How to increase smoke life?

[dresoccer4]

Hey guys. I'm wanting to increase the life of vehicle/plane/ship smoke. In my opinion it's wayyy too short. Things can burn for a long time, plus it makes the battlefield look a lot cooler . Now I get why ED doesn't let things burn long, as it would eat a lot of the lower-end PCs for breakfast. But a lot of us have tough rigs that can handle it, so I'm looking at a way of experimenting and getting the smoke to last a realistic amount of time to increase fidelity.

 

I'm taking a look at the VehicleFire.lua but nothing is commented so I don't know what any of the values mean. I've been experimenting but without much luck. Can someone smarter than I shed some light on what the different variables are? Thanks!

 

local fireLife = 3
local smokeLifeC = 3
local smokeLife = 8*smokeLifeC
local lifeTime = 120

Duration = {{0, 2000}, {1, 5000}}
Emitters = {
        {
        Name = "Fire1",
        Texture = "DCSFireTex.png",
        Technique = "AnimatedFire",
        InitPositionBox = {Min = {-1.2,0.8,0.3}, Max = {-1.2,1,1.3}},
        Flags = {"SoftParticles"},
        

[MAXsenna]

Hey guys. I'm wanting to increase the life of vehicle/plane/ship smoke. In my opinion it's wayyy too short. Things can burn for a long time, plus it makes the battlefield look a lot cooler . Now I get why ED doesn't let things burn long, as it would eat a lot of the lower-end PCs for breakfast. But a lot of us have tough rigs that can handle it, so I'm looking at a way of experimenting and getting the smoke to last a realistic amount of time to increase fidelity.
 
I'm taking a look at the VehicleFire.lua but nothing is commented so I don't know what any of the values mean. I've been experimenting but without much luck. Can someone smarter than I shed some light on what the different variables are? Thanks!
 
local fireLife = 3
local smokeLifeC = 3
local smokeLife = 8*smokeLifeC
local lifeTime = 120
Duration = {{0, 2000}, {1, 5000}}
Emitters = {
        {
        Name = "Fire1",
        Texture = "DCSFireTex.png",
        Technique = "AnimatedFire",
        InitPositionBox = {Min = {-1.2,0.8,0.3}, Max = {-1.2,1,1.3}},
        Flags = {"SoftParticles"},
        

Search for "Better smoke" from Taz1004. He has made a couple of mods. There's even a thread about it.
Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[dresoccer4]

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

Search for "Better smoke" from Taz1004. He has made a couple of mods. There's even a thread about it.
Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk
 

 

hi. i have that mod, but it doesn't simply increase smoke life, it does a lot of things. i want to be able to simply increase the life of the smoke by adjusting the variables. but need to know what he variables actually do. 

[MAXsenna]

 
hi. i have that mod, but it doesn't simply increase smoke life, it does a lot of things. i want to be able to simply increase the life of the smoke by adjusting the variables. but need to know what he variables actually do. 

Ah, I see. Yeah, I would like the fires to burn longer as well. Any plane crash or another wreck should burn for hours.

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[dresoccer4]

3 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Ah, I see. Yeah, I would like the fires to burn longer as well. Any plane crash or another wreck should burn for hours.

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk
 

 

yep, exactly! so i was hoping it would just be as simple as modifying one of the variables. but they aren't obvious to what they mean

 

local fireLife = 3
local smokeLifeC = 3
local smokeLife = 8*smokeLifeC
local lifeTime = 120
Duration = {{0, 2000}, {1, 5000}}

 

i tried increasing the two  "Duration" values by a lot but they didn't seem to do anything

Edited August 15, 2021 by dresoccer4

[MAXsenna]

 
yep, exactly! so i was hoping it would just be as simple as modifying one of the variables. but they aren't obvious to what they mean
 
local fireLife = 3
local smokeLifeC = 3
local smokeLife = 8*smokeLifeC
local lifeTime = 120
Duration = {{0, 2000}, {1, 5000}}
 
i tried increasing the two  "Duration" values by a lot but they didn't seem to do anything

If I remember correctly,@Taz1004 did write something about burn duration in that other thread. Something about it was intentionally reduced, or rather, did not make them burn for too long due to computer performance.
Maybe worth a check?

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[Mud]

I'm also trying to figure out how to accomplish long smoke times for vehicles.  Have you already found a way to do this @dresoccer4?

