If you're having trouble with frame rates and the effect is causing FS2002 to slow up, there are a couple of solutions, both of which require modifying the Rain.fx file. Just remember that using these effects will naturally cause a reduction in frame rates because of the moving textures on the screen. The reduction can be significant on slower systems and is probably the reason why Microsoft did not use these special effects to the fullest extent in FS2002. When creating these effects I tried to use textures with low resolution and a minimum amount of detail. If you view these textures with Paint Shop or a similar program, you will see that they are plain and boring, but for good reason. My system specs are as follows:
Athlon AMD 1Ghz
Geforce Ti200, over clocked to 193/430
640MB SDRAM
I did most of the testing in desert areas (to reduce texture loading time) with little or no ground scenery around. Every time you make an adjustment to the effects file, you need to shut down and restart the sim and at times this can be tedious. I set my frame rate lock at 40 FPS, then at 20FPS. The result was the same. My frame rates with this effect hovered around 14 to 15 FPS. It would be nice if I could incorporate the rain into FS2002 without using the smoke system, but it's all I can think of for now.
Two adjustments to the Rain.fx File:
Under the section [Emitter.0] or [Emitter.1] there is a line that says Rate=x,x that looks like this.
[Emitter.0]
x
x
Rate=200.00, 300.00
(This is the rate at which particles are emitted. The first number is the min., the second is the max.)
or
[Emitter.1]
x
x
Rate=200.00, 200.00
You can change the rate of particles emitted by reducing this range to,
Rate=100.00, 150.00
or
Rate=100.00, 100.00
or variations of that.
The other adjustment is eliminating the rain falling from the sky (not the ground splashes).
Eliminate the following SECTIONS
[Emitter.0], [Particle.0], [ParticleAttributes.0]
and rename the LINES
[Emitter.1], [Particle.1], [ParticleAttributes.1]
to
[Emitter.0], [Particle.0], [ParticleAttributes.0]
The Special Effects SDK describes these special effects and controllers for effects (not used in this version) as a powerful tool, with the only limitaion being the impact on frame rates. Any texture (mostly transparent ones) can be modified and resized to create outstanding effects. The SDK is, for the most part, helpful in tutoring a beginner and I encourage everyone to experiment and create.
