New smoke effect

[Krusty]

To be honest it doesn't look very realistic at all. I'm not defending the defaults, as I don't think they are realistic either, but yours isn't much of an improvement.

[JOACH1M]

To be honest it doesn't look very realistic at all. I'm not defending the defaults, as I don't think they are realistic either, but yours isn't much of an improvement.

Better than anything you have came up with.

[titanic3]

Well hey now, he asked for opinions, he got some.  So much hostility today Jo.

[ALFAMEGA51]

Wakeem is my favorite 

[Daddkev]

  It looks great! 

[Chilli]

my computer sucks and is less than 2 yrs old

First, there are a number of things that can probably be done to drastically improve your framerates.  Second, since all that (assuming) USRanger did was "color" the existing bmp files, it is no way possible that it would impact your computer's performance if HTC updated it into a standard texture (hope that I am using the correct term). 

Adding it as a custom texture in a terrain, might use a tiny bit of resources but  even then I am guessing once the texture is loaded with the terrain, it is no different than seeing the skin on your plane.

Tracerfi,

  I got your funny about your parents' fondness for facebook.    I applaud your decision to respect your parents' property and not to potentially damage or change any thing.  With that in mind, there are so many programs and adware apps that steal valuable resources not only from your ability to play games, but also from the speed and health of your family's PC.  There must be someone that you know and trust, that your parents would allow to set up preferences and profiles to meet each of your needs as well as get rid of the clutter that only slows the computer down.

[USRanger]

Don't be too hard on Krusty.  He dislikes anything he didn't do himself.  I did find his "unrealistic" comment funny, since I used a picture of real smoke to make it.

To answer some of Chilli's questions & some others' comments, I'll explain what I did.  The plane fire & smoke effect consists of 15 .bmps which control the colors and 15 alpha .bmps which control the shape and transparency.
This was just a quick 3 minute experiment, so I kept the default alpha .bmps and only changed the color .bmps.  Alphas work in balck & white.  Anything in the .bmp which is black is totally transparent, anything white shows the solid color.
So making the smoke and/or fire more transparent is simply a matter of making the white parts or the alpha .bmp shades of gray.  This will change it to semi-transparent.

I did this just on a whim to see what it would look like, and even used the same new smoke .bmp over & over to save time.  Now that I see there is some interest, I will go back and do a more thorough job using different smoke .bmps and see how it turns out.  I'll also play with the fire too.  It looks kind of funny with the default fire.  Updated pics to come.

Thanks all for putting up with my lil experiments I do from time to time.  I do like getting the feedback, whether good or bad.  It helps steer me in the right direction.

[USRanger]

I'm starting to play with the fire also.  What I need from the community is any pictures you can find, preferably color, of what a WW2 avgas plane fire looked like.  What I just made is too dark, but I'd like something to work from.

[JOACH1M]

I like it, but I think it needs more yellow. 

[rpm]

Looks great Ranger. Only improvement would be oil stains on the trailing fighter windscreens. Nice job! 

[Volron]

Go figure...I google B-24 Shot Down, and I see flames as long as what we have in AH.

A lot of the fires I saw on that 1st page alone appear to be fuel.  Even with it being in black and white, you can see that they burn quite brightly.  The fire you have is too dark.  From what I can see in the black and white photo's, it's very bright right up to the end, similar to how our default is.  I would try matching the brightness to what we see in the default fire.

[lyric1]

 

[LCADolby]

The flames are a great effect, but dont look right thanks to AH repeating it uniformally.

[Chalenge]

The real question is how it will impact the lower systems.

[SWkiljoy]

short and simple, looks great and thanks for the effort put into it. Been a long time coming and much needed. Agreed that it is a bit dark now.