Make trees catch on fire

[Jonny]

Would be much more realistic if trees (and objects) catch fire when shot upon. 

I was thinking that every object should have a flammability property and catch fire accordingly. 

For example it would be much more realistic if instead of directly hitting a group of soldiers hiding in the forest or a dry yellow field, we could just lit the forest or field and either eliminate them by fire or just make them escape. Besides it's kind of not realistic to hit a tree with a rocket and have that have zero damage..

 

Cheers!

[cfrag]

7 hours ago, Jonny said:

Would be much more realistic if trees (and objects) catch fire when shot upon. 

Indeed it would be. And it would open up a whole can of worms (that is exciting to explore/discuss, but a nightmare to program): 

• The immediate next question is: how long should it (tree/shrubs/field) burn, and how do we realistically integrate current weather (rain, wind) and season into burn duration and severity? How will fire damage units immersed in it?
• And of course the big one: will the fire spread? I wrote a nice little Lua script to simulate a forest fire, one that will spread if not attended to. If not done exceedingly well (i.e. I did not), that script can easily consume all your processing power as burn cells multiply, and the rules for where the fire is spreading consume more and more cpu and memory). This is a truly fascinating subject, and fun to explore - especially with fire fighting helicopters and aircraft. Definitely not something, though, that you want your normal combat sim to be dragged down with.
  Oh, yeah, all that flame and smoke? Total GPU killer due to the many layers of transparency, so maybe also keep that in mind. But a highly addictive subject that I'm still playing with.
• And, yes, as you said: trees should be destructive. That would mean that every tree by itself, and it's remains, must be individually modelled in the world. I don't think they are right now (for performance reasons)

So, (to me) this is a truly interesting subject (a plane that crashes in a forest should/could start a blaze). Since this is a wish-list, I'm all for it. 

 

 

[Mohamengina]

this is one the cool features in the strategy game wargame - fire adds an interesting dynamic that counters infantry and light vehicles hiding in the forest and makes it difficult to push through.

[Northstar98]

Don't they already catch fire when struck? They burn with this very large fire (kinda looks like a large gas flare). I'm fairly sure all manners of environmental objects do it too, even when it doesn't make much sense (like fences, electrical transmission towers/poles as well as streetlamps/light poles.

EDIT: okay just did some testing only some, smaller trees do, though it's quite difficult (they seem to have a lot of health).

There isn't any fire propagation effects modelled though, but cfrag nails that one.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Northstar98

[Jonny]

7 hours ago, cfrag said:

Indeed it would be. And it would open up a whole can of worms (that is exciting to explore/discuss, but a nightmare to program): 

• The immediate next question is: how long should it (tree/shrubs/field) burn, and how do we realistically integrate current weather (rain, wind) and season into burn duration and severity? How will fire damage units immersed in it?
• And of course the big one: will the fire spread? I wrote a nice little Lua script to simulate a forest fire, one that will spread if not attended to. If not done exceedingly well (i.e. I did not), that script can easily consume all your processing power as burn cells multiply, and the rules for where the fire is spreading consume more and more cpu and memory). This is a truly fascinating subject, and fun to explore - especially with fire fighting helicopters and aircraft. Definitely not something, though, that you want your normal combat sim to be dragged down with.
  Oh, yeah, all that flame and smoke? Total GPU killer due to the many layers of transparency, so maybe also keep that in mind. But a highly addictive subject that I'm still playing with.
• And, yes, as you said: trees should be destructive. That would mean that every tree by itself, and it's remains, must be individually modelled in the world. I don't think they are right now (for performance reasons)

So, (to me) this is a truly interesting subject (a plane that crashes in a forest should/could start a blaze). Since this is a wish-list, I'm all for it. 

 

 

You bring up lots of food for thought. You definitely took it a step further than me. I love it.

All these problems exist and are big problems to solve.

Processing power always was and alway will be bottleneck, however these problems are all solvable with simplified models and smart algorithms. 

Unreal engine 5 exists and does a pretty amazing job, Unity, MSFS, and even the features that DCS does have were all unsolvable problems that were solved using outsmarting the bottlenecks. 

 

P.S.

And BTW - isn't DCS running only on 1 CPU core?  Imagine what it could do with more cores...

 

 

[Northstar98]

28 minutes ago, Jonny said:

P.S.

And BTW - isn't DCS running only on 1 CPU core?  Imagine what it could do with more cores...

2, but the other one does sound.

[FlankerKiller]

I think the second poster nailed it. This would be super cool. But the technology to support it isn't there yet. Multi core would be a must. But even then a raging forest fire, or city wide firestorm would eat up alot of GPU, and RAM. It would be awesome though if it killed vehicles, and troops. Dropping fire weapons to push troops with a forest fire could definitely be a good tactic. 

[Jonny]

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

2, but the other one does sound.

So another one can do just fire 

[upyr1]

[Jonny]

 

[Baaz]

On 3/30/2022 at 2:50 AM, Northstar98 said:

Don't they already catch fire when struck? They burn with this very large fire (kinda looks like a large gas flare). I'm fairly sure all manners of environmental objects do it too, even when it doesn't make much sense (like fences, electrical transmission towers/poles as well as streetlamps/light poles.

EDIT: okay just did some testing only some, smaller trees do, though it's quite difficult (they seem to have a lot of health).

There isn't any fire propagation effects modelled though, but cfrag nails that one.

 

From my experience, only those trees around the airfields will catch fire and be removed.  I can't remember the range, but I think it's something like 5km.   If we use Senaki-Kolkhi as an example, I know for a fact all trees in and around the airfield and town will burn, but once you hit the hillside to the north, well that's where the buck stops.

[Dragon1-1]

This certainly needs to be part of a damage overhaul, particularly for thermobaric, incendiary and combined effects munitions. It's hard to start a major fire with high explosives, but we've got several weapons that are specifically designed to set things on fire. Huge forest and grass fires might be no-go for performance reasons, but things definitely need to burn. The Phantom, at least, needs its iconic "snake and nape" loadout.  

On a related note, WP smoke rockets should be pretty deadly to unprotected infantry. One FAC in Vietnam managed to disrupt a VC charge by hosing off his marker rockets directly at them. They should also be capable of starting fires, as well as dealing direct damage to infantry. WP burns quite hot, in addition to producing a ridiculous amount of smoke.