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Fighting fires?
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:46 pm
by CaptainRodney
I'm an FSX guy so is it possible and are there air attack planes in x plane? Are there fire effects? I know this idea is way out there. I want your opinions. Can we do this? If so we I'll set a date and place and sign people up
Re: Fighting fires?
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:53 pm
by Nelson L.
I would imagine there would be a lot of issues with scenery differences, mesh differences, display fidelity (i.e. settings) differences, etc...
Not sure if it's possible (not really my forte), but it would be a huge hassle to set up. Go for it if you're willing to put the hours in, but it'll be a long process
(plus the apparent lack of interest in this department from the general sim community. Haven't seen a single payware firefighting aircraft...)
Re: Fighting fires?
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:57 pm
by CaptainRodney
It's really lacking. Maybe it's not possible but there is not much of an interest in the real world ethier. I think that needs to change
Re: Fighting fires?
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:38 pm
by CaptainRodney
Still want ideas if this is possible
Re: Fighting fires?
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 5:15 am
by tshuff
Edit- this is totally wrong, there is a function in X-Plane to do this, see below.
I wouldn't count on it. The goal of X-Plane is to simulate flying a plane. Given that until recently scenery has taken a backseat, I would not anticipate the devs or any third parties to undertake something like this. That being said, the World Editor for X-Plane is very powerful and you could certainly make pretend fire objects that you do low passes over. These would be static objects, however. Not sure what you'd fly.
Re: Fighting fires?
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 5:58 am
by kullery
The OV-10 Bronco (
http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app ... file=16107) would be an appropriate aircraft (I have no experience with this so can't comment regarding this specific version).
It's a few year's old now, but here is a
good article about Patty Wagstaff making the transition to firefighting in the OV-10 Bronco. She is no longer flying with CalFire.
X-Plane option draw forest fires and balloons
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 6:26 am
by wmburns
Just wondering if aware there already is a an X-Plane rendering option for "draw forest fires and balloons"?
>>From X-Plane
When the box labeled draw forest fires and balloons is checked, X-Plane will randomly generate forest fires, which can be put out after scooping up water in a water bomber such as the CL-415 Bombardier. It will also cause hot air balloonists to meander through the world when the weather is nice. This option has a negligible effect on frame rate.
http://www.x-plane.com/?article=configu ... ng-options
http://wiki.x-plane.com/Special_Situati ... X-Plane_10 <more information on special situations in X-Plane>
Of course this does present problems if your intention is to have a cooperative fire fighting "mission" as the rendering of the fire and results would be only on your sim.
On a different note. Could PE make a drone balloon? Or a drone sailplane? Might be kind of interesting to encounter a low and slow moving balloon drone from time to time on PE.
Re: Fighting fires?
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 6:37 am
by CaptainRodney
Is there a way(again I'm an FSX guy) is there a way to get that draw fires thing and place it at certain coordinates?
Re: Fighting fires?
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 7:06 am
by kullery
CaptainRodney wrote:Is there a way(again I'm an FSX guy) is there a way to get that draw fires thing and place it at certain coordinates?
Not easily per
Sandy Barbour
We don't have support for this in the SDK.
If you are a programmer and know OpenGL you could probably do something with that.
But it would require a fair bit of code.
additional info
Fighting Forest Fires
In order to do water bombing on forest fires in X-Plane, load up your desired water tanker, such as the Bombardier 415 seaplane. Then, in order to increase the likelihood of encountering forest fires, open the Environment menu and open the Weather dialog box. There, click the radio button labeled set weather uniformly for the whole world. Set all cloud layers to “clear,” with no precipitation, and set the temperature to 70 ° F (21 ° C) or more.
At this point, you should be able to find some forest fires, especially in mountainous areas. To jump instantly to the nearest forest fire, you can open the Aircraft menu and click Aircraft & Situations. In the dialog box that appears, click the Forest Fire Approach button. Alternatively, the forest fires will show up in the X-Plane maps (available in the Local Map dialog box, found in the Location menu) as a small fire icon.
In the Bombardier 415, you will have to first scoop up water into the aircraft’s underside. With your water payload ready to be dropped, you can assign a key (as described in the section “ sec:keyboard_shortcuts” of Chapter ) to the “jettison payload” function (categorized under flight controls). Press that button to drop your load of water on the fire.
Re: Fighting fires?
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 8:59 am
by Keith Smith
I played with this recently, it was quite a bit of fun doing runs to a lake, picking up the water and then dropping it over the fire. It would certainly be interesting doing it in a group. That said, I don't know how you'd get xplane to draw the fires in the same place on everyone's machines and communicate the fact that portions of the fire had been extinguished by another player.
It's would be quite a bit of work to code this, and given how infrequently the code would actually get used, I would not count on any developer wanting to pick it up as a project unless it was being developed under contract for fire fighting pilots.