To vent or not to vent ...

One of the exciting part of working on an Orbiter's add-on is the search for data and images about the vessel you are making. If I told you that the amount of info available on the Internet for a Soviet rocket developed in the heyday of the Cold War is pretty slim, I'm sure you won't be surpised at all ... But even so, a fair amount of info can be gathered from a few web sites, such as the excellent Mark Wade's Encyclopedia Astronautica. I'll said that it is enough to make a N1 simulation relatively close to the real thing, altought what's more of an issue is that there isn't a lof of images of the whole N1-L3 project. This make some of the little details a bit harder to figure, such as: Where the N1 stages venting before liftoff? I'm guessing that they should, as each of the stages were using a liquid propellant similar to the Saturn V, which was venting quiet a lot before and during liftoff and flight as the following images shows:

Now, if we look at some of the available images of the N1 liftoff from Baikonur it's hard to tell if the same kind of venting was happening:

The low quality of these images and the distance between the photograph and the rocket doesn't help, but even so ... I can't really see much venting happening ... In fact, if we look at a modern day launch of a Soyuz, we can't see as much venting on it as the old Saturn:

A close look to the picture shows some sort of steam flowing down the boosters. The question is can we assume that such venting was happening on the N1 ...