What if the storm were no longer just a visual effect?
Lightning tears across the sky and thunder shakes the countryside—but this time, something else is happening. This mod goes beyond lights and sounds: the storm actively interferes with the gameplay, forcing you to adapt.
GIANTS once rejected one of my ideas simply because I dared to create something unusual. This time, I’m not going to explain myself.
I’ll let the storm answer for me.
Read readme from file…
I created this mod for my own enjoyment and according to my personal vision. I aim to recreate realistic situations.
Regular updates are planned, as I still have plenty of ideas. Let’s push the limits of the GIANTS Engine…
Overview
BXR Lightning Shock adds a map-independent, weather-driven lightning and power outage system to Farming Simulator 25. Lightning selects targets and creates branching channels, impact particles, cloud and environmental illumination, thunder, and local power outages.
Weather And Automatic Lightning
Active from early March through the end of October during rain, storms and hail.
During active precipitation, distant events normally occur every 55–65 seconds.
80% of distant lightning is generated inside the player’s field of view.
Every rolling 10-minute storm window includes at least 2–3 separated close
impacts within 100 metres of the player.
Distant strikes have a higher probability of creating a separately impacting
wandering channel.
Precipitation weather settings use denser, more continuous cloud cover.
Lightning And Cloud Effects
The main channel begins at an approximate cloud height of 185 metres and follows
an irregular, unpredictable path with frequent direction changes.
Main and wandering channels taper towards the ground. Side branches follow their
parent direction with a small outward angle and may grow additional child branches.
Channel formation is progressive. The light envelope, cloud flash and visible
channel use the same timing.
Six large upper cloud flashes remain inside the cloud layer and use GIANTS cloud
textures.
A separate irregular, thick disc-shaped cloud using GIANTS textures appears at
the lightning start point. It selects from three forms and variable sizes, while
its centre remains locked to the main channel start.
The exit cloud fades smoothly at its edges and emits a bluish internal flash in
sync with the lightning.
Close environmental illumination is restrained, while distant lightning
illuminates a wider area.
Thunder
The mod uses 10 renamed and normalized original mono OGG samples and 10 normalized
muffled counterparts.
Thunder uses reliable non-positional 2D sample playback instead of 3D audio sources.
Normal samples play outdoors, in external camera view and in an open cab.
Muffled samples play in a closed cab and in detected enclosed houses, garages,
workshops or other roofed spaces bounded by walls.
Indoor detection checks for a roof and enclosing walls in multiple directions.
Distant thunder arrives later and quieter, but the waiting time is shortened to
half of the real-world sound travel time.
Every impact owns a separate thunder queue. Sounds may overlap; double impacts
retain a 90–220 ms separation.
Target Selection
The system prefers tall and electrically plausible targets: streetlights, power
poles, water towers, silos, storage and production buildings, factories and
taller structures.
Trees, vehicles and ground points are fallback targets.
Previous impact locations are tracked and repeated hits are avoided when possible.
The active player vehicle has a lower strike chance, while AI-driven vehicles use
a separate strike probability.
Vehicles And AI
When a vehicle is struck, the complete consist is handled together.
The mod preserves the current GIANTS AI, Courseplay or AutoDrive controller where
possible and attempts to resume the same controller after the outage.
Engine, lights and safely restorable work return with delays. Uncertain work states
are never started automatically.
Power Outages
An impact within 100 metres of the player creates a 200-metre local outage.
A distant impact creates a 150-metre local outage around its own impact point.
Affected lights, gates, barriers, railway crossings, LED and information panels,
productions, buying stations and selling stations may stop operating.
Affected buying or selling cannot start and an active transaction is interrupted.
Lights and equipment may return at different times with a flashing recovery sequence.
Performance And Compatibility
The mod builds world, placeable and light caches while the map loads, then scans
only the required target area during an impact.
Cache data is stored per map under modSettings/FS25_BXRLightningShock.
The mod is mapindependent and declared as multiplayer-supported in modDesc.
Rainbased vehicle cleaning is provided separately by BXRVehicleCleaning.
V1.1.7.2
Lightning channel generation has been redesigned with less predictable direction changes, progressive tapering and more natural branching.
Cloud backlighting has been added and now follows the complete lightning flash envelope.
Above-cloud and internal cloud flashes are synchronized with the visible lightning channel.
Rain, storms and hail now produce denser, thicker and more continuous cloud cover.
80% of distant lightning is generated inside the player’s field of view, making distant events visible almost every time.
Environmental illumination is distance-dependent: close strikes are more restrained, while distant lightning illuminates a wider area.
Excessive close-range impact brightness has been reduced.
Main and wandering channels now use dedicated channel lights.
Impact, channel and cloud illumination follow a shared flash envelope and timing.
Close and distant strikes use separate targeting and outage rules.
Distant impacts create a 150-metre outage around their impact point; close impacts use a 200-metre outage radius.
Power outages affect lighting, gates, barriers, railway crossings, displays, productions, buying stations and selling stations.
Every impact receives an independent thunder queue, allowing multiple thunder samples to overlap.
Thunder playback now uses non-positional 2D samples.
Normalized original samples play outdoors and in open cabs.
Normalized muffled samples play in closed cabs and detected enclosed spaces.
Distance-based thunder waiting times have been shortened.
Double impacts retain a 90–220 ms thunder separation.
Expanded thunder logging makes problematic audio samples easier to identify.
The mod operates independently of the loaded map.
Per-map world, placeable and light caches reduce runtime scanning and stutter.
