Extinguishing forest fires

Been searching and searching and haven't found anything about extinguishing forest fires. We have tried several things in FSX and also using the utility *FSActiveFires* and even installed a couple of fire bomber missions. Tried using water and retardant for extinguishing fires but they just keep burning.

 

Is it even possible to extinguish fires at all in FSX?, or are the fires strictly for looks and/or just eye candy? nothing we've been doing is putting out the flames.

 

Can anyone tell us what else we might need to do in FSX to get these fires out?

 

Thanks in advance...

 

~A~

Extinguish fires was impossible in FS9 (I came to FSX very recently). I'm ready to believe that it is the same in FSX. I did some workaround, a kind of "dirty" trick in FS9, which consisted in creating my forestfires myself, so I programed the location/start time/intensity as well as the end of the fire & smoke effects. So, knowing exactly the time your fire will stop, you can manage to fly over, drop your water/retardant/worst enemy, whatever, just a few seconds before the fire effect stops and, tadaaaaa! you're the hero of the day.

 

Luc

LOL your kidding! man that's just wrong lol. Well I won't be doing any of that programming stuff or using any SDK's so I guess they'll just have to burn.

Appreciate your reply.

 

Thank You.

~A~

Just wondering: How well DO "worst enemies" put fires out? Are they effective on house fires too? How about just a small grease fire...?

I know, I've been told I am a sick puppy...:eek:

 

Pat☺

AFAIK it is not built into the sim per se. I imagine the fire is a localized (particle?) effect or something, so basically a scenery object.

 

Just brain storming here: for this to be arbitrary and not a mission you would need some TacPack like addon that tracks your position and the release of the extinguishing agent. It could then remove the fire effect or replace it with smoke. Most likely it would have to know about the existence of the fire in the first place, so it probably needs to create the fire itself too. Sounds like an interesting addition to FSActiveFires and it seems odd that the developer didn't include something like this(?). All he has to implement is an additional "button" you need to press when you release the water so the program can put out the fire it created, provided you are right on top of it and at the right altitude(??)

Anyway, should doable as a DLL I guess, a couple of days worth of coding.

 

On the other hand, there are missions like those on this page:

http://simviation.com/1/browse-Missions-59-0

"FSX Marignane Civil Security CL-215 Mission v2.00" where it says "..extinguish fires". Might be worth a try?

I'm reading about forest and wild fires on the news almost daily. I think if you're going to accurately simulate air fire fighting in today's world you need to include drones getting in the way!! All the news people seem to love and use them. Even though they sometimes ground the fire planes for fear of collision.:mad::mad:

Maybe fire dept. could use some kind of EMP device. That would be a very handy thing to have if one could use it directionally. Could help against smartphones too.

 

The firefighting addon is intriguing. It would need to consist of two parts. One, the fire simulation (spreading, running with the wind, extinguish and smoke for a while?) and second the dropping of the agent. The first one is tough, the second one fairly easy. Guess I will give it a try, see how it works out as a DLL.

Maybe fire dept. could use some kind of EMP device. That would be a very handy thing to have if one could use it directionally. Could help against smartphones too.

 

The firefighting addon is intriguing. It would need to consist of two parts. One, the fire simulation (spreading, running with the wind, extinguish and smoke for a while?) and second the dropping of the agent. The first one is tough, the second one fairly easy. Guess I will give it a try, see how it works out as a DLL.

 

Great! I'll try to shoot down the drones.

nuitkati....

 

Yeah tried that one before starting this thread thinking I was in luck. Well turned out that when you make a successful drop on the fire you only get a text message in the upper right hand part of the screen saying: WATERDROP 1 and if you make another successful drop then it will say same thing but adding 2 for the second fire and so on. The actual fires still remain. It scores the 1, 2, 3 and so on based on the actual data of height, speed and coverage of the retardant or water and whatever other data it reads.

 

The bad thing about this mission is you don't know this until you travel over 150 miles or so to the fire! I did speed it up by 16 but still.... what a waste of time that was. Very disappointing for sure.

 

Thanks for your reply and the heads up and thanks to all others who replied. Guess I'll just forget about it and hang it up until maybe one day something more comes out of FSX for fire bombing if ever at all.

 

~A~

Maybe fire dept. could use some kind of EMP device. That would be a very handy thing to have if one could use it directionally. Could help against smartphones too.

Or just a simple jammer. Jam the freq's the drones use for control, bingo, no drones. They either crash, or fly off into the distance, THEN crash. Either way, problem solved.

 

When I was in Iwakuni, model aircraft were a huge "thing", and the model airport was in a large empty area on the end of the main runway. Only trouble was, the Tower frequency was apparently in the band the models used for control, or was a harmonic there-of. Anyway, if a plane taxied out, all the modelers had to ground their planes fast, or when the planes and tower talked, the models would lock their controls in the last position, and either crash, or fly off someplace, out of controller range. Not healthy for the model planes. Nothing the modelers could do, really. It IS a military base, after all.

 

Anyway, given today's computer sophistication, finding and jamming the drone control frequencies would be piece of cake. Simple, cheap device. There are cell phone jammers used by some theaters, and so on, just a slight mod of that tech.

Pat☺

Or just a simple jammer. Jam the freq's the drones use for control, bingo, no drones. They either crash, or fly off into the distance, THEN crash. Either way, problem solved.

 

When I was in Iwakuni, model aircraft were a huge "thing", and the model airport was in a large empty area on the end of the main runway. Only trouble was, the Tower frequency was apparently in the band the models used for control, or was a harmonic there-of. Anyway, if a plane taxied out, all the modelers had to ground their planes fast, or when the planes and tower talked, the models would lock their controls in the last position, and either crash, or fly off someplace, out of controller range. Not healthy for the model planes. Nothing the modelers could do, really. It IS a military base, after all.

 

Anyway, given today's computer sophistication, finding and jamming the drone control frequencies would be piece of cake. Simple, cheap device. There are cell phone jammers used by some theaters, and so on, just a slight mod of that tech.

Pat☺

 

Yeah you gotta watch for those harmonics!

 

But I think a jammer's really just a temporary fix.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of a pair of aerial .50s. You know, with 1,040 rounds per minute each. I'm guessing one trip out with those and the drone guys won't come back.

nuitkati....

 

Yeah tried that one before starting this thread thinking I was in luck. Well turned out that when you make a successful drop on the fire you only get a text message in the upper right hand part of the screen saying: WATERDROP 1 and if you make another successful drop then it will say same thing but adding 2 for the second fire and so on. The actual fires still remain. It scores the 1, 2, 3 and so on based on the actual data of height, speed and coverage of the retardant or water and whatever other data it reads.

 

The bad thing about this mission is you don't know this until you travel over 150 miles or so to the fire! I did speed it up by 16 but still.... what a waste of time that was. Very disappointing for sure.

 

Thanks for your reply and the heads up and thanks to all others who replied. Guess I'll just forget about it and hang it up until maybe one day something more comes out of FSX for fire bombing if ever at all.

 

~A~

 

Let me give it a try this weekend. I will need to find out how to place and extingish the forest fire effects where I want via DLL at runtime. If I find a way, the rest is a piece of cake. Not going to drop anything from the plane though, it will be just a button saying that you did release. The DLL will then judge your altitude and position and put out the fire. If this works it can be expanded upon, like factoring in wind, speed, evaporating agent? I will post a thread if I'm successful with the proof of concept.

Hi,

Haven't read this thread thoroughly but there are missions available that have extinguishable fires. They are the High Park missions by Laserpoint (Al Goodrich) and were available FSXMissionsHangar.com. Haven't checked recently.

Jim F.