Better explosions

[Tracer2k]

Give, please! :) or at least some guide how to mod them.. i have tired to get my head around it how to mod them, but with bad results.

[kingneptune117]

Why are explosions so small?

 

Maybe it's just me, but the explosions seem very small. Check out this video.

 

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/6568/hhn.mp4

 

I know there are bigger problems that need to be addressed, but I feel that since this is a simulator it should accurately simulate the size of explosions. Anyone else agree?

 

Off topic, but I have another question. In the gun runs in this video, he is not in DTS mode, yet he is still gunning on very hilly terrain. Usually when I try this on hilly terrain like in the video, the bullets never land where they should.

 

Thanks!

[wildone_106]

I know it'd effin awesome wouldn't it? No one will agree of course. Sometimes we need to add a 'little' hollywood to add the excitment, as those real life vids show..

[Kenan]

You can tell by watching that video that the guys who made a RL A10C pretty much nailed it and made it look almost as real as DCS: A10C Warthog.

[Baggy MacDouche]

The addition of some particle effects would be able to match that more closely.

 

A sim like this isn't necessarily all about eye candy, but it sure is nice if done right, considering that a lot of time is spent looking at the TGP.

 

I do have to say that I had a nice surprise the other day, as I'm still pretty new to this sim, when I took out an ammo dump and watched as all the secondary fireworks started going off. I think I even got giddy. :)

[kingneptune117]

Some of the explosions in that video are so big and bright that they drown out the video momentarily.

[Boberro]

Some of the explosions in that video are so big and bright that they drown out the video momentarily.

 

And this is what would add a lot of immersion. Add better explosions (supposedly explosions format aren't moddable now) and such effects like in movie. Ka-50's Shkval misses them too.

[BoneDust]

Explosions are not great but there has to be a trade off because ps effects can kill fps.

[genbrien]

Explosions are not great but there has to be a trade off because ps effects can kill fps.

IMHO, I dont think a developper should stop doing something because ''it could/would kill FPS''.

They should made it scalable (low/med/high)

 

and +1 for bigger explosion, or at least more dirt in the air:joystick::D

[DocSigma]

The explosions aren't that bad, besides I think if you were to make the explosions much larger with added particle effects performance would suffer. Also, in order of priority of things that need to be addressed is:

 

1: Any tweaking with the flight model and avionics that arise

2: Tweaking the overal stability of the sim

3: Addressing object errors

 

Overall eye candy issues, I would guess, would be a back of the mind issue according to ED.

 

If you want to add bigger explosions you can just edit whatever mission you are flying and just add in triggered explosions. From there you can adjust the size.

[BoneDust]

IMHO, I dont think a developper should stop doing something because ''it could/would kill FPS''.

They should made it scalable (low/med/high)

 

and +1 for bigger explosion, or at least more dirt in the air:joystick::D

 

No, that's not what I meant. I'd like to see better explosions too, but there needs to be a balance for performance :)

[kingneptune117]

Eye candy is not in the back of their minds. They are adding cockpit shadows in the next patch.

 

This is a simulator. It is just as important to simulate the outside environment as it is to simulate the inside.

[Shinigami]

Well the balance of FPS and Visual effect is a very thin line they have to do it very carefully cause then the game would be GPU killer, and wen you do a game as least IMHO you do it for all the people not only for the hardcore ones.

 

Thought I enjoy the 3D clouds :D and the smoke of the tip of the cannon in Black Shark!!!!!

Edited April 7, 2011 by Shinigami

[SmokeyTheLung]

Give, please! :) or at least some guide how to mod them.. i have tired to get my head around it how to mod them, but with bad results.

 

Try using the editor to set a "unit dead" trigger, and set the action to "explode unit". Then set the volume of the explosion to 40,000-90,000. Presto! Giant explosions! (Still the same core effect, just larger in volume)

I've been using this on static objects to simulate a giant secondary explosion.

[xXstubbifiedXx]

It's not just about bigger explosions or more particles in the explosions. It's the artwork involved. Mediocre textures and simple scripting result in simple looking explosions. You can make a really nice looking explosion with minimal particles and small textures, you just need to do it right. That being said I really would like to see some better looking explosions. :)

[LostOblivion]

"yet he is still gunning on very hilly terrain. Usually when I try this on hilly terrain like in the video, the bullets never land where they should." still he fires pretty vertically down about 25-35o down.

[Cholerix]

Go to your DCS-Folder and open Bazar\Effect\Explode. Those seem to be the effects for the Explosions. Don't know if you tried to edit them but i'll write what i know about them.

They usually consist of two files that are always in the "high" folder. One of them is a DirectX model file (.x) which seems somewhat odd to me as the ED Engine has probably its own model format. The other one is a .lua file but they are in a very impractical format and in case of the big explosions (TankShot and Ground I guess) 680 KB large and about 19000 lines long.

What's also required to make them look like in the video (will never happen) are the shaders. And they are written assembler.

As bad as the explosion may look, i think the effort is not worth it.

[Frostiken]

A GBU-31 in-game would move a *lot* of dirt since we can't air-burst them :D

[Mathiew]

don't forget that cool guy don't look at explosion... :gun_smilie:

 

I'm not that cool... :laugh:

[upupandaway]

I also want to stress this point again. Seemingly this doesn´t receive much attention, but I think you could really make the explosions (especially the bombs, not so much the vehicles) bigger, thicker, and especially longer lasting with all the smoke and dirt. A new kind of effects isn´t really necessary - I´m not complaining about the general way they look, but much more about the fact that a Mk-84 will create a tiny "poof" that will be gone after 3sec or so...

 

Isn´t there any way to tweak/mod this manually at this point? Could we ever hope to see an update on this? I mean - tree shadows are a nice feature etc. and all this stuff takes time, but I consider the smoke and dust to be a much more prominent feature in the end.