[Off-topic] Engine Plume and Coloration Thread - Vector Thrust

This could potentially become a feature suggestion, but first I want to discuss this.

Primarily, we know that afterburning engines are a thing. A great deal of combat aircraft have this. What it doesn't seem like we know (From what I've read) is why the engine plume differs between aircraft.

Take these images, for example:

Mostly yellow and orange.

Orange core with a blue edge.

This seems to repeat the pattern of the other two images, but with the same aircraft. The different colors then make sense if the 229 is more powerful than the 220.

Then suddenly, pure blue. It's said that other Su-30 and later Su-27 variants do this as well.

The Tu-22M has a very blue plume for whatever reason.

In other forums that are centered on aviation, it seems like we're simply unable to explain how engine plumes come out in different colors, and how it appears that some Russian aircraft exclusively are able to produce plumes as blue as they are.

Various reasons people have tried to say are simply a matter of engine operation, fuel type, temperature, and time of day. However, all replies seem to be an attempt at debunking these comments with another one of these reasons.

If someone does know and is able to explain this, that would be awesome, though at this point I'd probably have better luck asking an aeronautics engineer upfront.

It might have something to do with the camera (especially those F-15 photos where each one has a different plume color) and the specific fuel compound. Car headlights sometimes appear to be funny colors too, depending on what kind of gas is inside. I hope ingame the plumes are yellow or blue, the purple ones in Ace Combat were pretty ugly.

Edited by: bornloser

It's all to do with time, angle, fuel mixture etc. and most importantly the type of camera been used.