FSActiveFires

[Dieter]

May I draw your attention to a very interesting software called:

FSActiveFires

which greatly enhances FSX/P3D.

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/global-wildfires-open-source-project-need-programming.428525/

This software reads world wide fire datas from a NASA page.
Fires are displayed by using  MS standard effects ( Cntrl_ForestFireSingle, which calls fx_ForestFireHuge and fx_ForestFireSmoke)

Here is a direct link to the active fire file:
https://github.com/ollyau/FSActiveFires/releases

Short instruction:

- Run  "FSActiveFires" from a folder of your choice as admin.
FSX must be inactive

- Click "Install Model", a new folder is created
\FSX\SimObjects\Misc\Fire_Effect

- Now choose a "Region" of your choice (World, Alaska....)
- Download Data
Number of downloaded fires will be presented.

- Start FSX

- By clicking  "Connect" a green line appears in the upper left corner of FSX/P3D "FS Active Fires is connected to Mircosoft Flight Simulator X"

To try  if it works you might use "Move User to Random Fire", this will set your plane  to any fire.

More interessting is to find a fire in an area of your choice.

Go to
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/firemap/

- Choose
Satellite Source: Terra
Time period: past 24 hours

The map (not really detailed)  can be moved by pressing mouse key.
By pressing + the map display will be increased.
 
- Now click "arrow and i", mouse pointer will turn into a cross.
By clicking on one of the red (hot) spots you'll get the coordinates (degree,decimal). These values must be roughly converted to meet FSX coordinates inputs.
Now you can place your airplane to this hot spot.

Info

FS Active Fires only adds fires within a 20 kilometer radius of the user to increase performance. This threshold is not user adjustable because it's actually greater than the distance effects themselves appear and disappear at. The numbers of fires in the simulation will change depending on where your user aircraft is. The number of total fires per region changes depending on how many hotspots the MODIS instrument aboard the Aqua and Terra satellites detect.

As soon as your plane is in a 20 km radius to the fires the detected fires are displayed by number  "Fires in simulation:"

Dieter

Some users might remember "FSBlaze" for FS9 which was published many years ago, but doesn't work in our sim systems anymore.

[spud]

Canada is Burning!

[corbu1]

That is really Hot!.....

It's time to attach the bambi buckets to my helicopters.

[rochewf]

Thanks for the heads up on this Dieter. I have it up and running. No fires in Colorado right now which is a good thing.

Bill

[Trex3D]

Cool! Thanks for sharing this link Dieter..

It would also be more fun if these forest fires were "extinguishable" with bambi buckets equipped helos or Canadian fixed wing super soakers thru RTMM firefighting missions with FSX/P3D.. Hope some developers will be able to add this feature someday 

[frostlp]

Thanks for the heads up on this.  Another step to making our sims  as real as possible.  I've installed it in P3Dv2.3.

[spud]

Here is a direct link to the download.

https://github.com/ollyau/FSActiveFires/releases

Once you get the program then follow Dieter's instructions.

 

[Dieter]

You can also download latest "Active Fire Datas" as KML file to get the hotspots displayed in Google Earth.

(this is easier than the inconvenient data search described in my first posting)

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/data/near-real-time-data/firms/active-fire-data#tab-content-2

Dieter