An effect I would love to see developed

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
I was just tooling along in Ito's Northrop F-89 Scorpion, maybe 10 feet up off the water, and I realized what was missing. Spray from the water below. I know that if a jet doing 450 knots flies along at 10 feet, 50 feet even, there is spray off the water caused by the air pressure from the passing jet. Same with over land. I would love to see this effect developed for the sim. It would have to be gauge driven...set up to activate at 50 feet or less, with some degree of speed limitation as well...because a Taylor H2 at 80 miles an hour is not going to cause much of a disturbance to the surface of the water. The effect itself could simply be a modification of some of the pre-existing water spray and dust spray effects. The gauge would be the key to this effect.

Any gauge programmers up for a challenge?

There is a gauge for CFS2 that can be used to activate effects based on altitude. I think I might have to give it a try and see if I can come up with something.

OBIO
 
Nick has a ground dust effect gauge so there in may lie a start... the fx would be quite the same but use different color perhaps & more delay. Since I buned up my main computer and relegated to lappie no simming for me.
 
Yeah, Nick's gauges would be a logical place to start...got to give this another try.

OBIO
 
Since we're talking water effects, I'd like to see an effect that shows the water run-off trailing from the hull and pontoons of a seaplane just as it leaves the water. It's very visible in any video of seaplane take-offs. It would be short duration (3-4 seconds) and there could be two versions, large for the hull and small for pontoons. The "fuel leak" damage effect from CFS2 could be a good starting point. Anyway I have no idea how to do this stuff but I thought I'd throw it out there. :)
 
OBIO said:
I was just tooling along in Ito's Northrop F-89 Scorpion, maybe 10 feet up off the water, and I realized what was missing. Spray from the water below. I know that if a jet doing 450 knots flies along at 10 feet, 50 feet even, there is spray off the water caused by the air pressure from the passing jet. Same with over land. I would love to see this effect developed for the sim. It would have to be gauge driven...set up to activate at 50 feet or less, with some degree of speed limitation as well...because a Taylor H2 at 80 miles an hour is not going to cause much of a disturbance to the surface of the water. The effect itself could simply be a modification of some of the pre-existing water spray and dust spray effects. The gauge would be the key to this effect.

Any gauge programmers up for a challenge?

There is a gauge for CFS2 that can be used to activate effects based on altitude. I think I might have to give it a try and see if I can come up with something.

OBIO
Click to expand...
I think the gauge itself is the simplest part of the solution (activating an effect via a lightswitch in the aircraft.cfg).
The problem IMO is having a good effect (that also follows the aircraft, but is independant of exact Radar Altitude because it's "tied" to the water surface).

If you (anyone) can find a good effect file (you can test it yourself by manually activating it via the "L" command), I would be more then willing to make the gauge that automates it.

:ernae: Rob Barendregt
 
One hurdle I came across in thinking about this effect would be the altitude problem. The sim reads altitude from sea level (0), but not all land and water is at 0 feet altitude. A guage that reads radar altitude would be needed to allow the effect to be triggered regardless of the actual ASL (above sea level) altitude but by the AGL (above ground level) altitude.

And as rcbarend notes, the effect would have to be tied to the water and land instead of some remote point in space.

I do believe that I have a great idea with this effect, but not the skills to bring it to reality.

If I only had a brain!

OBIO
 
Okay...not sure how it is being done...but the Alpha Sim Cessna T-50 Bobcat Float plane appears to have the effect I am looking for...but I can't figure out how it works. When I start the plane up on the water and begin putting on throttle, there is a definite effect for water spray from the prop (the effect is either a smoke effect or dust effect), and this effect ends as the plane lifts off the water...and once the plane is close to the water, but not touching it, the effect kicks back in. I have looked at the effects section, the smoke section, the panel config...and can not figure out how the effect is triggered.

Does anyone fly the stock Alpha Sim Cessna T-50 Bobcat? Can you confirm that this effect is working on your plane. I have done some tweaking to my Bobcat floater, changing out the bow spray effect, engine start up effect...but nothing that would account for the water spray when the plane is on the water or close to it.

If I could figure out what is going on with the Bobcat float, I could figure out how to add it to other planes and get the overall effect I am looking for...being water and dust spray when the plane is close to the water and dirt but not actually touching the dirt or water.

OBIO
 
And the mystery thickens....I downloaded the stock Bobcat from the library to compare the original aircraft config to what I have now....and found that in stock form the Bobcat only had a single line in the Smoke System (same as in my tweaked config file) and the only Effect in the stocker was the VC Rain effect. All the effects in my config file are the ones I added..and somehow came up with the result I started this thread about. Got to spend some time figuring out what I did so I can duplicate it in other planes.

