What happened to the airshow smoke?!

[Brother_Leb]

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

UPDATE: As of 2.8.2.35759 this issue has been resolved! Thanks ED. Airshow smoke now looks pretty good and, as far as I can tell, the permanent smoke on the ground bug is fixed as well.

Personally, for our airshows, we like the smoke to linger a bit longer than it is currently coded to do. If you want to edit the parameters of your smoke, I suggest taking a look at the edited file by @FrecceTricoloriVirtuali as a good place to start: 

 

smokeTrail.lua

BE ADVISED, EDITING THIS FILE BREAKS IC.

Cheers!

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Dear ED,

I think a lot of the changes in update 2.8 are really good from what I can tell. Good on yah. Before I grouse, I want you to know that we appreciate the hard work you are putting in. We really do.

As an aerobatics/airshow pilot, however, I have a major gripe. The airshow smoke looks HIDEOUS now!

It wasn't going to win any awards before, but it more or less looked like it should and our imaginations did the rest. The "new and improved" stuff is clearly making use of new cool particle effects and physics sim tech, BUT it looks like the smoke dispenser is broken with how quickly it exits the jet and disappears/dissapates (around 6-8 plane lengths). We airshow guys want to make shapes in the sky. There's no possible way to make a loop when the smoke is gone less than a quarter of the way through it. It's also really hard to see from the ground or another plane (another reason for using smoke in an airshow setting).

I mean, what are all the MB-339 people you are marketing to gonna do with their fancy new fangled smoke system?

Now, I have no doubt that people will mod in improved airshow smoke effects, and more power to the awesome community. However, I humbly submit that we have the option to either change how long that stuff lasts or go back to the old smoke. I hate saying it. I know this is probably the lowest priority stuff or your list. And I don't want to stand in the way of progress. But, this stuff is just sad. It makes me sad. Please fix it.

Gratefully,

A sad Blue Angels stan

Edited January 27, 2023 by Brother_Leb
Issue resolved

[ChariotOfFLAME]

I'm just seeing this now too. This really takes the joy out of doing opposing maneuvers, but also makes it dangerously hard to spot your opposing solo across the circle to ensure deconfliction.

Would love an option to extend the duration of the smoke, or to have the old smoke back until this can be improved.

I know we're a small community, but why else do you have smoke dispensers if not to have folks mimic airshows! Please help!

[Brother_Leb]

I'm in a few virtual Blue Angels groups discords and somebody already made a fix, but it involves editing a .lua file in the core files. I don't want to have to do this (I already did, because I want good smoke, but it'd be nice to not fail integrity checks).

[Flappie]

Track please.

[ChariotOfFLAME]

8 hours ago, Flappie said:

Track please.

As in upload a Track File? Why? This is a LUA issue, which is Track File agnostic.

[ChariotOfFLAME]

9 hours ago, Flappie said:

Track please.

Below are comparisons.
Old 2.7 Smoke:

New 2.8 Smoke:

null

[Flappie]

The scene is not identical, and it's hard for me to see any difference, because I don't use smokes at all.

A track helps because I can run it on previous build and in current build, make a comparative movie out of it, then show it to devs.

[ChariotOfFLAME]

Copy that. I'll grab you one tomorrow.

[Brother_Leb]

@Flappie Here's the track where I first noticed it. There's a bunch of dead time at the beginning (sorry) but starting around 10:14:00 in in-game time we're doing airshow maneuvers with smoke and it's very noticeable to me at least.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T1LQzhum9MkqdH-lCRYNsngquZZUQjjb/view?usp=sharing

[ChariotOfFLAME]

On 10/29/2022 at 3:26 PM, Flappie said:

The scene is not identical, and it's hard for me to see any difference, because I don't use smokes at all.

A track helps because I can run it on previous build and in current build, make a comparative movie out of it, then show it to devs.

Here is a short track with a couple of maneuvers that should show the smoke!

Smoke2t8.trk

[Flappie]

Many thanks, gents. Now I see the difference. The issue has been reported internally.

[Fanter]

Second this, the new smoke is terrible.

[MadKreator]

I don’;t do aerobatics/ smoke but I notice this too with regular contrails from planes. They seem to dissipate much faster now and they kinda look like cheesy cotton ball puffs.I was hoping they would stay around longer with 2.8 updated clouds/weather. Real ones don’t fade away 1/8 mile behind the jet If true to life is the goal then they should be visible for a much longer period of time, or distance.  My .02

[FrecceTricoloriVirtuali]

Hi there,
we are on the same boat talking about the "aerobatic" smokes. 
We fixed (sort of) the smoke length by editing (again) the smoketrail.lua file, but we ask for help about the coloured smokes that fade into white very soon. We were able to fix it in the previous version, but we can't now. Looking forward for the community help, thanks in advance.

