FWsim in the future and updates?

FWsim Help & Discussion
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Hello everyone,

I have a few points of interest for fwsim and maybe you guys have some too.

Everyone knows that FWsim is one of the most famous fireworks simulations in the world.
Everyone also knows that the FWsim support team is ready to help you quickly, that’s all good and I’m not going to pay any attention to that.

But I’ve been seeing questions coming from water reflection for 3 years, anyone have any idea where that is or what update it is, will it come at all or will it be pushed aside.
I personally think it can cause lagg or it’s too much work for the development team behind the scenes.

Same about the smoketails it seems much more realistic to me to add water reflection and smoke tails to tail for exporting to prevent lagg.
Maybe it’s an idea for a test like in 2020.

I see that many people also get other ideas such as stage building lighting technology, it seems very cool to have that in FWsim.
But I think that will take a very long time, especially for the HD and development of the lights.

In addition, this is of course not hate against fwsim but I sometimes just wonder.

Now the part about smoke and buildings.

I’ve noticed for a while if you have a building or something else and you put your fireworks/position behind the object and you have smoke on with the export you see the smoke through the building.
This looks weird and unrealistic.

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You talked about the smoke behind the buildings! I never saw anyone talk about that! I’ll make post about it here now! I have a screenshot where this is very clear! Comment there so @Lukas can see it!

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Hi,

thanks for your message, I appreciate these ideas.

Development of FWsim is driven by many factors. Therefore, I usually avoid promising any specific dates at which specific features will be implemented. I like to be honest about the development process (which can sometimes be unpredictable) and only announce features that are ready to be tested.

It is useful to hear that these graphics features are important to you, and I have added your vote for these features to our internal wishlist.

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I think one of the hurdles with FWsim is that it is build from scratch. Presumably any new feature will also have to be build from scratch. If Fwsim was started today you would probably have used an existing engine like Unity or Unreal, which have all the physics for lighting, materials, shaders, and so on built in, but I don’t think that was an option when Lukas began on FWsim.

Even I can make smoke trails with texture sheet animation in Unity and I’m not a programmer in any sense of the word. I don’t think it is that easy to do in FWsim. And major updates to the graphics may render existing effects unusable. Personally, I’m fine with that. I don’t mind remaking them but it might upset some users.

I have found certain problems with FWsim that I can circumvent. Most of the effects I make are small calibre. The physics and the look of very small calibre effects is not that great. But I just double everything up and that improves it a lot. So, a cake with 25mm peonies becomes a cake with 50mm peonies. Double the shoot area and multiply the size of any models by 2 and it works.

I also have a problem with the screen being overwhelmed with smoke, but I’m fine with just turning smoke off. Having realistic animated smoke trails would be nice, but it is not a feature that is very high on my wishlist. Same with the small calibre fireworks. It would be nice, but I found a way to work around it.

There are other features I (among others, I assume) have requested that are in FWsim now. I asked for a dropdown menu for the author field. I have that now and it is very convenient. The ability to select several effects in the show editor was an improvement I really wanted and that is also available now. Pausing in the effect editor was implemented better than I imagined because it updates any changes when paused.

So, smoke trails and water reflections are probably coming at some point. Personally, I don’t consider them that important. There are many minor features and improvements I would prioritize. More effect types like flying fish, go-getters, bees, spinners, swimming stars, humming snakes and so on would be nice. Or little things like having the whistle as an ascent effect or an option for angle variation under simulated inaccuracies in the cake editor. More options for metadata (or tags) for the individual effects.

But the two most important things for me at the moment would be a slider for star sizes, like there is with sparks and the ability to have sparks change colour over time.

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