OBIO
 
Obio,
In the Bobcat floater's panel.cfg file there's a [Vcockpit00] window with a single .xml gauge titled AlphaSim!Alpha_waterspray2. I don't understand XML language but I believe it's keyed to activate smoke at around 15 feet off the water. This may have something to do with the effect you're seeing but I can't get it to work. My aircraft.cfg file has the harrier.fx file in the [smokesystem] section. It only works when I hit the "I" smoke key.
 
In my crude way I fidgeted something not like what you are after but thought it might be useful. I wanted a sea spray like the real the Ekranoplan beast tip vortices make so I dropped a float point off each wing tip that creates a wake with the craft some 10-12 feet above the surface. Its hard to fly just right cause if one dips too far it will drag and spin me out but I'm working on that. I'm also trying a smoke effect in the same place. It doesn't work when stationary but it does look nice.
But now that I notice in the second pic it is stationary with an initial throttle-up and a spray cloud appears connected with the throttle. It is an Alpha A-90 Orlenok.
 
I found the source of the water spray effect on the Alpha Sim Bobcat float. When I opened the panel the first time, I used FS Panel Studio and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But when I opened the panel config file in Notepad, I found that there was a Virtual Cockpit 00...FS Panel Studio does not recognise VCs numbered below 01. This Virtual Cockpit 00 is a false vc...it does not show...and on that VC there is a gauge called Alpha_waterspray2 and it is in the ALPHA_T-50 cab file that comes with the Bobcat. This gauge is tied in some way to the smoke system effect fx_harrier, and it uses a radar altitude reading to determine when the plane is close to any surface (water, dirt, dust) and activates the smoke effect.

I copied this line

gauge00=ALPHA_T-50!Alpha_waterspray2, 1,1,1,1

and pasted it into the VC of the ALpha Sim Arado196 and renumbered it to be in proper sequence, then added the smoke effect line

[smokesystem]
smoke.0 = 0.0, -5.0,-5.0, fx_harrier

and now my Arado has the dust/water spray effect when it is close to but not touching the ground.

So, for those who want to add this effect to their planes, simply download the Alpha SIm Cessna T-50 Bobcat package from the library (it is found under ALphaOldies as the author) and insert the gauge and smokesystem lines into your panel config and aircraft config files. Then place the fx_harrier effect where you need the dust/water spray to come from on your plane and you are all set.

OBIO
 
Ahh, OK, I got it now. :redf: I'm a little slow, but I catch on eventually.
The AlphaSim gauge works on sea level altitude, not radar altitude. I was launching from Lake Michigan (Navy Pier Chicago) at about 575 ft MSL. It works fine at zero feet MSL. :)
 
Tarps

You are correct and I was wrong....I thought that the effect worked at all levels, but it only works at sea level. The five places I tested it, upon double checking, are all at sea level. Now if there was only a way to get a guage to do this that worked off of a Radar Altimeter so that the effect would not require sea level take offs and landings.

OBIO
 
I do believe that I am a freaking genious...or at least that I am smarter than the dogs, ferrets and fish who share my office/sim room. I took the Alpha_waterspray2 and pulled a copy of it out of the T-50.cab, opened it in notepad, then went through gauges folder until I found a XLM based radio altitude gauge, did a bit of copy and pasting....and as the Frech say, Vooey Looey! I need to do some more testing on the resulting gauge, but it looks liek we now have a gauge that reads altitude above the surface without having to be at sea level. I placed the gauge into my Alpha Arado 196, along with a copy of the smoke system section from the Bobcat, fired it up on an Alaskan lake that was at 65 feet MLS, and the smoke system kicked it when the throttle hit 50%, stayed on until I began climbing, then kicked back on as I got close to the surface of the ground...not water. So, I appears that through shear dumb luck, determination and a bit of persperation, I have managed to knock together the very gauge we need.

Please, hold all applause until I do more testing.

Tarpsbird, you will shortly have an incoming e-mail...would like you to give this gauge a tryout as well.

OBIO
 
Very nice detective work Obio:applause: I found the same panel line in the WIG too. Think this might look very convincing as a catapult/steam effect for carrier shoots as well. Going to play around with some different smokes to see what happens.
 
I just tested the tweaked gauge in the Bobcat wheeled version and it works at sea level, above sea level, below sea level. Still some more tweaking to do to get it to be more useful, but I am getting there. Now I just need to learn to create effects and I will be set to produce some really neat effects packages.

OBIO
 
For the low-level water spray or dust effect there's probably an existing fx file around that would give a better visual than the giant cloud created by the AlphaSim Harrier fx - something more along the lines of "gunsmoke" fx in CFS2, but a solid trail instead of puffs. If the gauge works OK, it's just a matter of experimentation with fx in the smoke line of the aircraft.cfg file. :)
 
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