I think I have randomly mentioned this to various developers, so I might as well randomly mention it to all developers.  A new particle system for X-Plane is in our road-map – that is, a particle system where authors can control the properties and graphics in detail (similar to what you’d get in one of the AAA game engines).

If you have feature requests or ideas for things you need for a particle system, please write something short and coherent and email it to me; I can file it with my design notes for later integration.

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

24 comments on “A New Particle System Is In the Roadmap”

    1. No – particles are for things like contrails, smoke, fires, etc. In X-Plane the clouds have their own code that can cope with the sheer _quantity_ as well as the need to Z sort.

  2. Hi Ben,

    Is this feature mainly for scenery builders, or can we control it through datarefs.
    If not, can it be exposed to the SDK through Datarefs ?

    Thanks

    1. The feature is for aircraft and scenery builders.

      The primary way to make a particle system will be via a new particle system file format, edited via a visual editor.

      Particles will be generated by emitters attached to OBJs, and the input values will come from datarefs.

      So there will be plugin control but it won’t be strictly necessary to write a plugin to use it.

      1. So, I can create a fire object with particle effect attached to it, and in certain condition I can just “say”: no particle or change particle values to become heavy smoke or thin smoke…

        Do you think it could be achieved out of the box with current planned features ?

        1. If you can find an existing data-ref to drive the ‘intensity’ of the fire (e.g. tie it to time of day or engine throttle level or just leave the fire constant) then yes. The change of the particles over time would be art driven, not dataref driven.

          I’ll post about this in more detail later.

    2. I agree, exposure through the datarefs would be useful. An emitter would have an XYZ orientation relative to an object, and a UVW direction orientation in degrees from some arbitrary zero reference. Then there’s emitter type Of course, these all need to be array values based on the number of emitters, along with emitter type and relevant parameters. But with such, the opportunity for easy access via plugin or SASL/Gizmo/Python script would really dress up the look and feel of the sim.

      These all seem like common sense sorts of things right off the top of my head, Ben, but do you want an email containing same? (Included here for discussion amongst other devs).

      Thanks for the heads up. This is good news indeed!

  3. Unrelated issue, but I’m wondering if there are any plans to add the option of locking 60fps and get rid of any stutters (for a “levelD” type performance).
    Right now, on a Mac Pro 5,1 with a 7950 and all SSD, scaling down graphics to keep 60fps is possible, but with the occasional stutters / loading pauses / etc.
    What is the main reason for stutters? Is there anything we can do other than dialing down eye candy to help eliminate them for good?

  4. This would be pretty awesome for replicating volcanic ash cloud. I wonder if these particles could have physical properties added to them? So that say flying though an ash cloud will wreck your plane’s engines and such.

  5. Well, if we have control of rate of generation alone that’ll take care of the very ugly spitball effects of some jets’ exhaust. Anything else like size, texture, and position and triggers will be icing on the cake.

  6. Excellent news, although I am not sure I can grasp the full length of this news, but I try!

    I would love to see the an option for i.e counterails, thickness, lenght etc. Further more it would if applicable be nice to have control over particles on the ground. Not sure what kind of water waves currently running on the runway, but it would be nice to have options for wet runway, icing runways, wave controller, ocean color (if that is part of the particle system) and purhaps rotor sand effect (what helicopter pilots call brownout – i think). Purhaps wind effect on water (you can tell where the wind is coming from on i.e water, trees etc) or rain/snow.. What I mean is rain blows according to wind. Icing conditions on plane (like in the C90B from Carenado)

    So if I am way off now, please elaborate!

  7. Any chance to see a functional X-Plane with catalyst on Linux?
    Any chance there will be MESA support? Please guys … i want to fly again.

  8. Hi,Ben!
    I think,as non programmer,that the main difficult, how to do this new Particle System without low fps. Additional slider for increase performance? Or, I misunderstand?
    Cheers
    Youri

  9. As vonhinx says, anything that improves on the Trumpton train-smoke effects will be great news; but this sounds like it has applications for not only engine exhaust but fuel jettisoning, con-trails, and wing-tip vortices too. That would be something to look forward to.

    2. I used the ground dust effect in a video for great dramatic effect. It all depends on the runway surface. Low pass doesn’t exist, so that would be something that could be added by plugin with reasonable ease. It’s fair to say that we would be able to enhance many of the effects that currently exist and add quite a few more. It all depends on how much they would cost in terms of rendering speed. This is really opening a door to creativity.

  12. Hi Ben,

    I appreciate the work, and although not here, I have a question: When the problem with OpenGL on AMD cards will be solved? Regress driver is not an option, as little as turn off the HDR. See, it worked in 13.9, 14.1 are in and we have no solution by AMD and tells you to wait … But then it gets difficult if neither side intends to solve.

    Thanks!

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