Smoke systems for vehicles

[Chuva_RD]

My idea is to change smoke deploying systems on vehicles so they make smoke screens according to declared characterictics. In my opinion such little things make a difference, change gameplay and make it more immersive.

[Mats391]

Looks nice. Would need to compare it to smoke screens that start closer to ground, cause this right now is pretty useless to break line of sight quickly.

E.g. Abrams instantly conceals tank:


Same for Leclerc


And Leopard @2:28

https://youtu.be/BwxnbHdlg5c?t=2m28s

Humvee on other hand seems to shoot normal smokegrenades that slowly build

[Chuva_RD]

Tanks are done.

The main concept is:

• Each click makes smoke screen sufficient to cover vehicle. Systems which have two-staged lauchers able to make smoke screen twice in a short time.
• Vehicle have additional load of grenades so lauchers can be rearmed in field.
• A form of smoke wall and amount of used grenades depends on capabilities of systems being used IRL.
• Smoke launchers always being mounted on turret and spins with it, so driver can't control smokes and only gunner can.
• Every tank uses grenades blocking IR range of waves and works against thermal sights.

M1A1/M1A2

This tanks uses M250 launchers, on both side and 6-barrels each. Barrels can be grouped in pairs by directions so at least two barrels looking same way. Maximum amount of grenades: 12 for two lauchers.


As you might spot on picture pairs of barrels (1-4, 2-6 and 3-5) covering 3 directions.

Pressing one of two push switches in the turret sends an electrical charge to the dischargers. Dischargers are wired to fire grenades from alternate barrels. Pressing one push switch launches a salvo of six grenades (three from each discharger). Pressing both switches launches a salvo of twelve grenades. The charge flows through an electrical contact in the grenade base and fires the grenade's squib fuze. (U.S. Vehicle Grenade Launchers)

So immediately after dropping one smoke gunner can drop one more and after wait until reload.






Challenger2

This tanks uses L8 launchers, five on each side.


Very often on shows Challenger crews show smoke screens being made by the injection of diesel fuel into the engine exhausts, but such approach was considered as affecting FPS too much.

I haven't found refs on youtube for smoke lauchers, so I made it how it should looks like according to variations of lauch tubes directions.




Leopard 2A6

8 lauchers are mounted on each side of turret giving gunner ability to drop two pretty big screens. Launchers grouped in pairs by directions.




skip to2:28



ZTZ-99/ZTZ-98 (Type98 )

This tanks uses Type84 launchers carrying 5 grenades on each side of turret, layout of tube directions is 5-point arc. System is two-staged, launchers carry 10 grenades in total which can be fires in salvo of 5. Top tubes are made to launch grenade on middle point of arc.


Same as for Chally chinese crews don't like to shoot how they make smoke screens. Length of screen is less than the one being made by NATO counterparts but two stages make it more usable.



T-90

Smoke screening system on T-90 goes as additional to optical countermeasuring system "Shtora". System throw two salvos of 6 grenades in front hemisphere, so system are two- staged. Launchers follows fashion of splitting in pairs.



Video of single grenade test:





T-72/Merkava

Setup of smoke lauchers on both tanks unusual. On T-72 all tubes directed forward and supposed what gunner uses as many grenades as needed throwing they at directions he decides. Merkava's layout almost same excert tube directions, they splitted in two groups of 6 oriented to look a bit on the side.



I have made them to shoot salvos of two with some small deviation by angle.




Leclerc

Hi-tech Leclerc have GALIX protection system allowing to shoot grenades of all types (however every launcher can do so but on Leclerc it's common thing). I made this tank to carry smoke and fragmentational grenades at once.


By firing "Galix FRAG" 4 HE-projectiles will be fired close to the tank. Also I broke letters on HUD and don't know how to fix it, I tried to assing copy of .dds with letter "E" for it but broke it completely at some point.

[Mats391]

Nice work. Are those launchers all using the same smoke grenades or did you make new ones for each? Right now they all use M82 and M82_IR accordingly (those are names in code).
Did you edit the smoke effect or is it same one as we have right now? Smoke seems bit smaller or at least not as high as current one, which is quite nice.
Frag grenades are a nice addition, guess civis wont bother the leclerc on insurengcy anymore
Next step APC/IFV?

[LiamNL]

Actually quite nice to see this level of detail in a thing most tank crews don't really think about.

[sweedensniiperr]

That reference video of the leclerc, it seems that it fires both the in-air exploding one(thermal smoke?) and launches regular smoke grenade -> the ones that infantry use.

Also some of the explosions should be a lot louder? Maybe that's not your expertise I dunno...what does our military advisors/sound guys say about smoke grenade explosions?

[Mats391]

Another thing: How does T72B work? It only has smoke launchers on one side to make space for more RAE.

[Chuva_RD]

[quote=""'[R-DEV"]Mats391;2143225']Nice work. Are those launchers all using the same smoke grenades or did you make new ones for each? Right now they all use M82 and M82_IR accordingly (those are names in code).[/quote]
M82_IR for smoke screens and 40mm_mk19mod3 for HE on Leclerc.

Did you edit the smoke effect or is it same one as we have right now? Smoke seems bit smaller or at least not as high as current one, which is quite nice.

No, I used current smoke effects.

[quote="sweedensniiperr""]That reference video of the leclerc, it seems that it fires both the in-air exploding one(thermal smoke?) and launches regular smoke grenade -> the ones that infantry use.[/quote]

You are right but I haven't found projectiles for slow smokes. Also notice that this regular smokes being blowed away by wind which is not represented in PR, so regular and fast smokes differs only in deploy time which is essential for evading.

Another thing: How does T72B work? It only has smoke launchers on one side to make space for more RAE.

It should work similar as on T-72A, probably each tube may be ignited separately. In game it would have same smoke setup as for Merkava and T-72M but with 8 launch tubes instead of 12.

Т-72B1

[Mineral]

There is wind in PR We just don't enable it cause it looks really stupid.

[mries]

Awesome work!

[Mats391]

Making slow smoke is rather easy, just copy some parts from the handheld smoke grenades to the vehicle fires ones. The biggest difference in the two that we could easily simulate in game would be duration of the screen. Slow smoke would take longer to build, but also stay longer. Exploding smoke would build up instantly, but wear off quicker.
For the frag one should also probably make a new grenade too.
You got the files upload somewhere already? Would like a link to them

[LiamNL]

It would be interesting to see how people will react to these changes, that is if they would be implemented in PR itself. (which I hope will happen)

[camo]

I believe the AMX-10RCR has the GALIX smoke system too, so could perhaps add the frag feature to that as well.
EDIT: not sure it's modelled on our amx-10rc though.

[Chuva_RD]

How to decrease size of effect? Tank smokes looks enormously big comparing to ones from hand grenades

[Arab]

How to decrease size of effect? Tank smokes looks enormously big comparing to ones from hand grenades

Firstly, great initiative with this

The main code to set the size of the effect is

Code: Select all

ObjectTemplate.particleMaxSize

You can also control the speed of the smoke growing by loading the effect in the BF2Editor and playing around with the Size Graph.

Code: Select all

ObjectTemplate.sizeGraph

[Chuva_RD]

ObjectTemplate.particleMaxSize and ObjectTemplate.sizeGraph working weird in my hands, I have spent like 3-4 days trying to get how this stuff works but this like trying to get an answer from potatoes. Only logical for me and easy for use parameters are RGB values, animation speed and more-less TimeToLive but even this working weird due to irrational responce to decreasing it's value. Just changing anything related to gravity, emit speeds and radiuses don't affect visually that happens in game.

I have made new layout of smoke clouds based on mixing of IR- and nonIR-effects, it looks cool and coherently with current smokes layout and more of all it have real references but this damn clouds reaching in particular cases 50-60m still not under my rule.

I think after this problem will be solved or forgotten I might post huge post with videos and tons of references.

@Mats, Rpoxo was so nice to agree to make diff patch to show my work, I'll send files through him.

[Heavy Death]

This is epic, and im not even an armorwhore

[Mats391]

ObjectTemplate.sizeGraph
This defines size in x/y/z. The fourth w I am not sure about, but in general I dont even touch it. It also only percentage of max size.

ObjectTemplate.particleMaxSize
This is where you would want to tackle big effects, but there are issues. You might have noticed that there is no particleMinSize. From what I noticed the initial size is based on

Code: Select all

ObjectTemplate.randomSize

and the timeToLive of the particles.
You also have to count in the particles moving apart. This is what is happening on the smoke screens I think.

[Chuva_RD]

Mats391;2146621']ObjectTemplate.sizeGraph
This defines size in x/y/z. The fourth w I am not sure about, but in general I dont even touch it. It also only percentage of max size.

ObjectTemplate.particleMaxSize
This is where you would want to tackle big effects, but there are issues. You might have noticed that there is no particleMinSize. From what I noticed the initial size is based on

Code: Select all

ObjectTemplate.randomSize

and the timeToLive of the particles.
You also have to count in the particles moving apart. This is what is happening on the smoke screens I think.

I decreased each parameter you mentioned and seems like it works, thanks.

[Chuva_RD]

I noticed what size of effect depends on asset carrying launchers, I copypasted part of code of tank smoke to uparmored HMMWV and got quite small effect. Code related to effect equal in both tweaks. How does this works?

By varying sizeGraph, particleMaxSize and randomSize I can only change density of cloud but not it's scale.


tweaks in description


Answer: effects in common_server\effects\weapons\misc\e_tanksmoke have fixed scale not depending of according values in tweak.