Simviation Forums

Spent hours trying to solve this, so hope an effects guru can please help... I have an effect for a Spitfire exhaust that works great except for one small problem: Imagine the aircraft is pointed magnetic North, and using the outside view from the side, port side, you can see the spitfire's exhaust pipes with an exhaust "flame" all nicely lined up with the exhaust tail pipe -- in other words the "head of the fire" starts just where the exhaust pipe ends, and the rest of the flame extrudes and fades away from the end of the tailpipe as you'd expect any hot exhaust gas to do. That's the good part. The problem: If I now change the view to a aircraft top-down orientation, and then rotate the view 90 degrees, (so the aircraft is still pointing north, but my viewpoint has rotated 90 degrees) instead of the exhaust flame staying coupled to the aircraft, the flame effect rotates 90 degrees with the view. So what I end up with is an aircraft that's facing magnetic North, and my flame is now at right angles oriented towards 90 degrees.

The other part of this problem is that if I bank the aircraft, the effect banks with the aircraft -- so I know its coupled to the model as it should be. The problem is only when I move the outside viewpoint around, the effect follows the view orientation. The effect is somehow locked to the viewpoint, and not the orientation of the model. So you can imagine that when I move the viewpoint over to the starboard side the exhaust is now essentially the opposite of the port side view -- backwards with the trail-end of the flame at the end of the tailpipe and the flame head where the exhaust fade-away should be!

What do I need to do to decouple the effect from following the viewpoint orientation, and instead have it remain "glued" to the model?

Are you running FSX or FS9? I am only familiar with FS9,and fool with effects frequently.FSX is a different animal.Also,if you run FS9,what is the AC file (zip) and who designed it ,...and a plus would be where you downloaded it from,that way I can download it as well and fool with it some.However...if it's FSX, I cant even begin to try and help.