If you play War Thunder top-tier or at least watched a gameplay of it, you noticed that when it goes full afterburner the nozzle goes fully open and then it shrinks when done afterburning, right?

Shorts are from MilitaryTok on YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/yP9F2SHMeLg?si=FB8ZYFFkL-YG_-73

Well, today I am going to you show and teach you how to get this effect in your afterburning aircraft

A. Nozzle Opening

First, in order to get started you obviously need an Jet engine, you should use the "Blasto BFE150" as it is the only Jet engine with a nozzle animation,

I. XML Area

This area requires at least XML knowledge, but if you don't, no worries I'll simplify it

1. Firstly in the starting menu you will see the mods button, click it then you will see two mods within, tap or click overload then Enable

2. Now you're ready to do XML modding, go back to the designer and you should now see a new icon on the bottom part of your screen

3. Highlight the Jet engine and press the new button you saw earlier, now a new window will pop-up...

4. Now if you're new to XML, I highly recommend reading this because there many routes in XML modding, otherwise you can skip this part...

There two parts of the XML Window

1. Category Bar
2. Attributes List

The Category Bar contains different XML categories of attributes list, some in game parts have different categories, so XML categories of a Propeller engines is far different from the XML categories of a Jet Engines

The attributes list contains each specific XML, for example in the attributes list of the Part Category, there is a line called "massScale", and when modified, it essentially multiples the weight of the part by the number that is given

1. Now that is out of the way, Lets get to the XML part, first press the category bar and a drop down list will appear, press on the "InputController" Category

2. Now a new set of attributes list should appear, on the the XML
   "input", copy and paste this code to the right side of the XML "input"...

Throttle>0.90 ? smooth(clamp(Throttle, 0, 0), 2) : smooth(clamp(Throttle, 0, 1), 0.5)

Now I won't break this code down on how it works one by one but essentially when you hit past 90% of the throttle, the nozzle will open, but here's the only caveat, it essentially won't produce any kind thrust whatsoever past 90%, so we'll use a second engine to essentially produce more thrust as the afterburner...

Don't forget to save this XML by pressing the "Check" button on the window

AND HERE IS A SEVERE WARNING!
Always save the craft after editing an XML!

The reason is because if you accidentally pressed the undo button, it will revert ALL the XML modifications you made even if you pressed the redo button, essentially bringing you back to the beginning.

B. Secondary Burner

to do this, you will need the Blasto VTOL as secondary thrust, but to produce this thrust you will need the VTOL nozzle...

Blasto VTOL is essentially the brain of the VTOL nozzle, the VTOL nozzle being the output of producing thrust

And only one Blasto VTOL is needed, so it doesn't matter how many VTOL Nozzles you put since they will all connect to the same Blasto VTOL

I. VTOL Part

1. First put the Blasto VTOL into the designer, your can put it just about anywhere in the plane your making as long as no one can notice it

2. After we hide our blasto VTOL, we can now put our VTOL Nozzles, the number is depending on how many primary engines you have.

So if you have 2 engines needing afterburners, you might as well need two VTOL nozzles to burn.

I recommend putting them inside the middle of the primary engine just in line with the fans

II. XML Part

We'll dive back to XML again, this where the afterburner magic happens, so we'll start with the Blasto VTOL

1. Highlight the Blasto VTOL and press the XML button on the bottom of the screen

2. Press the Category Bar and a drop down will appear, press the "InputController" Category

3. on this category, in the XML "input", copy and paste this code to the right side of XML "Input"...

Throttle>0.90

with this, the Blasto VTOL will only start working when the throttle is 90% and above, filling in the missing thrust

1. Now press on the Category Bar and a drop down will appear, press on the "Engine" Category

2. Within this category, you should see the XML "powerMultiplier" on the right side, you can put any number you want.

But I recommend putting in a number somewhere 1-4, and decimals are allowed like "1.23"

This attribute multiples the amount of thrust it will generate, but at the end of this tutorial, you will have to recalibrate this in order to get the desired amount of thrust it produces.

1. Do you see the plus sign in the attributes list? if you do press on it, now on the left side put this attribute...

throttleResponse

and on the right side put this...

0.5

I couldn't rlly explain it properly for some reason lol, but you will see it in after this tutorial...

1. Press the "Check" button in the window to save the XML, and save the craft

8.Now lets move to the VTOL Nozzle, but first Highlight it then press the cog icon on the right, now press the VTOL button until it says "Disabled", this locks it in place making sure it won't rotate.

1. In the XML window, press the category bar and a drop down will appear, press the "EngineThrustPort" Category

2. Within the attribute list of said category, you should see the XML "exhaustScale"

Now this truly dependant on you, but I suggest a size of about...

18,18,18

This will change the size of the flames its spewing but its all just visual and does not affect thrust whatsoever

Note:
If you have more than one nozzle, return back to step 8 to apply the same thing for the other nozzle(s)

Remember to press the "Check" button when your done... And save the aircraft

and voila, your engine nozzle finally opens when going full afterburner and produces more thrust

but here's a problem when doing this, when going full afterburner, your actually guzzling less fuel which is kind of unrealistic

so to fix this, here's a solution

Solutioning Guzzler

In order to burn alot more fuel when afterburning, you have to use this noisy but definitely fuel draining engine

The Blasto BFE300

Use more than one if you have 2 or more engines

but first let us XML it first,

1. Highlight the Blasto BFE300 then press the XML button on the bottom

2. Lets rescale the engine first so in fits in the engine, find the XML "scale" then on the left side of the XML put this

0.3,0.3,0.3

Now this is pretty dependent to your engine scale, but try experimenting until it fits inside the engine

1. Once your done with the scaling, press the category bar and select the "Engine" category

2. From there, find the XML "powerMultiplier" on the right side of it, put 0

this essentially makes the engine to produce no thrust and only guzzles fuel

1. In the same category, you can find the XML "Input", on the right side of it, put...

throttle>0.90

this essentially only activates the engine throttle at 90% and above

1. You can also set the XML "exhaustScale" to 0,0,0 if you don't want its effects

And your finally done! Great Job!

Now all of the screenshots showed are from a modified version of VeroViper's original aircraft that I published

Here my modified version
Modified Version

And here is the original aircraft from VeroViper's
Original Version