Missile/Contrails smoke disappear too fast.

As the topic states, the smoke disappears too quickly, in the earlier version of dcs the contrails was visible for much longer. Now they disappear much quicker (missile smoke after about 10 seconds). In my humble opinion, the missile smoke should be visible for at least 30 seconds; it would be more realistic and should provide better visual sam launch location on the ground. I am aware of the fact that it's probably sticked to performance but, if possible, longer time of smoke visibility would be a great feature.

It definitely wouldn't be a bad thing.

Missile trails stay there pretty long in real life.

I would vote for that as well, smoke must stay in the air for much, much longer.

It would add so much to the immersion.

Agree as long as it doesn't impact performance too much.

Although have not tried 1.5 yet, I vote for this.

+1

The contrails in 1.5 are simply too impressive to not have them linger a lot longer than they currently do.

Agreed. Just played the mission Smirch Hunt. When the first artillery piece unmaskes and fires you really should be able see it visably from all the smoke from the launch.

I'm sure it varies greatly from missile to missile but the heavier sam systems definately need to linger for a long time and be visible from very far away. I heard in an interview with an ex sr71 pilot they could see sam launches from 70.000ft up

Agreed. Just played the mission Smirch Hunt. When the first artillery piece unmaskes and fires you really should be able see it visably from all the smoke from the launch.

It fires? :huh: I've played that mission quite a lot of times and never noticed it fire.. that says alot.

I am not a software developer, but I don't agree that keeping smoke in the air for a longer period of time would be a performance hog, especially now that we have EDGE.

Even in 1.2.x you can already see a lot of planes in high altitude with contrails with no impact on FPS.

Heck, you can even turn on smoke for most planes in multi (aerobatics) which is thick and stays longer, and again, no performance hit.

+1

 

The contrails in 1.5 are simply too impressive to not have them linger a lot longer than they currently do.

+1

I agree it's much more visible now than in 1.2. But yes, contrails felt longer in 1.2.

I would also like the SAM launch smoke to be fuller and longer. Look at this FALCON clip. THIS is how it should look in my opinion. Then u stand a chance seeing it.

Mind that I think this is a smoke MOD for Falcon and not vanilla Falcon.

Agreed 100% about the contrails. Depending on the weather contrails can really hang on for minutes at a time.

As for the missile smoke, I think the way they are now is pretty good and unlike contrails they don't form condensation in the air. It wouldn't be realistic for them to linger in the air for a long time.

The smoke looks awesome, and as far as I can tell doesn't even seem to have a big performance impact. I was disappointed with how short lived the smoke is, so it'd be great to have bigger and longer smoke trails. If it really does become a performance concern maybe it could be made optional?

Any chance to give us a slider in options menu to choose for how long i want smoke visible? Like from 10sec - 60sec for SAM smoke visible. And for contrails 1min-5min.

Is this really the same after 3 years and with 2.5 DCS now? It feels contrails are soon gone still, which makes at least identifying/finding friendly formations a bit harder (eg. when formation flying).

The performance impact should be carefully considered before eg. giving it an option for server admins - cannot be a client side setting in MP because of balance reasons. A mod in singleplayer could be a feasible solution.

I guess this would be part of optimizing the render distance of smoke.

I would not like a slider for render time, but a better rendering system altogether that is more efficient. And then let the smoke stay realistic amount of time, depending on missile.

real smoke trails on-25

Agreed, though contrails in particular depend completely on environmental factors. e.g. no contrails, very short contrails (dissipate within, say, 5-10 seconds), long but eventually dissipating contrails, and finally contrails that never dissipate but eventually form clouds.

Also I think contrails should be visible from practically unlimited view distance. The farthest LOD could just be a white line for lower spec PC's. Though care must be taken to render them properly depending on weather conditions and lighting - I've seen games that render effects and aircraft dots over the clouds, meaning you can see everything you need even in full IMC

Regards,

MikeMikeJuliet