Question PARTICLESTREAM Contrail using Vinka's Spacecraft

[tradx]

Hello there,

I have trying to add some contrail effects to the main thruster of a satellite that I am currently building using Vinka's spacecraft3.dll but I can't make it work

My last attempt has been trying to replicate the contrail effects used by Perseus add-on ([ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3629"]Perseus Deep Space Ship[/ame])

Here below is the code that I use in the config.ini file

[TEXTURE_LIST]
TEX_1="Contrail2"

[PARTICLESTREAM_1]
NAME=contrail
TEX=Contrail2
SRCSIZE=4
SRCRATE=5000
V0=100
SRCSPREAD=0.0
LIFETIME=0.6
GROWTHRATE=14
ATMSLOWDOWN=0
LTYPE=EMISSIVE
LEVELMAP=LVL_PSQRT
LMIN=0
LMAX=1
ATMSMAP=ATM_PLOG
AMIN=1e-4
AMAX=2

[CONFIG]
.
.
.
MAIN_PSTREAM1=contrail

When I run it for some reason Orbiter loads another exhaust texture for the main thruster and no contrail effects at all

Any help/ ideas will be welcome

Thanks!

 

[boogabooga]

Read the documentation and look specifically at the definition of these things :

ATMSMAP=ATM_PLOG
AMIN=1e-4
AMAX=2

IIRC, spaceraft3 (and multistage) intentionally cause the particle streams to fade with altitude so that they don't display in space.

 

[tradx]

Thnks for your reply boogabooga,

I went indeed through all the parameters of the PARTICLESTREAMSPEC Struct Reference including the atmospheric params you mention. Unfortunatelly I didn't see any difference by tweaking those params

My concern here is, why the exact same parameters work fine with the Perseus spacecraft but not with mine....

 

[fred18]

Try to use the atm_flat settings with min and max both to 1, does that work?

 

[tradx]

Thanks fred18 for your reply!
At the end I retrieved the values of the PARTICLESTREAMSPEC class from "mars cargo dragon add-on" (thanks to brianj for sharing the sdk) which implements the contrail effect that I was looking for and it worked! by the way using ATM_FLAT as you suggested

PARTICLESTREAMSPEC exhaust_main = {
0, 0.4, 40, 40, 0.02, 0.02, -0.1, 10, PARTICLESTREAMSPEC::EMISSIVE,
PARTICLESTREAMSPEC::LVL_SQRT, 1, 1,
PARTICLESTREAMSPEC::ATM_FLAT, 1, 1,
exhaust2
};
The definition of the parameters passed to the PARTICLESTREAMSPEC funtion can be found in page 308 of the API Reference (./Orbitersdk/doc):thumbup: