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Question re new effect

A

archtx

Messages
194
Country
unitedstates
I apologize in advance if this has been previously discussed. I didn't find it.

I would like to create an effect of an engine fire on an AI aircraft. I know how to attach smoke to the engine, but do not know how to keep it from appearing 100% of the time.

Is there a way to trigger the effect based on altitude of AI, or elapsed time (from engine start of AI), or distance (when I fly within a certain distance of the AI aircraft).

Thanks for any tips or ideas.

Ideally, the "engine fire" would trigger at a specific altitude, but be "turned off" after an elapsed time.
 
Hey Arch,

Im pretty sure when these effects are triggered..for instance on aircraft that a gauge is used to trigger the smoke when the throttle is at a certain setting. Im not really sure how to go about this since i dont personally deal with aircraft but if perhaps create a fire effect, create a controller (type 3 for distance) and add it to the aircraft cfg in one of the light parameters that it might be possible but im not sure to be honest.

Dave
 
Thanks, Dave.

I think I will play with adding a controller to the aircraft.cfg and see what happens. I'll report back if anything developes.
 
Let me know what you find out as i was thinking of an idea for a project using effects and aircraft but wasnt sure if it was going to work and any feedback might help.

Dave
 
Dave:
Played with it some last night. I'm fairly sure now that a controller won't work. My aircraft proximity to the AI aircraft seems to trigger nothing.

I also tried a delay in the emitter, thinking that I could make it happen with proper timing. However, as soon as the AI aircraft turns on the beacon, the engine starts smoking, regardless of the delay.

The main problem is this, however. Have you ever seen how long it takes an AI Convair 240 to get off of the ground with only one engine running? It's quite comical! Miles and miles!

Obviously the proper way to execute my idea is with a gauge. I'm somewhat surprised it hasn't already been done. It seems that it shouldn't be impossible to have a altitude or position parameter trigger an engine failure, and then an effect for the engine smoke....but, then again, I'm not a gauge programmer either. Time to learn.....because it is pretty neat to see the AI convair streaming smoke with one prop feathered (once it gets off of the ground!)
 
Hi guys,

I have bad and good news for you. I'll begin with bad.

Controllers do not work when attached to aircraft. Neither will gauge. No panel is loaded with AI aircraft and therefore no gauges are initialized. The only way to trigger an effect is to attach it to the lights ([lights] section in aircraft.cfg). To be honest according to reports from some people there is a way to initialize a gauge in AI aircraft if it is defined in [VCockpitXX] section of it's panel.cfg AND is present in main panel of user aircraft while viewing traffic, but I’ve never been able to make it work.

And good news:

It is possible to specify delay and duration of the effect precisely enough. I've used this method to replicate an airdrop of paratroopers for military AI traffic package.

Here is how:

There are few lights which are triggered by AI engine at different moments. As you probably already discovered each light effect is defined in [lights] section of corresponding aircraft.cfg file as shown below:

light.N=T, X, Y, Z, EffectName

where

N – incremental number from 0 to 21 (higher numbers are ignored)
T – type of trigger
X, Y, Z – longitudinal, lateral, and vertical positions of the light in feet.
EffectName – the name of .fx file.

Following types are accepted (Only AI relevant lights are described):

1 – Beacon (On while engines are running)
2 – Strobe (On from the moment when clearance to takeoff is received until vacation of the runway)
3 – Navigation or Position (On 10-15 minutes before scheduled flight time until parking)
4 – Cockpit
5 – Landing (On from the moment when clearance to takeoff is received until altitude of 10000 ft. passed on takeoff and from 10000 ft. until vacation of the runway on landing)
6 – Taxi (On from the pushback until clearance to takeoff and from vacation of the runway until parking)
7 – Recognition
8 – Wing
9 – Logo
10 – Cabin

By attaching of our effect to the correct type of light we can control when it will be triggered. Although there are not many choices we can at least eliminate unpredictable taxiing and clearance waiting times by selecting of strobe or landing light trigger. If we want to trigger our effect only once (afterburner, airdrop or engine fault on takeoff) we are left with strobe lights trigger. So the light trigger definition will look as follows:

light.N=2, X, Y, Z, EffectName

So far so good. But we don’t want to push our paratroopers out of the plane on the runway while lining up, are we? The next step is to define delay and duration of effect itself. How? Quite simple. We define delay and lifetime of every emitter in our .fx file as follows:

[Emitter.N]
Lifetime=60.00, 60.00
Delay=1200.00, 1200.00

In this example the emitter will begin to emit particles in 20 minutes after effect was triggered (1200 sec / 60) for duration of 1 minute and then shut down. By adjusting of lifetime and delay values we can control when the effect starts and for how long.

The final word. Effect will be triggered and shown after defined delay also when AI aircraft enters active AI zone (about 80 nm around user aircraft) because it is recreated at that moment.

Hope it solves your problem.
 
Stranger

Thank you so much for the detailed and comprehensible explanation!!
You have saved me a lot of time studying gauges xml that wouldn't have worked anyway!

