More variety in vfx

[falconzx]

Given the number of weapons in development is increasing, i suggest in parallel to work on more variety of VFX and maybe associate them to the color/type of terrain or object hit.

Some tips:
-Create more types of explosions with increased duration per type/size of warhead and type of weapon, in general DCS explosions and their relative smoke or dust raised have a very short duration.

-Change slightly the colour of the explosion smoke based on type of terrain/texture hit. Green/brown for soil and grass, Yellow/orange for sand, Grey for urban areas, with increased debris, white for snow.

-Based on slope data(if accessible) or height data, add the number of debris/rocks relative to some type of explosions for mountain rocky/sloped areas.

-More smoke/dust duration, means bending the smoke produced by explosions in the wind. I would add this influence not immediatly but after the first blast.

-More variety of fires for "set on fire" things, like vehicles buildings, etc. All the current types of fire have different sizes that produce proportional amount of smoke. But the fire shape or the smoke shape and color they are very similar if not identical.
I suggest to increase variation in these, like making the fire more irregular in intensity and shape, like having sometimes longer flames or irregular blazes, on random basis, to reproduce the variety of materials burning in a real vehicle. Same applies to smoke, just add some random to the colour and intensity, the amount and colour of smoke can be associated to a random basis per object at the start of the effect, and it can mutate randomly across the duration of burning. 
You can parent the values of randomicity to a coefficient linked (or even originated by item data or class) to items data to have some controllability per size or type of vehicle or object.
If this system works good it can be applied with a more fast time evolution to the burning of aerial objects.

The decrease in intensity introduced in the last years it's very appreciated but i think adding some bit of variations and unpredictability it's a key point that can make appear the sim core hugely more realistic with a minimal effort in terms of work for the team.

Most of these i suggested are achievable just adding more instances to the effects with some variation in each instance.

In general what make the current fires and smoke "fake" it's the lack of detail/variation.

 

Edited July 20, 2024 by falconzx

[bies]

True. Just adding some random variations to the explosion, smoke and fire would already make a big difference.

[Gunfreak]

Scaling the explosions better would help too.

Rocket explosions (especially the ww2 rockets) are too big. While 1000lb and 2000lb bomb explosions are too small.

[Avenger31]

+1

[Pingodingo]

this might be bollocks but if they would remake the actual explosion cause when you see bombs in real life they kinda explode not only up but alot of times rolling out like a donut.

 

(all the pictures are 500lb bombs, only the last one is a 2000lb