Historically when a aircraft got its fuel tank holed it was apparently pretty obvious to the other pilots in the fight - besides the poor victim - as the aircraft trailed a white plume of gas vapor that sometimes preceded a fire, sometimes not if you were lucky.

Anyway I have talked to the Dev's over the years and they say it's in there - and it shows in the effects.xml - but I, for whatever reason, have never seen it and I have been shot in the tank plenty of times.

Until yesterday. Was doing a practice run against a two-seater and got my tank holed. As I dived out of the fight I could see the white smoke/vapor that I was trailing! In a additional bit of coolness it stopped when the tank was empty. Went to the "View Target" button and my opponent was also trailing this white smoke followed shortly thereafter by his engine shutting down.

Very cool. Unknown why this has never shown before (and I have always looked for it) unless it was because of the in-game light level being just right or maybe the new Nvidia drivers. Now hopefully I can now see the Oil Leak effect which is also coded in the game.

Yes, it is in there; seen it many times.
In real life, your chances were near nill, if you didn't immediately switch the engine off.
And even then the engine parts were so hot, that the fuel vapour might inginte.

We would not talk about the famous ace Manfred von Richthofen, if he had not been among
the lucky ones - he descrived such a dilemma, and he was also lucky then, that no enemy
pilot followed him and shot him up.
They were all bladerunners really, living on the knife's edge...

Unfortunately, I have seen this many times with my aircraft. I have a knack for getting holes in my crate.

My system and settings are top end.
Wonder why I have such an apparent issue in seeing it?
Hmmm...well anyway pretty cool.

I don't think I've really noticed it either, Duke and I have certainly had my tank holed many a time...I'll have to pay more attention, I guess!

I have an idea, how the devs could force us to pay more attention:
if the tank gets pierced and we pull a trail of vapourised petrol, we have - say - 10 seconds
to switch the engine off; then the stuff ignites. I bet we'd notice it the next time!
Mmuahahahahaaa!!!

In this video between Albs and Nieuports you can see the vapor trail of an Albatross at 3:23. I follow him down.

Nice dance, MFair!
But you could do more commercialising for OBD, if you would call your videos
"Wings Over Flanders Fields..." instead of "Combat Flight Simulator 3..."

Oh, I see this Fuel Vapor roughly once a week LOL
I even have an impressive Fire Trail behind me every now and then. Cool thing: When you shut off Ignition and Dive (to gain some Speed), you can blow out the Flames! Works nearly every time :-)

Yes, that is my bad Olham. I think I have it figured out where to type that in now. It is on my latest video. I do not have that many and if I can edit them I will.

Good video MFair
Thanks for the tip, Nietzsche

If you don't see fuel leaks it could be you have your effects slider not on 5, or maybe some video driver issue - or perhaps monitor brightness/contrast issue. If you lower the effects you may see less effects or some not at all.

My Effects have always been on "5".
It was a cloudy day in WOFF world.
Are you saying my monitor may be too bright?
It's at factory default in that I have never touched it nor through the video settings. It's always seemed fine - not too bright IMHO.

Duke, If you didn't see Udet wave at me when I circled to see if he was OK you may need to have your eyes checked.

Switch off...or burn! You sure know how to motivate a guy, Olham!

The motivation came from the upper tenthousand.
They decided not to give the pilots parachutes - they found it might make the guys
give up their expensive aircraft too easily.
How's that for motivation?

Thanks for the video MFair.
The trail was certainly visible but I noticed, that somewhat similar to me, it was in a relatively reduced light situation.

Did some more QC testing.
I am going to guess in the bright light, or even not that bright, the vapor effect is being lost in the exhaust plume.
Was looking at one of my screenshots (in the Screenshot thread of me in a SE shooting down a Halb) and the vapor trail looks to be happening as it can be seen against the dark smoke of the engine fire.

Maybe something, or some modder, can do something to "brighten it up" to make it more visible in normal daylight conditions.

Just some suggestions Duke, it's OK here.

If you want plumes of smoke then effects would need to be edited.
Everyone wants different things so it is what it is of course.

Thank you for the suggestion Pol.
I will take a look at it but will also give it some time for further game play evaluation.
After all I obviously have not seen a flying WW1 aircraft with its tank holed by gunfire so who am i to say anything about an effect and what it should really look like. Apparently most here see it and have no issues.
Read real life accounts where it's reportedly obvious but who knows?

Well, not wanting to be accused of sitting back and being a whiner, I looked at the effects.xml
The textures called up for the various effects (fuel leak and oil leak for example) looked to also be used in other effects so just making a "simple" graphic change is not the way to go.
However it would appear that how they actually look in-game is controlled by individual settings such as "Initial Color" and "Alpha" apparently at the beginning of the effect and then the ending color and Alpha for I will guess the end of the effect or end of the vapor trail?
The "0-255" color scheme and higher/lower on the Alpha can researched on Google I suppose but how a change looks actually in-game will be trial and error. And there are multiple lines for each effect (such as "oil leak") so there are different levels of oil leak graphics that can be called up?
Don't know but as time allows I may try to "darken" up the "Initial Color" and Alpha and see what happens.

Or if I am real lucky I have hit the graphics sweet spot and will have no more issue seeing them and I can just shut the hell up and enjoy myself flying my campaigns!