From the video description:
My flight of A5Ms takes on 12 TBD torpedo bombers, which will fly like fighters when not encumbered by a bombing mission. This video is to showcase the new fuel leak fire effects I'm developing. The TBD is particularly prone to fuel leaks and hence fires, which makes for a good test bed.
I have written a lot of new code that selects from a variety of new fire and smoke effects. Among the fuel tank fires are brief pulsing, rapid intermittent, short steady, long steady, brief small and brief large. The state of fuel tank damage is a factor in selecting the effect to use, with a certain amount of randomness thrown in. When the plane runs out of fuel, the fire intensity, if not already low, now reduces in intensity; this had not occurred before. Moreover, the intensity of the lighting which illuminates the plane reduces as well. Note that this reduction in lighting intensity is not replicated in saved ntrk files, for some reason I've not divined.
Of particular interest, when a fuel tank takes damage initially, two possible damage levels can be induced. I have implemented an additional fuel leak effect where formerly just one was used. Now a light and a heavier effect are used for the first and second damage level, respectively. When these damage thresholds are imparted, there is a chance for a brief fireball to fall behind the plane, simulating a brief flash fire for leaked fuel. This can be of duration of emission of 0.3 second or 0.9 second, the latter being more likely when the second tank damage level is imparted. The thumbnail for this video shows just such.
The smokes attending the fires are not always the same. There is a set, 'base' smoke for each damage level. But when the damage state changes a different smoke can be selected at random, from thin or dense, light or dark. This makes for better variety and less predictable sameness.
Also seen here are the new water crash effects. If the vertical speed is insufficient to cause an 'explosion', such as when making a forced landing, the water splash is a new effect to replace the stock use of the effect assigned to float planes. When a plane does explode due to a sufficiently high vertical velocity the effects are new, and not the stock set used also for 250kg class bomb explosions. Occasionally a crashing plane on water will create a fireball, small fires and smoke column. More rarely a violent explosion can occur, more so for bombers.
Appearing here also is my new tracer smoke implementation. I added to the weapon classes an ADDITIONAL tracer smoke property, which allows the player to choose the stock 2D smoke, a new 3D smoke, or a combination of both 2D AND 3D smokes. Here I'm using the combo, which I think offers the best of both. The 3D effects apply to the PLAYER ONLY, which minimizes the resource hit that would result from a number of planes creating the very numerous 3D smoke particles. And 3D smokes appear ONLY for the inside (cockpit) view. When the view is outside the smokes are 2D only; 3D smokes are not good looking from outside due to the necessarily large particle separation.
In use also is my new code for paratrooper 'chute opening altitude, which generally occurs at a lower altitude and has a good range of altitude set randomly. I've also imparted a slower speed of paratroopers (with some randomness) when leaping out of their crates, simulating the slipstream pushing them behind. These measures both help to notably reduce the number of fouled 'chutes when crew bail in pairs.
At the end of this video I show my plane from the outside, to present the reduced intensity of the reddish specular reflection off the plane as seen when the Sun is very low. I reduced the specular component of the world lighting for a low Sun in order to achieve this. I find the stock specular intensity to be too prominent for the crude way it's represented.
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Topic: A video to showcase the new fuel leak fire effects (Read 537 times)
