We have placed hundreds of cabins and lodges in the Alaska area. Many of the objects we use do not have a smoke effect (smoke coming from the chimney). So we found a way to make that happen. We take a small cabin that DOES have smoke, miniaturize it and place it (using IS3) into the chimney of the object without smoke. The result is a smoking chimney.
When we moved onward to V4 and V4.1, we noticed a problem with this. The smoke effect seems to detach from the cabin. The little cabin to stays where it was positioned, but the smoke effect jumps away from the miniaturized cabin as you move away from it. At about 50 "virtual" feet away, it is ok, continue slewing back and suddenly the smoke from the little cabin separates and jumps away from it.
We also discovered that if you put that smoking cabin, (the object we were miniaturizing) at its normal size, into the scenery and back away from it, the smoke never detaches, the cabin remains stable and positioned ... it works perfectly at its normal size.
Bottom line for developers, be careful if you are miniaturizing an object to position an effect, you might encounter this problem. For a fix, we have created our own "smoke object" (a tiny ball, with smoke emitting from it) that we now place in the chimneys, this object doesn't move with distance, it stays put. Also the Snow Dogs Tour Stove is an object that can be used. You oversize it and place it so its stack is centered on the chimney of the object, then reduce the size until the smoke is at the chimney exit. This object's smoke effect does not "move around" if miniaturized. So we have work-arounds for the problem. (The real problem is now going in and manually replacing all of those misplaced objects ... about 800 of them for RTMM ... but that's what keeps us retired guys busy!). Again this isn't a complaint, just a heads up for anyone using this technique.
One other point ... this is NOT related to the movement of an object with higher altitudes. We are seeing this at sea level, at higher altitudes it happens, but exactly the same as at sea level.
Here is a picture of the problem. If you slew closer to this by about a "virtual 3 feet" the cabin object jumps back to the center of the chimney. If you look closely, you'll see the miniaturized cabin right beside the chimney pipe of the big cabin ... and notice how the smoke has now "detached."
