Engine Flames

A rocket engine's exhaust as burning gas: a blinding white-hot jet that leaves the nozzle, widens, cools out through yellow into orange tongues, strikes the ground and runs out over it. Worked out bit by bit and drawn as a true volume, not painted.

For Kerbal Space Program 1.12.x. Needs two other mods, each a separate download, and does not load without both: Keystone (on SpaceDock) and Volumetric Explosions 0.6.4 or later (on SpaceDock), in whose air the flame burns.

What it does

• Bright, as a rocket's flame is: white-hot at the nozzle, then yellow, ending in ragged orange tongues.
• What burns shows: kerosene and solid fuel blinding, hydrogen a pale veil with shock diamonds in it, a nuclear engine a faint red.
• The air shapes it: a narrow column at the pad, wider as the air thins, a clear lobe in a vacuum.
• It moves as fire does: it wavers, trails when the ship turns, and is turned by the pad, the ground or another craft.
• It works beside the Waterfall mod or without it: the flame the game or Waterfall draws for an engine is hidden while this one burns.

Install

Copy the EngineFlames folder from the download into your KSP's GameData, beside Keystone and VolumetricExplosions.

Settings

In the Keystone window (the keystone button on the game's toolbar, or Alt-K; Option-K on a Mac): how bright, how long, how wide, and whether the game's own flames are hidden.

Good to know

• Rocket engines only. Jets, ion engines and engines that burn something it does not know keep the flames they had. Flames for other mods' engines.
• It lights the smoke of Rocket Smoke, which is made to go with it. The light on the ship and the ground is Natural Light's.
• It costs less than the flames it hides, where it was measured.

Works on

Windows 11 (Direct3D 11 and OpenGL) and Mac: tried. How the flame moves since Volumetric Explosions 0.6.4 has been looked at on the Mac only so far. Linux: never run.

More: the long description (everything in full, and what was tried on each system) and the rest of the wiki.

Licence

CC BY 4.0: use it, change it and pass it on as you like, as long as you credit Ishiaki and link back here.