Strange smoke effect under the MD-81

[ecosse821]

I just noticed this just now cruising over the american midwest in the MD-81 at 28,000' mach .75 I am seeing a white smoke effect about a hundred feet or so below the aircraft, about halfway back from the nose to the tail. It is streaming out as if it were emanating from the airplane, but it is out in free space by itself pluming out for maybe 40-50 feet.

Any ideas?

[aerofoto - HJG Admin]

Sounds like a contrail/vapour type of effect rather than an actual engine smoke effect

I have heard of this issue .... a few years ago .... BUT .... don't recall the precise solution .... other than,. as I recall, it had nothing at all to do with any of the files we offer here.

HOWEVER .... and just to be absolutely sure ....

One thing you should check though .... and which I can at least recommend (remembering I'm not FSX myself) is to make sure you've, indeed, activated the FSX specific AIRCRAFT.CFG file within you MD81 aircraft base pack .... and that your not inadvertently using the default FS2009 assignment which all of our files download "ready to run" with. Failure to do this could likely/will result in strange looking smoke, and possibly vapour effects, because the FSX co-ordination of these effects files is "different" from that of FS2004 .... hence the need to activate the FSX specific AIRCRAFT.CFG file as per intructions contained within the aircraft base pack download .

Mark C
AKL/NZ

[Falcon]

You are absolutely correct Mark. I'm a FSX user and have made that mistake more than once. I use a few FS9 a/c, and have that problem. I think Dan has a post in here how to do away with it through the Aircraft cfg file. Should be in this FSX pages.

[Falcon]

Please read Dans at FSX Vortices ! that should solve your problem ecosse.

[ecosse821]

Thanks guys. I double checked to make sure I had the correct aircraft file (which I did). I Rem'd out the "wake" entry in the effects section of the file. That seems to have removed the offending vapor.

[ecosse821]

OOPs not so fast. That did not fix it. It is happening with all my aircraft, even defaults.

I guess this will take some effort to figure out.

I can pause my flight, reload the aircraft, then un-pause, and it seems to go away.

Grrr.

[aerofoto - HJG Admin]

OK .... if it's happening on "EVERYTHING" you've got installed .... including the defaults too .... then that's us/HJG in the clear

Hopefully someone might be able to provide more general advice for you to follows.

I know this topic has come up on these forum pages .... in relation to FSX, but, I can't recall the fix .... through my not paying much interest to it, at the time, and on acount of my not being an FSX user in any case.

Mark C
AKL/NZ

[Dan K. Hansen]

Read my post regarding vortices again ....
Doesn't mention anything about either Rem'ing or wake .... so apparently you haven't read it....

[ecosse821]

Mar 20, 2012 21:12:19 GMT Dan K. Hansen said:

Read my post regarding vortices again ....
Doesn't mention anything about either Rem'ing or wake .... so apparently you haven't read it....

I did read it. I determined it was not relevant to my issue. I tried something else that initial testing seemed to show it as fixed, but that was wrong.

It turns out it is the fx_SnowEngineWash.fx effect. Renaming that file made it go away.

Thanks again for all the help!

[aerofoto - HJG Admin]

It turns out it is the fx_SnowEngineWash.fx effect. Renaming that file made it go away.

Thanks for you feedback "ECOSSE821" .... because that sort of information may ultimately help someone else in the future too .... and which what I like to see a lot more of around here

I'm glad to see you're, apparently, all sorted out .... with orwithout our assistance ;D

Mark C
AKL/NZ