

Thanks for that tip! I wasn't aware of the vertical placement.

 

[pilot2242]

Thank's everyone for the help. If i posted in simviation they would just tell me off for asking a question but i like it here.

Thanks everyone for being so kind .

Thank's again.

2242

 

[ablitos]

This is the only site besides avsim that i post or respond to. You will see the oppsite reaction here as everybodys willing to share their knowledge and go the extra bit to help as much as possible. I could honestly say by just browsing other posts that you will learn something new each day.

Dave

 

[Horst18519]

I think that's the difference here. I've learned more here than everywhere else, because here are experts who know that their knowledge comes from others, so it's no question to help others and share their knowledge.
At other forums people sometimes only think to know a lot about FS and keep this nothing like it's a special gift or precious... ("my preccccious!" )