MT - Ship smoke white and poor quality

[Nealius]

I've seen reports of issues with ship smoke in ST but not in MT. For a while we were missing the black, whispy smoke we used to have, but since the July update we have a very poor-quality white smoke now. Is it just me? I've removed mods and done slow repair, but still weird smoke.

[Northstar98]

Not sure about the quality, but this is the new smoke.

Personally, it doesn't look that realistic on ships - for the most part it's just far too dense and is more like what I'd expect from an engine smoke system on a tank or from a steam train. Heck, it might be the effect we have for steam trains, just made larger.

We have plenty of ships in DCS producing smoke, which either shouldn't be producing any whatsoever or produce a lot less visible smoke(not while underway and at speed anyway).

It was teased in this trailer so I assume it's intentional - here it was on a Leander, which, unless its boilers are cold and starting, shouldn't be producing smoke at all when underway, at speed.

Just for a comparison, here's a picture of Ranger:

The smoke is barely visible and there are plenty of images like it.

And even in shots where it is visible, apart from the colour it doesn't really bear much resemblance to DCS

Note that this image appears to show Ranger moving quite slowly.

 

As for Tarawa:

http://www.navsource.org/archives/10/07/10070158.jpg

I can't see any smoke at all.

I've also done a few comparisons here and a separate bug report on the La Combattante IIa here.

I know the smoke used to not work on MT, but for a lot of ships, that actually made them more accurate - this feels like a regression in most cases.

Edited August 14, 2024 by Northstar98
grammar, spelling

[Nealius]

This is supposed to be new? It looks like low-resolution steam sprites instead of the actual particle smoke we used to have. This is a regression not only from the more realistic no-smoke, but from the smoke we used to have as well. The steam from locomotives on Normandy and Channel maps look better than this...

Edited August 14, 2024 by Nealius

[Northstar98]

42 minutes ago, Nealius said:

This is supposed to be new?

That would be my guess - some ships (like the Type 148 Tiger/La Combattante IIa) IIRC never had any smoke whatsoever, even before the MT update - now it does.

The trailer also makes it looks like it's intended - personally, it seems odd that they'd set up that particularly shot the way they did if it wasn't.

42 minutes ago, Nealius said:

The steam from locomotives on Normandy and Channel maps look better than this...

Actually on second thoughts, I'd say you're right.

The smoke from trains does certainly undulate more and change size, it also doesn't look to be as dense (though that could be down to the slower speed of the ship - I can't seem to get the train to go any slower than 60 km/h for some reason) or opaque. It definitely isn't the steam train effect but made larger.

However, my system is currently lacking in a pretty critical way - so that could always be influencing my results:

 

And just for a comparison with this Ropucha I:

Spoiler

Can barely make out the tiniest amount of smoke.

I'm struggling to tell whether this is just heat haze or smoke - either way it bears next to no resemblance to DCS.

And even in images where smoke is definitely visible, it looks nothing like what's seen in DCS: