Radiator heat haze script?

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

I follow with interest and sometimes participate in any discussion involving operations and realism of US railroads and rolling stock.

The recent exhaust stack fire/flames thread made me wonder wether it is possible to create one of those emitters producing a heat haze effect coming out of the radiator fans.
Actual distortion of the air is probably impossible, instead a very light but wide "cloud" of "smoke" might provide us with an optical illusion.

Since the US Diesel engines don't produce clouds of "healthy" black smoke anymore after the TS12 update but a sickly yellow/purple translucent something instead, perhaps this (alpha effect?) can be used to produce a fake radiator heat haze?

Any thoughts on this by our resident .bin hackers?

[Kali]

I did think about this once; I thought maybe doing emitter textures with faint concentric circles would work, so the interference would produce a wavy sort of contrast. It wouldn't actually distort anything like a real haze would, but it might fool the eyes.

Might be awful also, mind you.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

That is actually a great idea: interfering concentric circles. If the effect is so light it is almost imperceptable, any discoloration probably doesn't matter.