There are engine fire flags in the FS2004 sim!

[JBaymore]

In reading the SDK from Peter Dowson's FSUIPC, I noticed that at offset hex 3366 there is a one byte value that indicates fires in engine 1 through 4 through the values of the bits at 2^0 thru 2^3.

This is VERY interesting news to me.  It makes the creation of a truly functional fire detection and suppression panel for up to a 4 engine a simpit more of a reality.  (wish the APU was simulated too!)

You would write code to monitor those values.  When one or more of them goes "true", you have them drive engine "fire" annunciator lights (and maybe a horn sound).

Then you write more code into the routine that activates the "suppression" mode when you close a switch for the engine in question.  That action would affect all the typical systems that the real system would affect on the aircraft...... shutting off stuff like bleed air, fuel valves,  generator, hydraulic pump, shutting down the engine, and so on.  This would be accomplished simply by writing values to the appropriate offsets in FSUIPC to accomplish these tasks.

Now if only there were a way to also key this to an effect file for each engine  ;).

Has anyone reading this done any work with these values?

best,

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

[SilverFox441]

It can be written to an effect file.

There are a number of "Lights" available that are used for effects...

1

[SilverFox441]

Just had a thought...

Can FSUIPC accesss specific lights?

What I mean is can it be used to turn on say, Light #12?

You could then set up a lights section like so:

[LIGHTS]        
//Types: 1=beacon, 2=strobe, 3=navigation, 4=cockpit, 5=landing
light.0=3, -52.22,-103.52, 11.38, fx_navredh ,
light.1=3, -52.22, 103.52, 11.38, fx_navgreh ,
light.2=3, -54.34,-103.64, 11.38, fx_navwhih ,
light.3=3, -54.34, 103.64, 11.38, fx_navwhih ,
light.4=3,-139.00,   0.00,  8.42, fx_navwhih ,
light.5=2, -51.00,-103.40, 11.38, fx_strobeh ,
light.6=2, -51.00, 103.40, 11.38, fx_strobeh ,
light.7=1,  -5.00,   0.00, -6.25, fx_beaconb ,
light.8=1,  22.00,   0.00, 18.30, fx_beaconh ,
light.9=4,  93.21,   0.00,  8.75, fx_vclighth ,
light.10=9 0.00, 0.00 0.00 fx_engine fire
light.11=9 0.00, 0.00 0.00 fx_engine fire
light.12=9 0.00, 0.00 0.00 fx_engine fire
light.13=9 0.00, 0.00 0.00 fx_engine fire

The last 4 lights are all Logo Lights... but if FSUIPC can turn on specific lights then you can specify each engine fire effect individually. The co-ordinates would have to be set up properly for each engine...but that is no big problem.

[JBaymore]

SilverFox,

We are beating around on something interesting here.  

FSUIPC can directly access a certain number of lights... I'll have to research it to be sure how many and how.  More on that later.

The real question here is what engine conditions will cause those engine fire offset values to "trip" to a "true" state?  That would be in the coding that Microsoft put into what controls those flags.  That they exist is already documented.  When and IF they change state is another whole question.

Do combinations of things have to happen to create a "fire"?  Or is it a single vairiable that is "monitored"......... say maybe EGT or ITT.  Or maybe RPMs.  Who knows.  That is stuff that really needs to be explored.

I already have a good engine fire fx that I set up to trigger on the "smoke" key.  makes a mess....... but slowly developing + getting worse with time.  As you said............ it'd just be a matter of relocating the effect in X,Y,Z coordinate space to put it on each engine.

best,

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

[SilverFox441]

hmmmm....

It might be possible right now to make a guage that would monitor the engine failure states and turn on the appropriate light.

This could lead in a very interesting direction.