Attached particles stop when travelling

[HomerJohnston]

Hi guys, trying to use ArmA's new particle setup, works great but I'm having a problem: If I attach it to the player (as I want), and start running around, then once I travel a certain distance (seemingly about a kilometer circular of the starting point) the particles just plain stop generating. If I walk back then they kick in again. You can see this using Col Sander's utility; attach the smoke to your squadmate, get him in the hummer, and drive to the very eastern shore of the island. Just past the burnt out APC they stop generating! Go back west and they start again.

Any help warrants a    Thanks!

Edit: I can't use the drop command because it is broken in ArmA (see BIS forum thread http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?s=a2d82ecdf1830e8f7fa072ff313ac10a;act=ST;f=71;t=66885 )

Double Edit: I can make it keep following the player by running all the setparticleparam commands in a delayed while loop... but then the particles themselves screw up (they are deleted/replaced constantly as the set commands are re-run, rather than fade naturally through their life)

Yet another edit: Oops. Solved it -- need to constantly move #particlesource objects to keep them near the player (apparently they get ignored if they're too far away...), no need to re-set params. Sorry for being a waste of space

[Mandoble]

true, if the particle "vehicle" gets too far from its attached vehicle, no more particles are genetared. I would say this is another ArmA bug 

[h-]

Or it's simply a optimisation thingylee, I mean what is the purpose of generating particles (= spend resources) when there's no-one to see the particles

Have you tested if this is dependant on system specs/viewdistance?

[Mandoble]

(= spend resources) when there's no-one to see the particles

How is that there is no one to see the particles? In his example, he has the particles attached to the player itself. And once the player moves away certain distance of his original position (where the particle source vehicle was created), the particles surrounding him dissapear.

The problem is the followin. Particles may get absolute positions or positions relative to objects. And, of course, particles generated by particle-source vehicles may be attached to objects, so, their coordinates will be always relative to that object (for example, the player).

You may create a particle source vehicle and start generating smoke, using just the absolute coordinates of the particle source vehicle. In this case, it may make sense to only generate particles with coordinates close to the particle source vehicle, because it is placed in the origin of the smoke. But, if the particles generated by the particle source are attached to another moving object, for example the smoke trail of a jet, it is quite possible that this object will move fast and well away of the particle source vehicle, and the particles should keep there because they are, in fact, attached to an object different than the particle source itself. This is what is not considered by the current commands, hence the bug.

[h-]

I see..
I probably should start reading posts..

I have things of me own made that use the particlesource attached to a vehicle but I have never seen this bug..
But then again I probably haven't run far enough..

[HomerJohnston]

yeah, it does seem like kind of a bug, but fortunately it is quite easily solved, just need to move the #particlesource(s) back to the player before he travels outside its working range (setpos loop with ~5 second sleep works fine)

[Mandoble]

I had in the past the same problem with missiles smoke trails, and these were moving at 800 m/s or more, the problem there was quite noticeable 

[HomerJohnston]

hahaha, yeah I suppose that would require a bit faster looping

A shame that the drop command is messed up... as it didn't have this issue of course... 

[HomerJohnston]

One more question... it seems like if you set particlecircle radius to anything other than 0, then the pos parameter of particlearray stops working?

ex:

Code: [Select]

ps setParticleCircle [1, [0, 0, 0]];
_pos = [0,0,10000]
ps setParticleParams [_shape, _anim, _type, _timerperiod, _life, _pos, _velocity, ........]

when using these values, the particles will spawn at ground level.

but change particlecircle to [0, [0,0,0]];    and now the particles will be 10km in the sky

stupid! lol, why did BIS have to screw up Drop

[Mr.Peanut]

Maybe not a bug, maybe a streaming issue.

[paddy]

Just a note in retrospect, I found this link on the official forums for a nice little config for ARMA particle effects, i think vektorbosen or another scripter had one out for the OFP drop effects and I found it very useful while experimenting, maybe this will aid simulating your problem