Red and Green lights in the Afterburners

[Voodoo]

Hmmm....this problem has me slightly foxed.

I am not familiar with 64-bit Vista and whether the issue could be connected to that. Also, are you running with DX10? (I have only tested the effect on XP SP3 and with DX9). Do you have any problems with any other effects at all, or does everything else in FSX work AOK on your rig?

If you are sure that all the files connected with the effect are installed correctly, could you do me a favour and show me some more screenshots of the problem so I can try and figure out exatcly what bits of the effect are not running properly? Could you include both a daytime and a nighttime view of the afterburners, and also side-on views of the burners, and perhaps at two different A/B settings:- stage 2 afterburner, and full stage 6 afterburner? And I'll see if this gives me any more clues.

BTW when you asked about the "night" effect, I presume you meant the spurious landing light that comes on at Stage 2 afterburner? My fixes couldn't correct that bug. That landing light is built-in to the danged model and I couldn't find any way of editing it out! 

A call to others - is there anyone else out there experiencing the same problem as Ryanbatcund?

[Orion]

A call to others - is there anyone else out there experiencing the same problem as Ryanbatcund?

Nope, at least I haven't noticed it (if it happens).

I've used it on Windows Vista SP1 32 and 64 bit and Windows 7 Beta 1 64 bit.

Edit: Here's a screenshot from Windows 7 64 bit.  Is that right?

[Voodoo]

Yes, that's exactly the correct appearance. Thanks for that info Orion...I think that probably eliminates the OS as the problem. Cheers.


@ryanbatcund,
Can I ask, did you by any chance try to edit the fa18_ab.bmp file at any time, using an editor like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, or suchlike? The file is not a regular Windows bitmap. It's an Extended 16-bit 565 format bitmap, so one potential cause of the problem you seem to be having is if the file was opened for editing and then saved in the wrong bitmap format.

Does that sound  likely?

[Razgriz]

I've posted an improved "Version 2" that is a significant improvement on my first version of afterburner fixes for the F18 earlier in this thread. I think an MDL editor for FSX would be needed to allow editing of the model attachpoints and completely eliminate all the bugs, but since that doesn't seem to exist at this time, version 2 of my fix that I present here for your flying pleasure, makes almost all of the bugs more or less unnoticeable. I won't be doing any further work on this so...Share and enjoy!

All the instructions are in the Readme.txt file in the zip.

If you want to get rid of the poor looking "smoky afterburner trail", simply rename the file "fx_fueldump.fx" found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Effects to something like "fx_fueldump.fx_old".

The way I edited MDL's into FSX was use a XToMDL converter.  I made the model in 3ds max, saved it as a .X extension, and then converted that into a .mdl for FSX.

[Ifresh21]

Can you edit mdls like that razgriz?

[Razgriz]

Can you edit mdls like that razgriz?

No, because it is a finished model and I cannot transform MDL into X.

[Wingmate]

I have installed this but now I get this werid problem.  you can see the effect throguh different parts of the aircraft.  Is there any way to fix this?

[Voodoo]

I've experienced what looks like this sort of problem before with FSX effects that are attached to an aircraft. Depending on where your geographical location is and also depending what altitude you are flying at, attached effects (if they are offset from their attachpoints in the model in a .fx file, and also ones defined simply in the aircraft.cfg file) can "drift" from their point of origin. You can see the problem with aircraft lights as well (and also smoke effects attached to the LIGHTS section of the aircraft.cfg file). Sometimes the effect looks ok on the ground but drifts away quite badly at altitude. Aircraft lights can sometimes be quite "off-centred" from their intended position on the model even while it's sitting on the tarmac.

Also, if you try to edit the .fx files in order to relocate the afterburner effect further in or out of the jetpipe, you'll definitely cause the problem you are seeing!

I've also seen this issue associated with "draw order" problems. Sometimes an effect can appear behind parts of the physical model and sometimes not...depending on viewing angle. Although I have to say when I was testing this effect I never encounterd this problem.

Lastly...this effect was created for FSX not FS9. It might work in FS9 but the coordinates system is different (the X and Y axes are swapped over I think) and can make attached effects appear off-centred like this unless you edit their coords. I assume though you are using FSX?

Does any of this help, Wingmate?

[Orion]

I've recently reinstalled everything and am getting this odd glitch.  The effect seems to be larger than the engine nozzle.

See the screenshots below:

[Voodoo]

Sorry, Orion. I'm afraid I've no idea why the effect appears overly large for you following your reinstall. I've tried re-downloading the effect myself and overwriting my own files to see if I can re-create the problem, but to no avail.

Other than suggest you try installing the effect again, I'm out of ideas. Sorry.

[Orion]

I'll try reinstalling the effects again, but last time I tried nothing happened.  Thanks anyways .

[Orion]

Sorry to double post, but 2 things:

1. Reinstalling the effect didn't work
2. The problems gets even worse in DX10 (the glow in the left afterburner is intermittent).

I really don't want to reinstall again ...

See attached screenshot.

[Voodoo]

Hi Orion,

If you wish, I'll try to give you some instructions on how to tweak the afterburner effects file to let you adjust the size of the effect yourself?

If I could, I'd amend the file and give you a copy of it, but I am not experiencing the problem and can't see how much to adjust the parameters by, but if you're comfortable editing .fx files then it may give you a solution.

(P.S. I can't say how well the effect will work under under DX10. I have only tested this in FSX Acceleration (SP2), Windows XP (SP3) and DX9 on an Nvidia 8600 GTS card.)

[Orion]

That would be great, thanks .

[Voodoo]

Ok Orion, here's some settings for you to try and see if it provides a workaround for the problem you're having.

Go to your Effects folder and edit the following 3 files:
fx_AfterBurnerFire1.fx
fx_AfterBurnerFire2.fx
fx_AfterBurnerFire3.fx

In fx_afterburnerfire1.fx  got to the [Particle.3] section and replace the old X and Y Scale settings with some new settings, thus:
//X Scale=0.58, 0.58
//Y Scale=0.58, 0.58
X Scale=0.48, 0.48
Y Scale=0.48, 0.48

In fx_afterburnerfire2.fx go to the same [Particle.3] section and try the following replacements:
//X Scale=0.66, 0.66
//Y Scale=0.66, 0.66
X Scale=0.56, 0.56
Y Scale=0.56, 0.56

And finally in fx_afterburnerfire3.fx go to the same section and try:
//X Scale=0.74, 0.74
//Y Scale=0.74, 0.74
X Scale=0.64, 0.64
Y Scale=0.64, 0.64

These reduced scale parameters are just a starting point for you. You'll have to adjust them and then restart FSX each time to check how they look.

Basically, afterburnerfire1 is the effect at stages 1-2 of the afterburner throttle, afterburnerfire2 is on at stages 3-4, and afterburnerfire3 is stages 5-6. Hence you see that the scale of the effect gets slightly larger in each file as the exhaust aperture increases in size.

I hope this helps.
All the best,
Voodoo

Also, @Wingmate,
I've seen the effect you were talking about earlier. It happens at different camera ranges in the sim, where the effect can suddenly shift in position (temporarily only, I've found) to appear out of alignment with the aircraft (e.g. the burner flames appear outside the tailpipe). I've seen this now with effects on other models too. I've put it down to a bug with the way FSX handles camera viewpoints as distances change. Maybe its down to the way it handles the switch over to a different mipmap, maybe not, but whatever it is I don't see any way round that problem.