"If they manage to create a muzzle flash that is random and has a fair amount of alpha channel in it they're gonna nail it."

Yes, that's right, this will be a good solution, but again, it depends on so many factors, that a single rule will be hard to find.

But remember one thing, weapons engineers are not retards, they would not conceive for instance a nose gun with a heavy muzzleflash which would empeach the pilot to see anything when firing, it's simply not logical.

Kinda hard to avoid that in nightfighters isn't it? I for one can see how this config would blind a pilot if he was looking straight at it, and i imagine you'd get blinded by the muzzleflashes from wingmounted weapons as well in the dark

Bf109, Fw190, P-39, P-63, Me262, and many more had big guns mounted in the nose of the aircraft :P

During my time serving in the army i fired a 25mm Oerlikon,a 7,62 machinegun and stood next to it on the firing range while it was firing exploding shells as well as armoured piercing and saw .50 caliber machineguns firing all this at several weather conditions,but as far as i can remember i never saw muzzle flashes.........:?

Even the puny MP5 and not to mention my G3A3 had muzzleflash so long as there was no direct sunlight near me:???:... I distinctly remember one training exercise where my platoon were doing some basic fire-drills in the woods, and when we were in the shade, we saw both our own and eachothers muzzleflashes eventhough we were firing single shots and had flash-hiders on our G3's

As stated in this thread somewhere you were most likely firing blanks.........?


I guess much depends on the weather conditions and time of day..........

http://www.dutchdefencepress.com/wp-...040417-105.jpg

weather and time of day is probably a big factor, i just remember that episode because it surprised me how visible the flashes were despite it only being 4-5 in the afternoon :)

no, this was a live-fire exercise...i think it was our first squad based live-fire drill actually

this picture looks to be quite abit darker than what i remember from the exercise, but it shows what i mean :)

Also much depends on the actual phase of the moon.

"Kinda hard to avoid that in nightfighters isn't it?"

We were not talking here about muzzleflash by night firing.

LOL :mrgreen:

the choice of powder is very important. Nowadays modern armies tend to use smokeless powder and in general using loadings that would avoid flames, which can still occur in cases like long bursts, when partially combusted powder gets pushed out of the barrel and ignites as the next round comes out. Sometimes light conditions, moisture in the air, the moon phase as wisely quoted by our esteemed colleague GnigruH (LOL!) and other amenities can affect the visibility of the flame.. rest assured that there's a flame coming out of there anyway, if you dont believe me put your hand close to a muzzle of a rifle when is firing and get ready to smell burnt chicken ;)