fixed Smoke from burning aircraft not visible from a distance

[some1]

It looks like the last open beta update has fixed the long standing issue with fireballs not visible unless close to the aircraft. Great! (https://forum.dcs.world/topic/201010-explosions-invisible-fov-depending/#comment-4798804)

However, now the smoke from damaged aircraft disappears at a couple hundred meters, or when you zoom out.  The flames are still visible, but some of the smoke particles vanish.
 

All ok here:

null

Zoom out a notch:

 

Ok here:

Zoom out a notch:

 

[CapnCoke]

I am not sure whether this change was intentional or a bug. I recall being able to see aircraft with fuel leak or engine smoke from afar. Today I was doing a Ka-50 mission with an ai wingman and I saw my wingman behaving weirdly. I went to external view to spectate him and I zoomed in and I realized he was damaged. If I zoom out more than 500 meters then there's no fuel leak so I wasn't able to tell when I was in my cockpit.

I tested with ST version to avoid any known bugs related to particle effects with MT. I've identified two files that controls this effect in Config/Effects/ParticleSystem2/speedfireandsmoke.lua and fuelleakage.lua. First file is speedfireandsmoke.lua and the weird part about it is that engine fire visibility is at 10,000 meters, while the smoke is at 500 meters. This produces a weird effect when spectating an aircraft with engine fire because zooming out more than 500 meters causes the smoke to disappear. The fuelleakege.lua also has its distance set at 500 meters.

I feel like if engine fire visibility is set to 10,000 meters, then engine smoke should be set at 10,000 meters since those two effects work in tandem to produce an engine fire failure. The same should be for fuel leakage. Due to changes with IC, editing those will cause a pure client check fail.

Edited August 2, 2023 by CapnCoke

[CapnCoke]

Attached track replays. Also attached fix for fuel leakage smoke and fire smoke. Increased them to 10,000 meters. (Please note that if you are not a dev and want to test the fix, place folder in mod manager or backup your files as this is not IC safe). This should fix the common engine fire smoke damage (1st example OP posted and my example) and fuel leakage damage(2nd example OP posted) since those two are very important for spotting and target prioritization for WW2/Cold war era combat.

Before fix

After fix

Engine fire smoke bug.trk Smoke visibility bug fix.zip

Edited August 4, 2023 by CapnCoke

[Flappie]

Thank you, gents. Issue reported.

[Flappie]

This has been fixed internally. The fix should be part of the next OB update.

[Flappie]

The fix is part of today's OB update.

[Severum]

So I've ran into this issue lately, I'm not sure what is causing it, but the smoke trails that come from the body of the plane where the wings detach when shot down only appear when close up. From a distance they don't render in at all. Meanwhile the smoke trails for the detached wings themselves appear regardless of distance.  My graphics card drivers are up to date so I'm not sure what is going on. I don't have any mods running that would cause this issue. I attached a screenshot to show what I mean. I have not done a hard reinstall.  I run the graphics settings on pretty much the highest settings.

PC Stats:

12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900K   3.20 GHz
32GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080

[Flappie]

This as been fixed on August 16th in OB. I take it you're running the Release version?

 

[Severum]

3 hours ago, Flappie said:

This as been fixed on August 16th in OB. I take it you're running the Release version?

 

Yes I believe I am running stable.

[Flappie]

Ok, then it should be fine with the next Release update (no dates).

[Loukuins]

8 hours ago, Flappie said:

This as been fixed on August 16th in OB. I take it you're running the Release version?

 

It wasn't fixed for me running in the BETA ^^'  (It is specially apparent with Contrails)

Edited September 24, 2023 by Loukuins

[Flappie]

@Loukuins This thread is about smoke emitted by damaged aircraft. Please run the attached track in OB and tell me if you can't see the black smoke at some point. I can.

About the contrails issue, please create a new thread and attach a DCS track along with your options.lua file (from Saved Games/DCS.../Config).

Engine fire smoke.trk

[Loukuins]

18 hours ago, Flappie said:

@Loukuins This thread is about smoke emitted by damaged aircraft. Please run the attached track in OB and tell me if you can't see the black smoke at some point. I can.

About the contrails issue, please create a new thread and attach a DCS track along with your options.lua file (from Saved Games/DCS.../Config).

Engine fire smoke.trk 50.79 kB · 1 download

I will recheck for the smoke, might be fixed, the next flight I do I will make a track file and everything for the contrails