Hi,

I think the current 3D representation of the tracers is not one of the best, it looks like fluorescent lamps, it must be more like a glowing point leaving a TRACE;) because of the speed of motion (motion blur).

A shaking effect will be more than well come in my opinion, it will help the immersion, I belive that those planes did shake a lot on certain condition like firing heavy guns and starting engines.
Something like head shaking effect seeing on Sim Racing games.

A good mod it's always welcome, and you are free to use it or not.

Regards

P.S. I am off to check Arma2 tracers.

Edited: Ups, just notice, the planes do shake when firing and when engine run bad. It was a long time I didn't fire my CofD.
Anyway it could be a more foreshadowed effect, helped with some sounds.

Well that would make sense, I dont know the exact chemicles they used in the bullet (some variant or replacement of gunpower? It certainly would be more "smokey" then modern amunition) but when the bullet leaves the barrel it is of course rotating very fast from the rifling which would create a smoke whirl/spiral (the bullet would be trailing smoke and the particles/air would be disturbed by the bullets rotation causing it to form a spiral). Is that correct?

.303 definitly had rifling in them, .50cals too but no idea about the 20mm cannon as the term "cannon" implies to me that it was not rifled (but I truly dont know in this case).

-Also if you go look at ww2 guncam videos of enemy AA firing at the plane while its coming in for a run, at a distance you will notice the tracers are just very slow moving dots, but as the plane got closer those fireflies get very fast and very dangerous!

Real life rounds fly (shoot) straight though, they don't wobble about... its the camera doing the recording which is shaking (more like vibrating).
The kind of thing you're talking about would be like driving over deep corrugations on a dirt road

With regards to the 'shaking' effect. I discovered a simple little experiment that might help explain what people are talking about with regard to the human eye 'smoothing' it out.

If you're in a car, look at the car in front of you. Is it bouncing around? Certainly the car you're in is vibrating and shifting with road condition, etc. Maybe the car in front is going over bumps and such, but it's not 'shakey' in how it appears to you.

Now look at the car behind you in the rear view mirror. Notice anything different? The car viewed through the mirror, no matter how hard you try to focus or whatever will look more 'shakey', like it's vibrating. Both the car in front and the car behind are being subjected to the identical conditions of the road, so why do they appear different? I believe this is because the view that you're getting of that car is 'fixed' (the mirror) instead of the view of the car ahead of you (your eyes) as mentioned by a few people about guncameras being fixed positions. Someone said in this thread that the human eye has great anti-shake software. It's quite true.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is similar to the effect produced by filming the bullets rather than viewing them live.

This is a very easy experiment. I encourage everyone to try it if you are in any way invested in this argument. It's interesting to think about anyway.

In which case (and very well put) maybe one of the camera views should have a "Gun Camera" option for replay so that the vibration, squiggle, wobble effect could be seen, but only during replay if it is enabled in the replay gun-camera?

Just a thought and that way there is a best of both worlds as the option is switch-able?

Cheers, MP

BTW, currently the vote pretty much says that no-one likes the current effect, but as we don't hear anything from the dev's who knows if there was a point in making a poll?

MP

Not really, i do like the current effect even though i want them tweaked. I'll just like it even more if the two tweaks i mentioned are applied, but i don't consider the stock effect an immersion killer because it's the closest to reality i've ever seen.

As such, i consider it the most acceptable effect so far in my time of flight simming (in terms of closeness to reality) and it's the reason i didn't vote (i don't 100% agree with any of the poll's options).

I do agree though that having extra options to please everyone would be best in the long run. Maybe in the future we'll have a toggle in the graphics options, cinematic vs realistic effects and/or a gun camera feature that will simulate the camera induced wobble effect and play back in black and white at 1/4 - 1/2 speed like it used to be in the real ones.

Sorry about all the effort everyone is putting into splitting the hairs of perception but we are not looking at the sim in a holodeck.

We're looking at it on a flat screen. In other words we ARE seeing a camera representation of the world along with sun flare effects, somewhat less than realistic land, plane, sky, etc. textures and models, all by necessity.

All these things are, by necessity, interpreted for representation on a screen under the limitations of performance and technology. Is there room for improvement? Yeah, for sure, and I'll help carry the flag but even though we want realism - even the most hardcore amongst us draws the line somewhere because ultimately it has to be enjoyable.

Since we can't have perfect physics modeling of a bullet with all of it's individual physical properties and characteristics anyway, why not get it as close as feasible and elaborate on the effects just a bit?

Screenshot or Vid?

To get an idea of what were dealing with just take a look at a .303, .50 and a 20mm aviation type round, look at the base of the projectile and you will see the area available to setup the tracing material. Its pretty small in diameter. So that will give you a rough approximation of how 'thick' the tracing should be in game.

As for the 20mm cannon ammo, yes the barrels were rifled. Oh and projectiles do not fly in a straight line the definitely follow a curved flight path affected by ballistics and gravity. Bullet design, along with muzzle velocity also affect how flat the barrel will shoot; but there is always an arc that intersects the line of sight twice.

The military folks and hobbyists that have fired a variety of tracing ammo through various automatic weapons will know what we are talking about here.

The spiral somke trails come off of the ammo because that's how they were designed. As you said, all modern bullets spin due to rifling.

The british .303 'smoke' tracer/incendiary had a small hole in the side of the round (not the back) the smoke comes out of this weep hole and creates large (relativley) spirals. It had no visible light. I don't know if German smoke tracer was the same.

The only other comment on tracer (I've done it to death over on SimHQ) is that they should be relative to the viewer not the object being viewed.

In Game they behave like little comets with a physical tail, when in fact they are little dots that leave a trail inside your eye. This means that they do not always appear parallel to the line of flight and are always relative to the movement of the viewer. The light trails in CoD are always parallel to the line of flight.

The other issues are frame rate side effects.