effects in LockOn (56K warning!)

[Starlight]

I'd like to see more effects in LockOn in the future. In particular I mean aircraft smoking and more realistic vapor effects, and

apart from the graphics/scenic reasons, I think they could also affect air combat in some ways.... aircraft smoking are much easier to spot during A2A, and in LockOn there are some aircraft which are very renowned to be heavy smokers, first of all the Fulcrum, which is also a flyable....

And then also the vapor effects could help spotting an aircraft in A2A combat. And the huge cloud that sometimes builds up behind an aircraft pulling a lot of Gs I think also limits backward visibility from the cockpit.

I mean effects are great for realism, not only as eye-candy, but also because they can be a factor in combat.

 

And another effect which is already modelled in LockOn but maybe could be improved is the heat blur. From some pictures here we can see that heat blur usually covers a much larger area.

 

The pictures here are from their copyright owners, I've pasted them here just to show what I mean in my own post.

 

Some F-15 pictures with vapor effects:

 

 

 

 

 

F-4F Phantom with vapour and smoke trail

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/486195/M/

 

 

Tornado takeoff: notice how large is heat blur!

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/336497/M/

 

Tornado in flight, again see the heat trai from engines

 

F-18C, vapor and huge heat blur

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/718069/M/

 

mig-29 smoking

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/371758/M/

 

 

mig-29 smoking

 

mig-29 smoke effect

[VVanks]

Computers will refuse to run a game with that kinda of effects.

[GGTharos]

That isn't really true.

 

What MAY be true is that the development of said effects might be rather time-consuming and there are other things to be done first.

[VVanks]

That isn't really true.

 

What MAY be true is that the development of said effects might be rather time-consuming and there are other things to be done first.

 

I don't want to run that kind of heat blur on my computer though. lol. Yeah, they should work on other things first.

[Starlight]

I agree there are things which need to be fixed first. But one thing that would be quite easy to implement and is also the most critical among the "effects", is the engine smoke. It's critical in A2A combat because it's much easier to spot aircraft which have this dark trail, and it's critical because there are aircraft that are smoky, and aircraft that are not so. The smoke feature could be made similar to the one already modelled smoke for damaged engines, but a bit lighter and/or more trasparent.

BTW smoky engines are already modelled in "a sim with ancient graphics" like Falcon 4 ;)

[mikoyan]

there is any way to put the vapuor effects of flanker 2.5 on lomac ?

[S77th-konkussion]

Yes, very nice but other things take priority. For what it's worth- there is some "vapor effect" taking place in the mirrors when you climb in & out of contrails. I also have seen it when dumping fuel. I do not beleive it's there during transonic flight..

[Trident]

Good points, LOMAC needs:

 

- better afterburner effects (volumetric like the missile exhaust)

- better wingtip vortices (thinner and more persistent)

- condensation over the wingroots (similar to Flanker2, that one did it just right, nice but subtle)

- engine smoke (a less dense, black/brown version of the missile smoke effect would work great)

 

in that order of importance, IMHO.

[33rd_bratpfanne.]

Yes, i would really like to see Engine smoke (Mig 29 more, F 15 less), but its Intensity should vary from the Throttle input. If u power up Throttle in a Mig 29 from idle i.E. after a Looping, there will be a dense smoke, getting thinner when engines are on upper rpm. I always admired these things in Aviation Vids and it would be great, especially for Dogfighting reasons as statet above, if we could have modeled these Effects correctly.

 

This would make me a far more happier man !! I would even pay for a "realistic graphic effects Addon" (not 50 Bucks though ;) )

 

S!

 

Brati

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

If you were to add engine smoke you would have to change the volume of it for each country that use mig 29 as russian m29s use different fuel which is dirtier than other countrys m29s, so i have read, i could be wrong. Although it would be nice to have, I agree that there is more immediate things that need looking at or added first, but maybe oneday we will have it, and there will be one thing less for us to ask for but then we will just think of something new to take its place :P

[D-Scythe]

I think you would also have to model the way that the smoke disappears whenever the afterburners are lit, but I could be wrong on that. I heard in Vietnam, U.S. fighters often lit their burners to get rid of the tell-tale streak of engine smoke. Furthermore, AFAIK, the newer 1980s turbofans (at least the U.S. ones), like the F100s on the F-15/F-16 fighters, emit a minimal amount of smoke, virtually next to nothing, because they burn really clean. Not sure about that either.

 

Of all the effects, IMO engine smoke would be the most important. But in all honesty, I would rather see improvements to other things, like AI, first.