Simviation Forums

Hello fellow flightsimmers,

The one think I noticed sadly lacking in my FSX is a vapour trail for all of my larger aircraft. Does anyone know if there is such a thing available anywhere, please, preferably freeware ??

Thanks.

Transport Steve.

this normally happens to me when im at about 19000 + sometimes works better when its cold or warm but 9 times out of 10 i always get the trails when im higher than 19000

The vapor trail seems to be added by the sim during flight, depending on altitude and weather conditions. With "clear skies" it's around 28.000.  If you want a constant vapr trail, you can create a [smokesystem] entry in the aircraft.cfg file, and use the stock smoke effect, and you can have a "vapor trail" whenever you toggle the "i" key.

For the default 737-800, the smoke entry would look like this:

[SMOKESYSTEM]
smoke.0=-10.00, -17.50, -2.0, fx_contrail_l
smoke.1=-10.00,  17.50, -2.0, fx_contrail_l


Unless you lost your "fx_contrail_l.fx" from your effects folder, that should work.  Just press the "i" key when you want the contrails.

Hello fellow flightsimmers,

The one think I noticed sadly lacking in my FSX is a vapour trail for all of my larger aircraft. Does anyone know if there is such a thing available anywhere, please, preferably freeware ??

Thanks.

Transport Steve.

Not that I know of. sorry.

-Jake

Aren't the trails supposed to appear automatically above a certain altitude ?
I believe all aircrafts have it...

Steve,

Contrails are a default feature (effect) on all turbine engines. As mentioned, default contrails should appear on all turbine engines somewhere around 30000', depending on weather conditions

From the FSX SDK re: aircraft.cfg entries

[generalenginedata]

max_contrail_temperature=

Ambient temperature, in celsius, in which engine vapor contrails will turn on. The default value is about -39 degrees celsius for turbine engines. For piston engines, the contrail effect is turned off unless a temperature value is set here.

Adding or editing the entry in the aircraft.cfg file with a higher temp. will cause the contrails to appear at lower altitude.

I suppose you could also create a custom weather theme with a -40C temperature layer starting at a lower altitude.

Many thanks guys, especially, to Boikat and dave3cu for your input, I will study this information very carefully and see if I can make it work, I'm glad it's a default built-in programme.

Cheerz.  Transport Steve.