Smoke Affected by Rotorwash

[TFS]

For CSAR this would be amazing. Now that rotorwash is added, It would be incredible if smoke interacted with rotor wash vortex. 

Anyone heard on this, news or plans? The little details always add such immersion. I love CSAR, always hated hovering in or above the smoke and it just lays there.

Or is there a mod? Arma added this a decade ago and it was always exciting to see it work during helo extractions. 

https://youtu.be/HK1FB3-ugZM?si=XcJszxmoCvQgUsbF

 

Edited July 28, 2024 by TFS

[Gunfreak]

Smoke should also be affected by jet wash and prop wash. 

Edited July 28, 2024 by Gunfreak

[TFS]

6 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

Smoke should also be affected by jet wash and prop wash. 

 

Agreed 100%, the wind sock ingame works. This is quite easy to implement with smoke effects.

I'm sorry I didn't show love for the fixed wings and was selfish in my wishlist for rotorheads

[unclesneep]

+100 to this.  flying a helo through a smoked landing zone is a nightmare since it doesnt displace it

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

+1
pls fix 

 

[cfrag]

10 hours ago, TFS said:

This is quite easy to implement with smoke effects.

Uh. Volumetric smoke effects caused by variable, moving outside forces like fast vehicles, wings, jets, props and helicopter blades? This requires fluid dynamics modelling of the air surrounding all units, and the result then synched across all multiplayer environs. This may be possible with some future 9090Ti GPU, but our current crop of graphics cards can't, nor do the CPUs have the required lifting power. The simplistic jet exhaust distortion effect is the best we can hope for since it's merely a visual effect, and doesn't apply to other players (it's generated locally). Current smoke is a 'billboard'-like (always facing the viewer) 2D particle effect that is easily networkable and can even appear to interact with wind (it doesn't, it merely receives a constant offset over time). Smoke that interacts with the environment is another beast altogether.

Put differently, I'm not aware of some scalable game technology that can provide this with reasonable performance. But I'd love to see this too (as a rotor head, it drives me nuts that my downwash doesn't bother the smoke I'm flying through) - if you have pointers to any tech demo in this regard, please link, I want to be proven wrong here

Edited July 29, 2024 by cfrag

[TFS]

10 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Uh. Volumetric smoke effects caused by variable, moving outside forces like fast vehicles, wings, jets, props and helicopter blades? This requires fluid dynamics modelling of the air surrounding all units, and the result then synched across all multiplayer environs. This may be possible with some future 9090Ti GPU, but our current crop of graphics cards can't, nor do the CPUs have the required lifting power. The simplistic jet exhaust distortion effect is the best we can hope for since it's merely a visual effect, and doesn't apply to other players (it's generated locally). Current smoke is a 'billboard'-like (always facing the viewer) 2D particle effect that is easily networkable and can even appear to interact with wind (it doesn't, it merely receives a constant offset over time). Smoke that interacts with the environment is another beast altogether.

Put differently, I'm not aware of some scalable game technology that can provide this with reasonable performance. But I'd love to see this too (as a rotor head, it drives me nuts that my downwash doesn't bother the smoke I'm flying through) - if you have pointers to any tech demo in this regard, please link, I want to be proven wrong here

 

So this is meant at the DCS current engine being incapable without a futuristic PC GPU? Otherwise there have been games for years now that have this effect added, and mods too. 

[cfrag]

Just now, TFS said:

Otherwise there have been games for years now that have this effect added, and mods too. 

I'd love to see this - do you have any links?

[TFS]

 

[cfrag]

Thank you so much, @TFS, those are indeed some good-looking effects where the smoke looks as if it was affected by downwash, and it is a very clever effect. I agree that this should be possible with today's DCS technology, and, since it's not a physical effect, it should perform very reasonable. It would require some changes to DCS's smoke particle network code, and I hope that it it gets enough priority (it would require that each and every unit in DCS receive a 'smoke displacement' vector relative to thrust and direction, but it should be entirely doable).

Let's keep our fingers crossed!

[TFS]

9 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Thank you so much, @TFS, those are indeed some good-looking effects where the smoke looks as if it was affected by downwash, and it is a very clever effect. I agree that this should be possible with today's DCS technology, and, since it's not a physical effect, it should perform very reasonable. It would require some changes to DCS's smoke particle network code, and I hope that it it gets enough priority (it would require that each and every unit in DCS receive a 'smoke displacement' vector relative to thrust and direction, but it should be entirely doable).

Let's keep our fingers crossed!

I wonder, even if a "SMOKE AND MIRRORS" effect, pun intended, almost like a trigger effect, where smoke, when within range of a vortex would minimize the smoke effect rather than interact with the vortex itself, thus giving the impression that the wind is affecting the smoke is possible FOR NOW? Poor mans smoke effect. Other games have smoke being affected by wind, now I'm not asking for that depth...YET lol

Maybe it's not as simple as I thought, I'm no expert, but I remember having smoke effects as a mod in Arma 2 in the late 2000's on some 370 graphics cards or whatever it was at the time with whatever old engine that game used. Being picked up by helicopters in Arma 3 with smoke was always eye candy, now being on the opposite end, with such thick smoke, it's bleh. 

 

Even water rescues in DCS are sometimes almost laughable, hover IN THE SMOKE to "Winch" a pilot up, it's a pure blind hover at 30ft praying you'll be ok. Smoke should be doing something at the least.  

Edited July 29, 2024 by TFS

[draconus]

46 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Volumetric smoke effects caused by variable, moving outside forces like fast vehicles, wings, jets, props and helicopter blades? This requires fluid dynamics modelling of the air surrounding all units, and the result then synched across all multiplayer environs. This may be possible with some future 9090Ti GPU, but our current crop of graphics cards can't, nor do the CPUs have the required lifting power.

You love to overcomplicate things, don't you? You expected they do it on quarks interactions level?

We have quite good wake turbulence simulation already mind you.

Edited July 29, 2024 by draconus

[TFS]

5 minutes ago, draconus said:

You love to overcomplicate things, don't you? You expected they do it on quarks interactions level?

We have quite good wake turbulence simulation already mind you.

 

I experienced wake turbulence for the first time a few weeks ago when a friend buzzed my Kiowa in his F4, didn't know that was a thing and WOW, the effects exist fairly well. Done some testing with it since and when it's turned on, it's quite intense. Quick 14 second clip of my Kiowa from the mentioned event. *I yell kinda loud so if you're using earphones I am sorry

[Talisman_VR]

Great thread.  Thanks.  Very much agree that it would be much more immersive to have smoke moved by prop/rotor-wash.

I think there is a lot of room for DCS to widen the focus on helicopter operations and the relevant associated details to improve immersion.

Happy landings,

Talisman

[sirrah]

I'd rather first see the smoke columns change to the type that doesn't rotate when you tilt your head in vr...

(You remember those cotton cloud balls in DCS' pre 2.5 era. Those clouds also rotated in vr. Current smoke columns still do)

Rotorwash effecting smoke would of course be very nice too, at some point. But solving the "rotating" smoke is currently a far more pressing matter imho

[cfrag]

21 minutes ago, sirrah said:

But solving the "rotating" smoke is currently a far more pressing matter imho

Agreed. It's a result of the 'billboard' particle effect. Smoke in DCS is implemented with 2D rectangles that always orient themselves to the viewer, with a time-based sequence of art drawn onto them to make them look like smoke (of course, with transparency). It works well enough in flat, but with a HMD you can tilt your 'up' axis (which is impossible in flat), and if not implemented carefully, the billboard rotates, creating these visible and annoying artifacts. Let's hope that with a future update, ED also update their particle effects for VR.