[dresoccer4]

On 10/3/2021 at 3:53 AM, Mud said:

I'm also trying to figure out how to accomplish long smoke times for vehicles.  Have you already found a way to do this @dresoccer4?

 

I have not, however I thought I had found it in the file .../Config/World/World.lua as it has burn times for many different vehicles as well as airplane crash burn time...however I have adjusted all of these but don't really see a noticeable difference. 

Was hoping someone in the DCS modding community would be able to point in the right direction to help explain what the variables mean... 

[Habu_69]

I think smoke duration is 5 min. One solution is to write a script that re-initiates smoke every 5 min.

[Mud]

When strafing an area with multiple targets, the short burn/smoke times make it sometimes hard to distinguish between already destroyed and active vehicles.

I wish ED would let us know where we can modify it, or even add a slider to set the desired burn time in the settings.

 

[MAXsenna]

Let's petition for a slider in the settings. Everything should literally burn for hours if not taken care of.

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[speed-of-heat]

the problem with that (and i agree in the real world) is the performance impact that it has... because its not just one fire its all of them that you end up impacting.

[Mud]

21 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

Let's petition for a slider in the settings. Everything should literally burn for hours if not taken care of.

While I would not at all mind having it as an option in the settings, I guess it would cause a backlash of requests for all other possible things which could be made option-able.
So I would already be happy enough with just knowing where to modify the value currently.  Assuming/hoping it's not hard-coded now and out of our reach.

[Mud]

Anyone been able to manage to find/modify it already?

@BIGNEWY Could you bring this thread to the attention of the benevolent forces?

It's a real bummer that a destroyed vehicle only burns for a fraction of the time it would in real.  I do understand too many burning vehicles would have a detremental impact on performance, but giving us the choice to set this, or pointing out where we could modify it ourselves, would be very much appreciated.

Worst case scenario: I guess it's reverting to triggers on every vehicle with fire/smoke effects upon death.

Br,

Mud

[Taz1004]

On 8/15/2021 at 8:35 PM, MAXsenna said:

If I remember correctly,@Taz1004 did write something about burn duration in that other thread. Something about it was intentionally reduced, or rather, did not make them burn for too long due to computer performance.
Maybe worth a check?

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk
 

Strange I didn't get mention notification for this thread.  Didn't mean to ignore.

But I believe all smoke durations are locked away since 2.7

And I left VehicleFire.lua in my mod in case there's still something that uses it but new smoke are controlled by smoke.fx in Bazar and staticSmoke.lua in Config.

Edited November 21, 2021 by Taz1004

[dresoccer4]

On 11/21/2021 at 3:31 PM, Taz1004 said:

Strange I didn't get mention notification for this thread.  Didn't mean to ignore.

But I believe all smoke durations are locked away since 2.7

And I left VehicleFire.lua in my mod in case there's still something that uses it but new smoke are controlled by smoke.fx in Bazar and staticSmoke.lua in Config.

 

don't meant to necro my old thread, but I just saw your response @Taz1004 2 years later  
You said that all smoke durations are now locked and cannot be modified, which explains why nothing I did in the config filed seemed to have any effect on burn times. i was banging my head against a wall for a while with this!

Do you know if this is still the case with our latest DCS World version? I just picked up the sim again this week and one of the first thing I noticed was low burn times so it brought me back full circle to this thread 

[Taz1004]

2 hours ago, dresoccer4 said:

don't meant to necro my old thread, but I just saw your response @Taz1004 2 years later  
You said that all smoke durations are now locked and cannot be modified, which explains why nothing I did in the config filed seemed to have any effect on burn times. i was banging my head against a wall for a while with this!

Do you know if this is still the case with our latest DCS World version? I just picked up the sim again this week and one of the first thing I noticed was low burn times so it brought me back full circle to this thread 

I could be wrong but I don't think anything's changed.

[dresoccer4]

19 minutes ago, Taz1004 said:

I could be wrong but I don't think anything's changed.

ok thanks for the reply. i'll go ahead and mark your post as the solution since there hasn't been any update on tnat end.

hopefully ED will allow modders to make changes to certain configs like smoke duration in the future!

[rato65]

I understand smoke durations seem to be locked, but does this include cargo smoke for sling load ops? Can we switch off this cargo smoke when the load is selected somehow, or decrease the smoke time?

Edited November 20, 2023 by rato65