For some reason the emitter delay did not work for me last night, but now I know it SHOULD. Your paratroop effect is a very similar situation. (PS where can I download it? ) I will work on it some more.

Re: the feathered engine, no gauge - no in-flight failure, but perhaps I can get the Convair off the ground by boosting the power to the remaining engine.

Thanks again for the help.
 
Still can't get the delay to work. The lifetime works fine, but the engine fire starts as soon as the Convair turns onto the runway to takeoff, even though I have tried to set a 60 second delay. Can anyone spot the problem? Here is the effect file:

[Library Effect]
Lifetime=5
Version=2.00
Display Name=engsmoke2
Radius=100
Priority=0

[Properties]
Cockpit=1
VirtualCockpit=1
Spot=1
Tower=1
Map=0

[Emitter.0]
Lifetime=1200.00, 12000.00
Delay=60.0, 60.0
Bounce=0.00
Rate=20.00, 25.00
X Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
X Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.50
Y Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.50
Z Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.50
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=0.00, 0.00
Z Offset=2.00, 3.00

[Particle.0]
Lifetime=6.50, 7.50
Type=19
X Scale=2.60, 2.60
Y Scale=2.60, 2.60
Z Scale=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Rate=0.30, 0.30
Y Scale Rate=0.30, 0.30
Z Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Drag=-2.00, -1.98
Color Rate=0.22, 0.50
Fade In=0.05, 0.05
Fade Out=0.20, 0.25
Rotation=-50.00, 50.00
Shade=1
Face=1, 1, 1

[ParticleAttributes.0]
Blend Mode=1
Texture=fx_1.bmp
Bounce=0.00
Color Start=17, 17, 17, 130
Color End=32, 31, 30, 255
Jitter Distance=0.10
Jitter Time=1.00
TempK=110.00
TempRate=0.02
uv1=0.50, 0.75
uv2=0.75, 1.00
X Scale Goal=3.20
Y Scale Goal=3.20
Z Scale Goal=0.00
Extrude Length=0.00
Extrude Pitch Max=0.00
Extrude Heading Max=0.00

[Emitter.1]
Lifetime=1200.00, 1200.00
Delay=60.00, 60.00
Bounce=0.00
No Interpolate=1
Rate=20.00, 30.00
X Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
X Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=0.00, 0.00
Z Offset=1.00, 1.00

[Particle.1]
Lifetime=0.20, 0.20
Type=19
X Scale=0.75, 0.85
Y Scale=0.75, 0.85
Z Scale=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Rate=4.00, 6.52
Y Scale Rate=4.00, 6.52
Z Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Drag=-0.70, -0.60
Color Rate=0.50, 0.50
Fade In=0.05, 0.05
Fade Out=0.20, 0.25
Rotation=-40.00, 40.00
Face=1, 1, 1

[ParticleAttributes.1]
Blend Mode=2
Texture=fx_2.bmp
Bounce=0.00
Color Start=255, 255, 255, 255
Color End=253, 197, 66, 0
Jitter Distance=0.02
Jitter Time=1.00
TempK=110.00
TempRate=0.01
uv1=0.75, 0.00
uv2=1.00, 0.25
X Scale Goal=2.30
Y Scale Goal=2.30
Z Scale Goal=0.00
Extrude Length=0.00
Extrude Pitch Max=0.00
Extrude Heading Max=0.00

[Emitter.2]
Lifetime=1200.00, 1200.00
Delay=60.00, 60.00
Bounce=0.00
LOD=1
Rate=22.00, 25.00
X Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
X Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=0.00, 0.00
Z Offset=1.00, 3.00

[Particle.2]
Lifetime=6.00, 7.00
Type=19
X Scale=1.00, 1.20
Y Scale=1.00, 1.20
Z Scale=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Rate=4.00, 8.00
Y Scale Rate=4.00, 8.00
Z Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Drag=-2.00, -1.98
Color Rate=0.22, 0.44
Fade In=0.05, 0.05
Fade Out=0.31, 0.34
Rotation=-50.00, 50.00
Shade=1
Face=1, 1, 1

[ParticleAttributes.2]
Blend Mode=1
Texture=fx_1.bmp
Bounce=0.00
Color Start=74, 89, 88, 150
Color End=79, 85, 85, 255
Jitter Distance=0.10
Jitter Time=11.00
TempK=110.00
TempRate=0.02
uv1=0.50, 0.75
uv2=0.75, 1.00
X Scale Goal=3.00
Y Scale Goal=3.00
Z Scale Goal=0.00
Extrude Length=0.00
Extrude Pitch Max=0.00
Extrude Heading Max=0.00

[Emitter.3]
Lifetime=1200.00, 1200.00
Delay=60.00, 60.00
Bounce=0.00
Rate=20.00, 25.00
X Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
X Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=0.00, 0.00
Z Offset=3.00, 5.00

[Particle.3]
Lifetime=5.25, 7.00
Type=19
X Scale=1.00, 1.60
Y Scale=1.00, 1.60
Z Scale=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Rate=4.00, 6.01
Y Scale Rate=4.00, 6.01
Z Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Drag=-2.00, -1.98
Color Rate=0.05, 0.05
Fade In=0.05, 0.05
Fade Out=0.20, 0.30
Rotation=-60.00, 60.00
Shade=1
Face=1, 1, 1

