[MOD] Smoke & fire: Combat effects and Prolonged smoke and fire for crashed aircraft, static aircraft & large blocks (buildings)

[Mysticpuma]

11 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

New version of Smoke and fire large blocks mod in first post. 

One last thought, any consideration for making it a one mod install? Maybe "Smoke and Fire all in one modpack" ?

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, Mysticpuma said:

One last thought, any consideration for making it a one mod install? Maybe "Smoke and Fire all in one modpack" ?

Can do that but I thought people prefer the granularity. Thinking mainly of potential performance problems for people on older pc's.

As it is now, they can control what effects are enabled, if I do all in one then while it does makes it simpler it does remove the ability for people to isolate issues. That is also why I tend to find the really large mod compilations like the IL2 Enhanced mod pack that was available in the old forum not a great idea.

I prefer to use JSGME mod profiles to control loading a large number of mods in the correct order with maybe 2 or 3 mouse clicks a better approach. It means when a mod goes out of sync with the game or has an issue for me (eg mods of the oil on the windscreen can be an issue for some people's GPU and driver combo but not for everyone) and no-one is maintaining the mod or is very slow to maintain it for whatever reason I can easily amend the mod profile to exclude it. If I use a mod pack, I will have to wait for the person compiling the pack to update it. I also have to rely on the person compiling the pack to handle file level clashes as I would like. Quite often that can be a subjective decision for the end user.

 

In case it is useful to you see pg 14 of the JSGME user manual found https://forum.il2-series.com/topic/1272-jsgme-guide-and-manual/

Guessing you probably have the manual already but might not have really looked at profiles. They do make your life much easier.

Edited March 16 by Stonehouse

[VISHNU]

I think this MOD is complete  Fantastic job.   The last tweaks you made NAILED it @Stonehouse.  Well done!

 

Edited March 17 by VISHNU

[AcesDarthBubu]

Hello @Stonehouse , is there a parameter i can tinker on visual distance when the smoke will appear for the smoke and large block mod? Believe currently is around 10km away, I would like to adjust it further if that is possible. Thanks 

[Stonehouse]

14 hours ago, AcesDarthBubu said:

Hello @Stonehouse , is there a parameter i can tinker on visual distance when the smoke will appear for the smoke and large block mod? Believe currently is around 10km away, I would like to adjust it further if that is possible. Thanks 

I made it that way last year after someone gave feedback that it killed their FPS very badly. At the time the cause was that a campaign mission that had been built prior to being able to set building damage before mission start so the author just had a trigger to destroy a few hundred buildings not long after mission start or as the player approached (I can't remember which) so the player would see a bombed and smoking city. The campaign mission did get fixed, but I wasn't sure if there were more examples out there, so I altered the image attributes. However, that was with the large dramatic smoke columns so maybe I should switch it back now.

Try this

https://www.mediafire.com/file/cahxki47txcn9eg/Smoke_and_fire_large_blocks_test.zip/file

 

PS - Anyone trying this version out please provide feedback in regard to impact on FPS. If it seems ok, I will make this the release version. Thanks.

Edited March 20 by Stonehouse
meant to say campaign not career.

[Stonehouse]

no changes post 7.003 to release versions

[AcesDarthBubu]

On 3/20/2026 at 5:12 AM, Stonehouse said:

- Anyone trying this version out please provide feedback in regard to impact on FPS. If it seems ok, I will make this the release version. Thanks.

Tried it, didn't really experienced any fps issues with this test version of the mod. Seems OK to me. 

Update: Tried a few more scenarios, do see drops in fps if the smokes are cluttered around the same area, standalone or having the smoke a distance away no issue. Tested in Normandy map. 

Edited March 22 by AcesDarthBubu

[Stonehouse]

Updated release version of smoke and fire for large blocks to allow smoke to be seen from much further away. 

[Stonehouse]

Believe all fine post 7.004

[Stonehouse]

Believe all fine post 7.005

[Stonehouse]

Believe all fine post 7.007

[Stonehouse]

Believe all fine post 7.008

[bluemax]

Hi Stonehouse, 

Will you be doing a similar mod for Korea as well? I love this mod for IL2 as it fixed long and persistent hitching I had in VR when up close and dogfighting and smoke and debris start to fly off an enemy airframe. With your mod it not only looks more realistic but runs smoother without any hitching. The same problem unfortunately has been carried over into Korea where the exaggerated smoke effects tank the frames when dogfighting up close and there is no way they allow you to adjust those settings in the available graphical options. I would literally pay you to fix this. 

[Stonehouse]

11 hours ago, bluemax said:

Hi Stonehouse, 

Will you be doing a similar mod for Korea as well? I love this mod for IL2 as it fixed long and persistent hitching I had in VR when up close and dogfighting and smoke and debris start to fly off an enemy airframe. With your mod it not only looks more realistic but runs smoother without any hitching. The same problem unfortunately has been carried over into Korea where the exaggerated smoke effects tank the frames when dogfighting up close and there is no way they allow you to adjust those settings in the available graphical options. I would literally pay you to fix this. 

No idea when it will be possible to do such mods for Korea. Currently we don't have a version of unGTP that works with it. 

[bluemax]

2 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

No idea when it will be possible to do such mods for Korea. Currently we don't have a version of unGTP that works with it. 

That is a real shame, do you have any idea where in the new settings you could potentially limit the smoke effects only without effecting any of the other pre-baked settings in the graphical preset options? If I run medium for example I get no hitching, but terrain and aircraft model and other aspects of the sim look much worse, and weren't costing me performance anyway. 

[Stonehouse]

2 hours ago, bluemax said:

That is a real shame, do you have any idea where in the new settings you could potentially limit the smoke effects only without effecting any of the other pre-baked settings in the graphical preset options? If I run medium for example I get no hitching, but terrain and aircraft model and other aspects of the sim look much worse, and weren't costing me performance anyway. 

Not sure sorry. It'll be trial and error most likely as everyone's setup is different