TFS fuel tank fire effect. Work in progress, having listened to the community :)

[Mysticpuma]

So as it stands we are listening to feedback and steadily working through updates and fixes. Here's news on the fuel tank fire which many reported to be too extreme, so it's being toned down to make it still extensive but no longer extreme?
This will be included in a January patch (still being built) and be part of a selection of fixes to issues including code work, map details, effects and others (detailed in the patch notes).

So for now here are a few pictures of the updated fuel tank fire effect, cheers, MP/TFS

fire1.jpg fire2.jpg fire4.jpg fire3.jpg

[Bear22]

Thanks for the work!
Do you plan to do something with the arrows? They have become extremely sharp!
If this were the case, the Wellingtons and He-111 would not need escort and would fly in the afternoon.

[Kling]

Thanks for the work!
Do you plan to do something with the arrows? They have become extremely sharp!
If this were the case, the Wellingtons and He-111 would not need escort and would fly in the afternoon.

Arrows?
Do you mean gunners?

[Bear22]

Arrows?
Do you mean gunners?

Yes. It's all Google Translate

[ATAG_Ribbs]

I think the fire effect looks good( hard to tell from screenshots. Hope it still has the tail off trailing fire effect. Good job! I like the colors.

Thanks for sharing MP!

[Cassius]

Thanks for the work!
Do you plan to do something with the arrows? They have become extremely sharp!
If this were the case, the Wellingtons and He-111 would not need escort and would fly in the afternoon.

Old songs.
Which gunners? AI or human bombers? It is a bid difference!
#
Thanks for the screens. Of course video would be more informative.
#
Do TFS have any ideas about bombs explosion visualization?

[ATAG_Flare]

To be fair, I think this is actually much worse..... The only improvement is the colour. The flame looks like it's a small flame all scaled up to the size of a fuel tank fire. It shouldn't have that many jagged edges and "licks" of fire. Also the smoke still looks like a bunch of small clouds rather than a plume of smoke. I don't see why we couldn't just revert to something similar to the 4.3 effect? It was much smoother and looked like it was the right size.

EDIT: I think the overall size of the flame is alright, it just needs to look like a flame that's actually that big, not a campfire flame scaled to the size of a 109.

[rel4y]

In my opinion the jagged and puffy smoke effects are the main offender. If you guys made it a little more smooth and voluminous like the smoke effects from 4.312 it would look really good. The rather bright smoke makes sense as it is a really hot burning flame with loads of oxygen coming in.

Same goes for the liquid streams, at these speeds they should be very finely dispersed streams and not puffy clouds.

Also I wonder what happened to the PmK phosphorous tracers shown in an earlier 5.0 update? Did these cause a severe performance impact or were they somehow forgotten?

[ATAG_Ribbs]

To be fair, I think this is actually much worse..... The only improvement is the colour. The flame looks like it's a small flame all scaled up to the size of a fuel tank fire. It shouldn't have that many jagged edges and "licks" of fire. Also the smoke still looks like a bunch of small clouds rather than a plume of smoke. I don't see why we couldn't just revert to something similar to the 4.3 effect? It was much smoother and looked like it was the right size.

Even though I stated that I liked it..I do agree with you as well Flare. That's why I said it was hard to tell from a screenshot. Depending on how fast the flame animation is..is what will make the difference.I believe. I did like the 4.3 version as well. The flames at 200+ mph will be " feathered out considerably. Do we have catastrophic fuel l
Tank explosions that happen. Well after the fire has begun? I can't recall seeing any. It needs to be random..but it would be neat to have in game. As long as they are very random. What has always drawn me to this game from the very beginning was the randomness of the damage. Looking at other games, you can almost predict the damage model. A few hits..u get smoke.. then a few more u get fire ..then the wing falls off. Rinse and repeat. Random types of fires and outcomes is one of the many things that can and does set this sim apart from the others. S! Keep adding new things to the damage library!

[Biggs]

To be fair, I think this is actually much worse..... The only improvement is the colour. The flame looks like it's a small flame all scaled up to the size of a fuel tank fire. It shouldn't have that many jagged edges and "licks" of fire. Also the smoke still looks like a bunch of small clouds rather than a plume of smoke. I don't see why we couldn't just revert to something similar to the 4.3 effect? It was much smoother and looked like it was the right size.

from the still shots MP posted, I agree with you Flare...

I wonder how it looks in motion though... If it animates fast enough, it might not look as odd. (MP any chance of making an animated GIF or a short youtube clip?)

But I do agree... the fire looks too 'scaled up' at the moment. The flame needs to be denser.

[Art-J]

Agree with the points above. Looks like an RC model on fire . It's a fantastic fire texture in itself no doubt... but hopelessly out of scale for the rest of the model I'm afraid.

[Kling]

I personally think that fire and smoke looks great!!

[ATAG_Ribbs]

I just want to see it in action. Haha It might look totally different than the screenshot... And to be honest.. everyone is going to have a different opinion..and not everyone is going to be happy 100% All I would like is more randomness. Heck keep them all and use them for different kinds of fires.
Would it be possible to keep the 4.5 fore effect..for let's say An oil and fuel leak fire for a catastrophic fire. Let's say you blow an oil gasket or have any oil related damage..then get hit badly and catch fire. Then that fire effect could be triggered. If you're just hit in the fuel tank, then this fire effect could be triggered and so on.

[Blade_Meister]

I personally think that fire and smoke looks great!!

First I want to say thank you for all at TFS for trying so hard to make CLOD what your Team and your Supporting Community want CLOD to be. I would never want to be unappreciative for what each of you do, especially the person that is trying so hard to make the smoke and fire effects look as realistic as possible. I have to disagree with you though Kling in the sense that the 4.312 effects looked more realistic. IMHO the effort is definitely there but the puff balls of smoke that trail the plane after damage look unrealistic. The fire effect, again IMHO, are to big and bold for to long and to bright. I just want to encourage whoever is working on these effects to hang tough and keep up your intense efforts to improve these effects. The pictures that MP posted are not really good enough(nor close enough) to judge. A video would be much better. Again, Thanks to all at TFS and especially to the Fire & Effects guy, keep at it you will nail it, I feel sure of it!!!


YOU CAN DO IT!

S!Blade<><

[Hyperus]

The only thing i found with current 4.5 fire is that it is too thick. I actually liked the textures, so what I would change is: Make the flames dense but thinner so they dont look like a giant ball of cotton burning on your aircraft, second make it slightly brighter. Thats all from my side

[Bussard]

It looks ok as it is now, thicker smoke would be nice.

[Oersted]

I agree with Flare and Ribbs.

[Squashman]

They look great as they are!!!

The important thing is that you can see them from distance - We have waited a long time for this - don't change it too much

[Topgum]

Hi all,


thank you, MP & TFS for your efforts done and your will to go on. I like the new flames much more than the 4.5 ones. Is the smoke less dense now?


So there will be another patch, that are great news! Pardon, that makes me going off-topic, because I found out this morning that there is a wind direction issue in FMB. (Wind stays fix in one only direction, heading of runways is changing instead, read my post https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.c...ad.php?t=27973) If you could fix that in the coming or a further patch, that would be really good!

TG

[ATAG_Flare]

Honestly I think the best thing TF could do is simply reduce the overall size of the current fire by about 15% or so, and then make the smoke much thicker and smoother again, like it was in 4.3. That would look great!

[Mysticpuma]

Honestly I think the best thing TF could do is simply reduce the overall size of the current fire by about 15% or so, and then make the smoke much thicker and smoother again, like it was in 4.3. That would look great!

You'll like the next update

[1lokos]

Problem with this actual fire is the small flames loose around main fireball, this don't looks a high volatile fuel burning under a fast air stream.



At left how was in original CloD, before Lutier patches "collateral effects".

[ATAG_Flare]

Yes Sokol, that's my main gripe with the actual flame. Too many small "licks" of flame.

[Snapshot]

There is a lot of historical gun cam footage out there. Is it possible to mimic what is seen in that?

[1lokos]

Is it possible to mimic what is seen in that?

Early versions of CloD "mimic" very well what is see in gun cam...

About fires, I am testing planes attacking ships and put some Do-17 done level bombing.

But now bombs on water use the same explosion of planes hitting ground... the thing looks more a Napalm strike.

[TheVino3]

This is a bug, not an intentional change. This is being worked on.

Early versions of CloD "mimic" very well what is see in gun cam...

About fires, I am testing planes attacking ships and put some Do-17 done level bombing.

But now bombs on water use the same explosion of planes hitting ground... the thing looks more a Napalm strike.

[ATAG_TCP]

Those flames are lookin shnazy!!

[I_B_Spectre]

I was very impressed by the smoke effects in the FMB for various sized ground fires and how smoothly they animated. I'm wondering about the smoke trails of burning aircraft, though. Many complain about the puff balls of smoke, but could it be a compromise for the sake of frame rate? Considering TF models firstly for online and secondly for single player, both with widely variable hardware capabilities, modeling animations in 3D can be a performance hog. Modeling trailing smoke accurately may be a limitation of extant hardware. It's all magic to me.

[carbolicus]

Problem with this actual fire is the small flames loose around main fireball, this don't looks a high volatile fuel burning under a fast air stream.



At left how was in original CloD, before Lutier patches "collateral effects".

The original CLOD fire looks great, much better - please bring it back!

[ATAG_Flare]

I was very impressed by the smoke effects in the FMB for various sized ground fires and how smoothly they animated. I'm wondering about the smoke trails of burning aircraft, though. Many complain about the puff balls of smoke, but could it be a compromise for the sake of frame rate? Considering TF models firstly for online and secondly for single player, both with widely variable hardware capabilities, modeling animations in 3D can be a performance hog. Modeling trailing smoke accurately may be a limitation of extant hardware. It's all magic to me.

Well considering the smoke looked great in vanilla CloD and in TF v4.3 I don't think it's an issue.