effects in fs2004

[Guest Cees Donker]

Hi guys,Is there a program with which one can make effects like burning oil, in FS9? Or a good tutorial to adapt existing effects?Cees

[Guest Cees Donker]

come on guys! sure there is something?Cees

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Its a good question, be patient! I personally use FS2004 SDK effects documentation, and included examples, and develop my own, and/or grab someone elses and make whatever modifications you require.Takes a bit of reading, learning and experimenting.cheers Bryan

[Team_P3DSpacePort 6]

Unfortunately, there is no GUI Effects editor to my knowledge. Everything I learned was through painful trial and error, and by asking questions here. A lot of features in Effects SDK come with many limitations (specifically, rotating the flat, animated sprites)... it seems as if a few things were left unfinished by MS team, because, for example, I found out that some sprite transforms work in one axis, but not in other two.

[Guest seev_39]

Read this one;http://www.sk-flightsim.com/tutorials.htmlThere are other tutorials on the page too.http://www.sk-flightsim.com/

[Guest jersey shore]

Big issue with the new effects is that what i know is that it was rushed into fs9. Best thing to do is get the effects sdk and start reading. There is no tool to edit it them(you have to edit it them). One way i learned was looking at the effects and changing the parameters to see what changes occur. Of course, i highly recommend that you create a new effect(copy,paste,reneme) so you leave the orginal effect the same. One big misunderstanding with effects is that they only show in 2-d....not 3d. Also, what do you exactly want, perhaps i can help youDave

[Guest archtx]

The forest fire effect that comes with the FS2004 Effects SDK would be a great start. It has a really nice column of "smudgy" black smoke. It would be pretty easy to open the effect in Notepad, and change the height of the column to suit you.

[Team_P3DSpacePort 6]

Effects are essentially 2D sprites that exist in 3D world. Most of them (like smoke) have a property that makes them always turn towards the viewer, so that they always look 3D. This works only on generally globular objects (objects that look essentially the same from wherever they're viewed).A fairly simple way of describing the effects system in FS2004 is to think of it as a smoke machine ( smoke generator )The actual hardware box is the EMITTER - you can position it in 3D and point it in the direction of where you want the smoke to gothe smoke puffs are PARTICLES - you can specify how fast they come out, how dense, in what direction they disperse, if smoke is heavier or lighter than air (gravity paramteres), and how fast it "poofs out" into the thin air.Finally - You can specify what the each puff of smoke looks like - color change, how transparent it is, and what it actually looks like.The above elements have parent/child hierarchy:EMITTER___PARTICLE1______PARTICLEATTRIBUTE1___PARTICLE2______PARTICLEATTRIBUTE2...With such a multitude of parameters, the possibilities are endless. The smoke machine analogy is just a conceptual one - for instance, if you define your puffs (sprites) to be scurrying chickens, you'll have an effect which MS used in their Barnstorming scenario.Other effects don't really move or fade in and out - they just exist (this is done by setting the "Lifetime" parameters to 0). For instance, a nav beacon effect you can add to the aircraft is just a red/green "fuzzball" that sticks to the airplane wherever it moves. The internal FS mechanism displays it only if the light switch is on.Hope this helps a bit...