Thanks fael097, those pics illustrate almost all of the afterburner problems really well. The only additional one is the false landing light that comes on at afterburner stage 2 (if anyone wants to see it, sit on the runway at night with your lights off and run the throttle up to afterburner stage 2, and watch the runway suddenly light up with a false landing light).
I've attached a picture to show you how I have gone some way to address a few of the problems. But sadly I still can't get rid of the "false lights" at stages 2/3, and the "fuel dump" contrail at stage 1.
I have made a partial improvement to the afterburner disc by changing it's texture. This disc itself actually has two hidden purposes by being mounted too far aft - 1) because it is partially transparent it is actually used to create the effect of lighting up the plenum chamber more brightly as the burners are increased, and 2) it is needed to hide the front ends of the hot plasma exhaust textures which look hideous if you blank the disc texture out. So I've left the disc textures in place but edited them to have less structure and look more just like a "hot exhaust" rather than an afterburner ring.
I managed to move the burner ring animation forward by editing the three "fx_afterburnerfire.fx" files.
I have edited the hot plasma exhaust textures so that the front end of the textures don't extend outside the afterburners themselves (which they did at a couple of stages).
All the files are in the attached ZIP. The 3 "AfterBurnerFire" files should go in the main "Effects" folder. The 2 DDS files should go in the F18's own "Texture" folder. (REMEMBER to make copies of your original files before you replace them)
By the way, fael097, try out a utility called DXTBmp to help export those DDS and BMP texture files to your preferred graphics editor. I hope this helps you.
I hope these small changes make the F18 burners a little more realistic and are to your liking, people. One day maybe someone will find a way to edit out these horrible lights and fuel contrails, and allow us to complete the fixes. Until then - Happy Flying.
PLEASE NOTE - THIS FIX HAS BEEN SUPERCEDED BY VERSION 2, WHICH IS POSTED FURTHER DOWN THIS THREAD. VERSION 2 SINCE IS SIGNIFICANTLY SUPERIOR AT ELIMINATING THE NAV LIGHTS IN THE TAILPIPES. - Voodoo
[attachment deleted by admin]