[ParticleAttributes.3]
Blend Mode=1
Texture=fx_1.bmp
Bounce=0.00
Color Start=232, 77, 2, 170
Color End=66, 70, 70, 0
Jitter Distance=0.10
Jitter Time=1.00
TempK=110.00
TempRate=0.01
uv1=0.50, 0.75
uv2=0.75, 1.00
X Scale Goal=3.60
Y Scale Goal=3.60
Z Scale Goal=0.00
Extrude Length=0.00
Extrude Pitch Max=0.00
Extrude Heading Max=0.00

[Emitter.4]
Lifetime=1200.00, 1200.00
Delay=60.00, 60.00
Bounce=0.00
Light=1
No Interpolate=1
Rate=32.00, 32.00
X Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Emitter Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
X Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Y Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
Z Particle Velocity=0.00, 0.00
X Offset=0.00, 0.00
Y Offset=1.00, 1.00
Z Offset=0.00, 0.00

[Particle.4]
Lifetime=0.01, 0.01
Type=19
X Scale=5.00, 5.00
Y Scale=5.00, 5.00
Z Scale=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Y Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Z Scale Rate=0.00, 0.00
Drag=0.00, 0.00
Color Rate=0.00, 0.00
Fade In=0.00, 0.00
Fade Out=0.00, 0.00
Rotation=0.00, 0.00
Face=0, 0, 0

[ParticleAttributes.4]
Blend Mode=0
Bounce=0.00
Color Start=125, 64, 2, 0
Color End=250, 138, 27, 0
Jitter Distance=0.00
Jitter Time=0.00
uv1=0.00, 0.00
uv2=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Goal=0.00
Y Scale Goal=0.00
Z Scale Goal=0.00
Extrude Length=0.00
Extrude Pitch Max=0.00
Extrude Heading Max=0.00
 

Attachments

  • engine fire.jpg
    engine fire.jpg
    57 KB · Views: 562
Hey Arch,

To be honest, the delay is set to 60.0...not 60.00. Im not really sure if that really makes a difference or not. Also, set at 60 might not always give you a 60 second delay, meaning perhaps your in an area with not so good frame rates, your 60 seconds might not be the same as the sims 60 seconds. Perhaps try setting the delay higher and see if this helps.

Dave
 
I've tested your effect as is. Although there are few mistakes in it, emitters delay works fine. Effect is shown exactly 60 seconds after takeoff clearance is received. On my opinion 60 seconds is not enough and effect is shown right after lining up on the runway. Try to set delays to 120 sec. or more.

Mentioned mistakes:
1. Lifetime of Emitter.0 is set to a random number between 20 and 200 minutes (3.3 hours)

[Emitter.0]
Lifetime=1200.00, 12000.00

2. There is no bitmap assigned for Emitter.4 particles, so some white flashing is shown.

[ParticleAttributes.4]
Blend Mode=0
Texture= is omitted
Bounce=0.00
Color Start=125, 64, 2, 0
Color End=250, 138, 27, 0
Jitter Distance=0.00
Jitter Time=0.00
uv1=0.00, 0.00
uv2=0.00, 0.00
X Scale Goal=0.00
Y Scale Goal=0.00
Z Scale Goal=0.00
Extrude Length=0.00
Extrude Pitch Max=0.00
Extrude Heading Max=0.00


My paratrooper effect was never uploaded separately and is only present in French AI military traffic package by Christian Muenier which can be found at avsim.com under download ID 66473. The package is about 40mb in size, so I'd better attach the effect here.
 

Attachments

Last edited:
Well, Stranger...thanks for "bailing" me out again!

Re:emitter lifetime....guess I got a little enthusiastic with the zeros!

Thanks for catching the missing texture. That was a microsoft error, as I just started from their fx_engsmoke file. Looks like a hangover from CFS2, so I'll check that to see if there is a bitmap there. If you looked at the screen cap, it looks pretty cool even with that missing particle. I haven't quite worked out the feathered engine part yet, but I'll continue working on it.

Thanks for sending the paratroop effect. I'll study it. I have a similar one someone gave me of a cargo drop, but it is not for AI aircraft, so very happy to have this one.

Thanks again fellows for the help. I don't know what I'd do without these forums.
 
Yeah,

These guys are the best i say.

They helped me with a LOT of stuff.

These forums are the best i'v ever came across.

Thank's So much everyone.

Nath.
 
Just wanted to report back that everything is working fine!

The missing texture is also missing in CFS2. I guessed that it was fx_smoke, added it in, and all looks well. So I'm happy.

A 120 sec. delay was indeed much better for the emitter delay.

Now that everything is working, I can tinker around to start with a small amount of smoke, then the flames, then the full effect, and trail off to less smoke after the fire is extinguished.

Thanks again, everyone.
 
Hi archtx,

Glad you have sorted things out. ;) You can achieve what you want by attaching of several effects to the strobe lights trigger. Adjust corresponding delays and lifetimes so that they will start in sequence.

Good luck!
 
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