Black smoke

[greywulf58]

I have just recently purchased the base game and the NATO module. Today I learned that no more work is going to be done on the series. However, I wanted to ask a question concerning the game. In some scenarios, black smoke appears out of nowhere. This happens even if I haven't popped smoke or called in an artillery smoke mission and no enemy units have been sighted. This black smoke does not appear to interfere with LOS issues. Is this a feature I don't know about or does this sound like a graphics card issue? At the moment I am using a computer that I am slowly upgrading but haven't gotten around to upgrading the video card. It is a RADEON 9200 with 64Mb of VRAM. Just thought you might want to know about this.

[black_prince]

I think the black smoke is supposed to represent vegitation fires.

[Sergei]

Black smoke blocks IR sensors in addition to normal vision. It is typically used by the BMP's long range smoke mortars - so seeing black smoke is usually a sign that there is Syrian mechanized infantry nearby. Note that unlike most vehicles, the BMP smoke launchers fire the smoke shells far in front of them, so it's hard to pinpoint its location just from the smoke.

[greywulf58]

I see. Well, I used to be up on all the new fangled weapon systems but that was way back in the early 1990s. Guess I need to do some research on current weapon systems. Some of the new Russian equipment looks impressive. Thanks for clearing up the black smoke question (pun intended). Chris.

[Ranger33]

I had no clue that's what the black smoke was. It always just seemed to appear randomly in larger battles, so I too thought it indicated fires or something. I knew there was IR blocking smoke, but didn't know that it actually looks different from regular smoke.