DMSmokeEffects beta 4.3b (smoke grenade viewblock only) by DM.

4.3a improvements
Extended Init compatible. (Extended Init addon v1.1 required, and included, with this release. If you already have Extended Init eventhandler addons you can delete them from the @DMSmokeEffects Addons folder.)
Smoke grenades have AI viewblock functionality. The viewbock reacts to wind direction & strength.
A new player Action, Wind info, is added. This is useful for smoke grenade usage, as well as general realism & ballistics addons. On use it will give you the strength & direction of the wind at the time you requested it.
Frag grenades tweaked slightly to be lighter in colour.
Full viewblock functionality is enabled for this "b" release on most DMSmokeEffects smoke effects. During heavy battles this can drag the FPS right down, but I release this version to get general feedback and results.

4.2 improvements:
New, more varied look to entire effect.
New pale animated smoke texture for more realistic battlefield look.
MaddMatt's settings for fuel explosion effect.
Default vehicle smoke altered substantially.
Smoke grenade improvements.
Most smoke effects now have lighting effects too for better night battles.
Smoke effects are now relative to world axis rather than vehicle axis. (Before, a tank on it's side would eject smoke to the side. Or even straight down if it was upside-down.)

4.1 improvements:
A new animated fuel fire particle.
Tank classes start their smoke effect a lot sooner.
All animated particles are now hi-res and no longer blurry.
Microdebris sounds temporarily disabled until a problem can be fixed.

4.0 improvements:
Now a "magic" addon, works just by having the addon. No in mission trigger is needed anymore and the install & use instructions below have been amended to reflect this.
New effects including fuel-fire effects, helicopters planes fuel trucks all burn with this effect. Especially effective at night :)
More config tweaks including (but not limited to) tank firing dust, helicopter damage smoke.
Streamlined sripting, now the effects are split into their own files instead of being one huge effects file. Better for editing & keeping track of.
Half of all tank class vehicles have the same effect applied (huge plumes of dark smoke) but half have a different behavior. Now half the tanks will eject lighter coloured but heavier smoke, more in keeping with some footage I have seen, and also a few people requested drifting smoke.
More particle images for people to use in their own addons if they so please. Just credit me etc :)

3.3 improvements:
All files are placed into one single PBO file now. PLEASE DELETE ALL THE OLD @DM FILES.
Added micro-debris sound for grenades. Each grenade is likely, but not necessarily definately, to produce small debris sound effects.
Added building collapse micro-debris sounds. A wall of dust will be accompanied by a wall of crunching, tinkling sounds as dust debris strikes all surfaces.
Lost the fuel station smoke effect, as it was an ugly basic test that was accidentally left in the last release. Also it was interfereing with MapFact's Chinhook helicopters. Mapfact Chinhooks do not call the helicopter smoke scripts for some reason.

3.2 improvements:
New texture for building collapse particles, tweaked settings.

*3.1 improvements:
Better grenade effects
Better smoke effects

This beta includes:

DMSmokeEffects, thick billowing smoke for helicopters & fuel trucks, and thick black smoke for tanks etc. After about a twenty minutes the smoke changes to smoldering smoke. After another twenty minutes the smoldering smoke peters out. If it rains, the smoldering smoke will steadily get lighter in colour and will extinguish quicker, depending on how fast it's raining. After about three-quarters of an hour the average battlefield will be clear of smoke generally, but there's randomness coded in.

Improved building collapse effects. Basically just made the existing effect 10x bigger and last 10 times longer. Also made the dust grey, heavier, and more difficult to see through for longer.

Grenade effects. I'm really happy with this one, it looks almost exactly the same as footage I reseached on grenades. A sudden "poofing" of instantaneous dark smoke, which lightens and drifts & settles over 10 or so seconds.

I have NO idea how this behaves in MP, but there should at least be no ill effects. My best guess is that if you host you will see all effects, but if you join you will only see config effects (i.e. not the smoke effects). If you see different behavior let me know :)


Instructions:
1. Extract content to someplace.
2. Put the @DMSmokeEffects folder in your ArmA folder
3. Make a shortcut to your ArmA game with the switch -mod=@DMSmokeEffects or add the @DMSmokeEffects to your list of mods already there.
4. Place the sample mission into your ArmA/MPMissions folder.
5. Ingame, select New MP game, and select the mission "Smoke Effects Beta 4".

Instructions for the totally clueless :) (as requested)
1. First, make sure you copied the @DMSmokeEffects folder into your ArmA game folder.

2. right click on your desktop ArmA shortcut, copy it and paste the copy right back in the same place. You now have TWO desktop shortcuts, one of which we will now modify to use the DMSmokeEffects mod, the other will remain just ArmA.

3. Right click one of the shortcuts, and choose Properties from the list.
In the Target textbox field you will see the command that is executed by this shortcut, it will read something like:
"D:\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA\arma.exe"

You will now add
-mod=@DMSmokeEffects
to the end of this, so in the example above the entire line in the textbox will read:
"D:\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA\arma.exe" -mod=@DMSmokeEffects

4. Now you can OK the Properties box and the shortcut will now run DMSmokeEffects. You can rename the shortcut to remind you of what mod it runs, I have several shortcuts that run various different mods.



Leave feedback :)

All the new custom textures may be used for your own projects, just credit me :) they're fairly nice :) 

Oddities:
Vehicles that land or otherwise end up on their side or upside down eject smoke along their own Z-axis. (fixed mostly as of 4.2)
Very, very occasionally all the smoke in the game will suddenly disappear, and will start again. It's only happened to me twice in all the tests I did (hundreds) so I don't know if it's an ArmA bug or too much data :)
A smoking tank on a bridge will have the smoke effects origin underneath the bridge.
Vehicles moved after destruction will have the smoke effect still apparent at it's old location.

Kindest regards

DM (DMarkwick)