Mt. St. Helens eruption effects and more.

[Bell206freak]

While I'm on the subject of Mt. St. Helens, can anyone out there who can create scenery special effects create the effect of the 1980 explosion?  Or can one create a pre-1980 summit cone in GMAX or some other modeling tool?  I'd like to be able to someday simulate flying around Mt. St Helens pre-1980 and to simulate flying around it during an eruptive cycle

[JBaymore]

I did a simple "steam" effects file a while back when it was blowing off steam recently.  I just took the M$ volcano effects file from the Hawaii one and modified the crap out of it and reset the location.  Mine is located using the FSGenesis terrain mesh though.

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=paywareshots;action=display;num=1097445315

best,

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

[Bell206freak]

Could you mind explaining how you did it? I'd love to learn how.  Since I cannot afford the US Terrain Mesh from FSGenesis I'd like to utilize it on the default MS terrain mesh for FS9.

I live about an hour and a half away from the mountain, my hometown is  a mile away from KSHN (Sanderson Field, Shelton, WA) in the Airport ID list in FS2004.

I had a chance to fly in a helicopter (The Hoffstadt Bluffs Helicopter Tours one - see screenshots section) around the mountain in early October when it was releasing steam. What an experience - especially being five miles north of the crater at 5800 feet!

Ever since then I've been wanting to recreate the experience in FS.

[JBaymore]

Get the Microsoft Effects SDK from their site.

[Bell206freak]

I am not having any luck at all with this. I've compiled the XML sheet per the directions of the SDK, but when it comes down to compiling it as a *.BGL file, the BGL compiler won't do it.

It gives me errors saying "Unrecoverable error parsing XML." and similar errors.