The intention was to transit to the credit/title and then a low orbit planet shot with some form of fleet scene. I felt it was a bit too close to the FS2 intro in that regard, though.
(albeit the actual intro cutscene is a lot like the FS1 intro in its current concept, and intentionally so)
EDIT; the fire was done using the BlurLib fire effects. They're available free from somewhere or other, but I don't have a link. The smoke was off a tutorial; it's very easy to do far better smoke, but it uses a particle spray and thus slows down rendering. I think this one took 1-2 minutes a frame, over 1000 frames. Which was a bit of a pain (that's the reason why the landscape is plain; otherwise it'd be dotted with rocks and desert plant life, as well as other ancillery debris & fire sources).