[FrecceTricoloriVirtuali]

Update: one of our pilots found the culprit, it was the ColorFadingFactor value. 
You can try our current SmokeTrail.lua if you want (attached in the message). 

smokeTrail.lua

[Brother_Leb]

Thanks to everyone who replied, posted, etc. @FrecceTricoloriVirtualiThanks for that .lua, very nice! We've been trying out our own adjustments as well, based on the .lua that one of the VBA guys did, post 2.8. I will say that I'm actually really happy with how the smoke looks once I change the dissipation factor, segment length, and scale base arguments which allows us to get the parameters we want. It's actually really nice smoke and probably a slight upgrade from before.

I stand by what I said previously though. It would be GREAT to not have to break IC to get these changes. I guess, I'll live with it, because copying and pasting a .lua is pretty low maintenance compared to some of the other things many of us do in the sim to get it where we want it. That said, it would be lovely not to have to do that.

Thanks again for everyone else pitching in their thoughts.

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * 

NOTE: As the OP, I've marked this as the "solution" because editing the .lua like the example above resolves the complaint. This doesn't change the fact that the smoke changed from 2.7 to 2.8 or that the change to the smokeTrail.lua that we've made to fix it causes DCS to fail integrity checks. You have been warned.

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * 

Edited November 10, 2022 by Brother_Leb

[Wayan]

I wouldn't count that as a solution - it is just a temporary fix, because when you modify the file, the known bug arises, that the smokes stays indefinitely, when activated on ground with no speed and this bug exists since 2 years...

[ChariotOfFLAME]

10 hours ago, Wayan said:

I wouldn't count that as a solution - it is just a temporary fix, because when you modify the file, the known bug arises, that the smokes stays indefinitely, when activated on ground with no speed and this bug exists since 2 years...

As you yourself stated, that’s a wholly different issue that may be resolved when/if they address this bug

[Brother_Leb]

@Wayan I agree. Hence my "NOTE" at the bottom of my post. It's clear this has not been fixed, but rather addressed by users on their own. I marked that as the "solution" so that someone looking for ways to fix their smoke problem will be able to do so on their own and not have to wait indefinitely for ED. I was that person once. I'm trying to help them.

I should also mention that I'm glad a beta tester replied and is aware of it. It gives me hope that ED will address this in future updates.

As for your other problem (smoke on the ground forever). You are correct that has not been addressed, but that was also not the issue I created this post about initially. You are welcome to make a new post about that in the 2.8 bugs directory. Feel free to tag or quote this topic if you like. I'd love to see that problem addressed as well.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Brother_Leb

[durp]

DCS 2.7.18.30765 (todays update) did not address the issue

keep using the modified file thankfully provided by FrecceTricoloriVirtuali

 

[gulredrel]

Today's update was open beta 2.8.0.32937, but yes, the old file is back.

[durp]

oops, yes. meant DCS 2.8.0.32937

[ChariotOfFLAME]

Just an updated post to say:

As of Today (28 Nov 2022), the Airshow Smoke bug has yet to be addressed, and any edit to the airshow smoke section in the LUA continues to break the Integrity Check.
I know this is likely at the bottom of the priority list, but it'd be awesome to see this addressed in the next patch!

[popov]

On 11/4/2022 at 6:05 AM, FrecceTricoloriVirtuali said:

Update: one of our pilots found the culprit, it was the ColorFadingFactor value. 
You can try our current SmokeTrail.lua if you want (attached in the message). 

smokeTrail.lua 8.41 kB · 37 downloads

Hi, thanks for this modified script, but I can't seem to make it work on my side.
I tested your file in both the Savegames folder and in the Core structure folder and on both case I can't manage to make it work

Test 1, in savegames path : ...\Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\Effects\ParticleSystem2
Test 2, In the Core : D:\GAMES\DCS World OpenBeta\Config\Effects\ParticleSystem2

Can you share where to put the file or this is still not working in this latest DCS Open Beta version ? ... thank you

 

 

[gulredrel]

Worked for me in single player.

I copied and renamed the original file in my game folder:

E:\games\DCS_World_OpenBeta\Config\Effects\ParticleSystem2\smokeTrail.lua --> E:\games\DCS_World_OpenBeta\Config\Effects\ParticleSystem2\smokeTrail.lua_org

I than edited the original file smokeTrail.lua within the folder with notepad++, which also has the option to compare both file versions, so you don't accidently change other values.