Idea

Hi Alyzee,

Thanks for asking, I feel we still need the API. Let me explain:

What we are looking for is to develop packages of effects that we can install on other 3rd party products, for example we could develop an special effect for airplanes that could trigger under our own conditions.

In order to achieve that currently we would have modify the original model behavior .XML file, which is not posible for many reasons.. so what we would like to be able to do is to inject these effects into the simulator via our own modules without the need to modify other 3rd party developers add-ons.

So what we are looking to do for example is to prepare a set of effects packages, a custom WASM module or SimConnect app and use this to inject the effects as we need.

This is a video of what we have done via this route for other platforms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdCJxk1A6bM

There we are injecting our own effects into the PMDG 777, it is done in P3D via SimConnect using a function called CreateEffect.. so we can put these effects directly in the sim without having to modify anything of the PMD 777 product.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Regards,
Raul

> It is already possible to attach FXs to objects that are not aircraft.

Hi Alyzée,

If I understand correctly, the VFX SDK only allows attaching an effect to a pre-existing object, whether by node name, or by pre-defined property index as found in the .cfg files (like the contact points). The object can be an aircraft or a static mesh. There is also a facility to use a few pre-defined simvars as value input into an effect but I'm not sure this can serve to "place" the emitter and it is only offering a short list of pre-defined simvars only.

Answering your question: this is one additional reason for the need for an API in order to be able to place the emitter from code, not from pre-existing object nor from pre-existing pre-defined list.

It doesn't work well really, many effects will fails to follow to correct heading, angle, and velocity of the target (airplanes for example) during many conditions..

We need the emitter's to inherit correctly the target object speed, orientation and many other conditions.

Trying to do this ourselves by injecting objects as you suggest (a nice idea btw) would generates a big overhead to Simconnect for the products that we wish to bring to MSFS. Specially because we can only Inject dummy objects as AI models, we cannot even attach things as an attachment to a SimObject..

Best,
Raul

The current system is very flexible to design effects around our own aircraft.

Getting the ability to spawn effects on other SimObjects (part of sceneries or AI aircraft) without editing the aircraft's already compiled xml files would be great. This is something the FX editor is able to do and something we would love to get access to somehow. Hence my "Ability to Attach it to a SimObject" request.

Since it would be difficult/impossible to manage such logic in XML, an alternative would be to get the ability to inject our own behaviors on an existing aircraft from a separate package without having to override any existing XML file. That would solve all the issues we face right now and would enable a lot more customization options even outside of visual effects.

Thank you for following up on this!