here reference shots :



And how it looks in the game, any comments are welcome.

The 4th and 6th in-game shots look eerily real.

However, in order to get the fire to be visible from a distance, you had to make them too big.

Even by your reference pictures, it is obvious the fire is not on scale (to which the second should not apply, since if I'm not mistaken that the infamous lightning of the oil wells in Iraq... not tanks or infantry).

I know you are working around the limitations of the engine, but at the end, it just looks odd to shoot at a tank and get a fireball that goes up half a mile.

The smoke trail is too constrained. Even if the pictures make it look dark and thick, since the game gives it more contrast, it needs to be more transparent. Ideally, you could not see a clearly defined boundary at the top of the smoke plume, but again, I guess this is another limitation of the engine.

Don't misunderstand me, I appreciate your efforts. I just don't see this as an improvement of what I consider were the best effects, from the 1.12.3 allmods... these are... just different.

Too constrained its true, but even in combat helo is identical smoke, because distracted looks hopeless.
Now the appearance of smoke and fire depends on the wind.
Small wind-focused smoke and short fire , large wind smoke dispersed and long fire.
All shots is the same smoke and fire, differ only in the wind and distance.
the fire tank produces a lot of fire.

Small fire can not be done.

2 times darker and 2 times less fire

That's the right idea.

looking good ...

How old is this sim?! Looking damn good! (imho)

looking great ! Thx Banita for the great work! Could you make the smoke go higher , farther out( like thick smoke becoming lighter smoke), it looks funny just ending the way it does, though not sure if it's engine limiting this...

Firebird--->Slowly, slowly,do better these plumes

Back when I played with the particle effects in EECH I tried to achieve the same thing, but I had to hold back because the particles are so damned expensive to render in EECH. There's no instancing, no vertex groups, nothing.

What you'll wanna try is different blending modes for the fire particles, and use a smoother alpha falloff near the end of the smoke particle lifetime.

Also note that the smoke could use different blending modes with alpha mapping, to allow the smoke to "lighten" the pixels, not just darken them. IMHO that's the biggest problem atm: Smoke is purely substractive, fire is purely additive atm.


Also, old forum topic about smoke and fire here: http://simhq.net/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/322694/1.html
Though the old screenshots don't work anymore. I admit I don't spot much difference between what you changed and what was before...

These look very nice! I agree that the final part of the smoke trail is a bit too well defined, but it's already pretty good!

Great job BANITA.

Werewolf-->Just check all the csv files in the main directory, you will see what are the changes in code.
I'm just an amateur, and my results look like they look, a professional would do in a few days everything
what will want to.

If this is the stuff included in the latest installs, I'd say the fire needs to be toned down. I'm seeing Fires from targets that are kilometers away that seem to have fires leaping 100's of meters into the air.

Here tests of my new explosions :

These effects are really coming around,,,and thanks for your work.

Thanks dfang I learned more than a year, but now I can do everything
simple question to all- which explosion is better?
This- dust more flat and sideways, or

from the previous post-smoke more to the top ?

I like test 2 best..

I think nothing more can be done, I return now to the smoke and fire.
But without Firebird will be hard, because it is a serious bug

New cannon dust, flame and smoke , switch movie to 480p.
Firebird wake up !

Burning wrecks looks really great! Good job

BANITA, those effects are very good!

when can we get the new exe???

HerrKaputt-->Dankeschön
Longbow fanatic-soon


How does it look like? exaggerated or ok?

I like it !

Very nice! & good music

Awaiting new exe )))

is there a way to not have the smoke end so abruptly.. maybe change it to a lighter intensity so it looks more natural?? The smoke plumes look funny the way they just end... other than that I'm being nit picky and it does look much improved! thank you very much for your time !!

Already this is done, thanks for your attention
With the smoke is such a problem,can be done with a very nice, but will eat every fps,always have to find something in the middle.

EECH needs "only" Cross Processing filter, and looks better than Apache Air Assault

Is that filter in game or from a video edit afterwards?

Any progress?