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Mt. St. Helens eruption effects and more. (Read 245 times)

Nov 17^th, 2004 at 2:31am

Bell206freak Offline
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While I'm on the subject of Mt. St. Helens, can anyone out there who can create scenery special effects create the effect of the 1980 explosion? Or can one create a pre-1980 summit cone in GMAX or some other modeling tool? I'd like to be able to someday simulate flying around Mt. St Helens pre-1980 and to simulate flying around it during an eruptive cycle

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Reply #1 - Nov 17^th, 2004 at 9:05am

JBaymore Offline
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I did a simple "steam" effects file a while back when it was blowing off steam recently. I just took the M$ volcano effects file from the Hawaii one and modified the crap out of it and reset the location. Mine is located using the FSGenesis terrain mesh though.

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=paywareshots;action=displa...

best,

................john

Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 7200 HD, Caviar 500G 7200 HD, GTX275 1280M, Logitec Z640, Win7 Pro 64b, CH Products yoke, pedals + throttle quad, simpit

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Reply #2 - Nov 17^th, 2004 at 9:55am

Bell206freak Offline
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Resident Bell 206 B JetRanger
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Posts: 195

Could you mind explaining how you did it? I'd love to learn how. Since I cannot afford the US Terrain Mesh from FSGenesis I'd like to utilize it on the default MS terrain mesh for FS9.

I live about an hour and a half away from the mountain, my hometown is a mile away from KSHN (Sanderson Field, Shelton, WA) in the Airport ID list in FS2004.

I had a chance to fly in a helicopter (The Hoffstadt Bluffs Helicopter Tours one - see screenshots section) around the mountain in early October when it was releasing steam. What an experience - especially being five miles north of the crater at 5800 feet!

Ever since then I've been wanting to recreate the experience in FS.

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Reply #3 - Nov 17^th, 2004 at 10:27am

JBaymore Offline
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Get the Microsoft Effects SDK from their site. It explains effects programming. It is NOT hard to do.

Once you have a basic idea....... find the volcano effects file in your main effects directory. Make a COPY of it. Rername it something like Mt. St. HelensSteam or something like that. Work on THAT file.

Go into slew mode. Got to Mt. St. Helens...and set the plane down in the exact spot in the crater that you want to "eruption" to be located. Note the lat and lon coordinates and the altitude from the red letters on the top of the screen and write them down. You'll need these to place the effect.

Modify the effect file based on the SDK... and place the new effects file in your effects folder. Set up an XML bgl file for your add on scenery folder the way it says in the SDK... and test it. Keep playing with the effects file and testing until you get it right.

Hope this starts you off.

best,

.....................john

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Reply #4 - Nov 18^th, 2004 at 6:59am

Bell206freak Offline
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Resident Bell 206 B JetRanger
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Posts: 195

I am not having any luck at all with this. I've compiled the XML sheet per the directions of the SDK, but when it comes down to compiling it as a *.BGL file, the BGL compiler won't do it.

It gives me errors saying "Unrecoverable error parsing XML." and similar errors.

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