I'm having the same prob with my GeForce GFX card.

Turn off Volumetric Fog in graphic settings. It will double your FPS when viewing anything outside, without really upsetting graphical splendour.

Lol, this Ati crap of mine seems to be equivalent to Nvidia GF 6200!

i've been getting up to about a 50 fps drop at times on my 2900XT when up close to a burning ship

To be honest, it's nearly unplayable for me when there are multiple ships burning.
I always tested with only one or two burning ships.:oops:

I think I have to make the smoke less dense with fewer particles. This means that I have to test several setups again. So I need a day or so before a better version is released.
Thanks for your patience ...

Tell

Yeah, I get a frame rate drop too on SLI'ed 8800GTXs with a Q6600 to about 10-20 FPS when I lit up a Mogami and 3 escorts all in the same area.

Love the extra height the smoke can reach.:up:

This is at 1920x1200 resolution.

@WilhelmTell

Which parts of that particles.dat file you've tweaked? There's so much info about everything! :doh:

THe giant smoke cloud does not look right to me. Should it not dissipate and spread out more towards the upper part? More like a funnel? It just seems to hang together very thick all the way up.

Trout

I've tweaked nearly everything in FastParticleGenerator of the node #Smoke_big, #Burning_oil_smoke, #Burning_oil_smoke_small and #Funnel_smoke. Speaking of the Silent3ditor structure.

I think you are right, but it isn't too easy to find a balance of all the values to make it look really realistic. Changing one value means to change another and another ...
Though I think you will like the next version I release much better.

Regards,
Tell

Ok, thanks! I'll see what kind of tweaking I can come up. Haven't done this kind of modding ever before but with Silent 3ditor it's so ridiculously easy :p

Smoke On The Water -beta5-
ready to download ! :)
(See the first post of the thread for further info and screenshots)

The smoke isn't that gigantic anymore but looks in my opinion more realistic. And you should have much better framerates now. So give it a try ...

The previous version beta4 can still be downloaded though if you like it better.

Regards,
WilhelmTell

Did some quick testing with the latest version and it's much better now. No AA or AF and lowest fps I got was 28 and the smoke itself looked much, much better. Nice job! :up:

And did this running with stock clocks of my GPU. All the other test were when I had overclocked it to core@682Mhz, Mem@992Mhz and once again, with Ati X1950XT 256Mb

Thanks alot !
The consequence is that the smoke isn't as voluminous than before, but I think it's a lot better than the vanilla smoke.
Maybe I continue working on the smoke mod later this weak but for now I play the game with all the other great mods that recently have been released.

Thank you all for your constructive criticism and adulation :D

Regards,
WilhelmTell

Awesome, Thanks WT :up:

great work WilhelmTell
 

I know that changing things and checking them is a total pain so the effert you put into this is great and totaly apreciated.

Sorry it took me so long to say anything been busy!

:sunny: I can imagine roughly the work you have. Must be a fulltime job to get this all to work well what you have done. But the outcome it's worth it, isn't it ?

Now get back to work ....:rotfl:

I need a favor WilhelmTell
 

Can you apply your work with the smoke to the files I gave you for the lightning for me?! I am asking because I am just so burried right now it isn't funny.

Plus I will admit this! I got pissed off at all the files on my desk top and not finding things I am looking for when I want them that I deleted a lot of stuff and UM UM well UM I accidently deleted your stuff too UM I am sorry UM!

:cry: :oops: :damn:

I feel like Golum right now looking for the ring only problem it isn't the ring I lost it's my mind LOL!!!

I also feel like a school kid going up to hand in the home work asignment to the teacher and telling her the dog ate it!

:rotfl:
No problem that you've deleted the data, I would send you a copy of that.
As you asked me to apply the smokeOnTheWater data to your (lightning-)particles.dat you sent me, I was into doing that of course.
But I met a problem:
I need to tweak some values via the minitweaker. The tweakfile #Smoke_big.txt offers some editable values that you can't do with the Silent3ditor. (OverlifeScale + Colors...)

Now the problem: Minitweaker shows strange values in all categories with your file. Even when I overwrite them with the accordant values of my mod, no smoke shows up when i testplay it. I noticed that those strange numbers must be due to some kind of incompatibility between minitweaker and Silent3ditor. Silent3ditor can read and edit files that were tweaked via minitweaker. But unfortunately not vice versa.

Since there are about 120 values I need to change just to apply the new smoke values to properties of #Smoke_Big node via minitweaker, I think it would be easier to apply the required values of your (lightning-)particles.dat to the smoke mod, though I don't know how many values are changed for the new lightning. This works of course only, if the values you changed in it can be applied via Silent3ditor.

So these are the options:

• You send me the required data for the lightning and I will incorporate it into my particles.dat (+ I apply CC's funnel smoke work) and I'll send it back to you
• You do the above on your own
• You don't incorporate my mod at all :cry:

it isn't the particles file that is a problem it is the materials file
 

I beleve. Because S3D editor has been repaired so it dosn't do that to the particles file anymore but sometimes still dose it for the materials file.

For example when C.C. made a tweek file for lightning his tweek file ajusted properties in both the particles file and materials file at the same time.

And there is no reason why a value would be in mini tweeker and not able to see it in S3D seeing nothing has to even be created to make values visable in the first place so my conclusion is who ever made the files for the smoke values for mini tweeker made a value use that is wrong just like the scene tweeker file originaly was wrong and adjusted things improperly.

BTW overlife scale and colors are materials handled files.

I've got the newest S3D version installed but i have no idea where to find a node which is responsible for smoke effects in the materials file. Apart from that my smoke mod only consists of a modified particles.dat.
And with S3D I cannot find the Overlife/scale values for certain parts in the particles.dat
Now I show you the difference between those two programs regarding the particles.dat.
Look here, this is what i get with minitweaker and anvart's #smoke_big.txt:
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/3...nitwqy7.th.jpg

Here is what S3D shows:
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/4...weakdb4.th.jpg

I need to change those OverLife LifeTime/Scale values as they change the size (scale) of the smoke particles after a certain lifetime. As you can see I can do it only with minitweaker. As you changed some lightning values in the particles.dat with S3D I think, I can not apply those relevant values of my smoke mod to your particles.dat you sent me.
When I open it with minitweaker and #Smoke_big.txt i get this here:
http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/2...eak2mp2.th.jpg

I don't know why there are such strange numbers, but I think this is due the mentioned incompatiblity!??? Even when I overwrite those numbers with the values of my smoke mod, I get no smoke in the game. Just an explosion, but no smoke.

That is why I used the minitweaker first (for colors and overlife/scale) and then went on to some additional tweaking with S3D (for oil smoke, small smoke, splinters and funnel smoke rendering distance), which can read the minitweaked files just fine, though it doesn't offer those overlife/scale thing I need.

So what do you think is the best way to go now ?
Any help is appreciated !!!