More realistic machine gun tracers?
 

Dear Luthier,

I personally think yhat the machine gun tracers look a little fake, too 'straight and laser-like" if u will.

I've seen those old ww2 gun vamera footage on youtube, and the tracers always look like "twisting" and "turning" worms as they arc toward the target.

Could we expect more realistic looking tracers in the future?

Thanks and i'm loving COD!

This has been discussed a million times.

To make this short - tracers are wobbly on film/video because the gun camera shakes. Tracers in real life look like star wars lasers.

Have you ever shot a machine gun with tracers in real life?
When ever I see these kind of threads I always think, this is what Holywood does to kids. :rolleyes:

if you are trolling dont read the rest.

if you are honest in your question, its been explained over and over again in these boards, that the curly effect is due to camera shake on the plane. you dont see the curly, and oyur eyes dont see like a camera.

in a matter of minutes someone will explain you the details of this, but you are wrong. no curly effect should be seen, the only thing I think is wrong ( withou facts or proof, jsut feeling) is the tracers are too thick.

+1 :)

tracers fly straight in real life
where did anyone think the term "hose 'em down" came into it from?

i agree, so to be honest, tracer are a little bit smaller and less brighter in day light that the one we can see in hurricane...
So, to be honest too, i never shoot with an hurricane so can't be sure :rolleyes:

here is example of evening shooting with tracer it's look like star wars :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKVH-WyTjBM


and this one in day light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldu8P...eature=related

yes, they are supposed to look straight. in cod, they look straight and ugly. Old ones from il2 looked better imo.

i also like those from rise of flight.

Because, you know, if they look like lasers in the videos posted, it's because of the speed at which the camera capture the images.

i agree so it's a game not the real life :)
So!!! it can be improve in the future (i like the ROF tracer too)

First video = a plasmagun
the second video = Han Solo
Lol :)

men in black are near!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz8QsBxcOMw


and the difference , is?

The difference is, speed at which the camera record images, sensibility of the film, time of exposition (given by speed of recording), and the fact the camera is mounted on a moving, vibrating frame.

Lots of factors that have nothing to do with the actual tracers.

Yet, i did shooting when i was in the military, and we fired tracers, and i never thought they were looking like lasers, because they weren't. Cameras can see them as lasers, but our eye doesn't.

As far as i can remember, tracers looked just like tiny color lights flying very fast to the target, it lasted very short time, less than a second.

"Tracers in real life look like star wars lasers."

Once again, I've been AA gunner on what was basically an improved WWII design canon (the Oerlikon54) and I NEVER saw, during day or night, any "lasers", either from the gunner seat or looking at the battery from a certain distance.



@the fanboys : before saying that the tracers look in real life like lasers because "God" or his saints said it, just remember the "atomic" muzzleflashes from IL2, which were also "really real", until they disappeared.

That's strange...i've been a flak gunner on dual 20mm Rheinmetal guns and they looked very similar to CoD, including their transition from "streak" to "dot" as they move away and the angular offset effect diminishes.

The only issue i can find is that the ones in CoD are a bit too thick when they are close to your viewpoint, but if i remember correctly this is due to a limitation in the way they are rendered.

Yes that is how I remember them too! Out of curiousity at which squadron where you serving?

One could argue that the pilot's head inside the cockpit shakes as the planes moves and the guns are fired; so he could see wobbly tracers too, but maybe this effect is small and can be neglected (don't know actually)

I'm fine with the tracers as they are, but i don't like the impact effect on planes, or to be more precise the lack of them. in all the guncamera that i saw, hits where very clearly visible with flashes, followed by dust and debris flying off the aircraft. In Cod i can hardly tell that i'm hitting the enemy plane until an aileron/elevator falls off.

Hmmm that's strange, i get a lot of visual feedback with my effects set to medium in the graphics options :confused:


I assume you mean in Germany, right? Well, i live in Greece and served in the local air force, so it's not very likely that we would have any common memories of places/units :grin:

To answer your question though, i was in an air defence/flak and guards squad which was part of a guided missiles wing that's operating Patriot missiles (i did see a memorial plaque from the Schleswig-Holstein at one point though in one of the missile squads' HQ, maybe from joint missile firing exercises)
Initially it was a bit of a let-down to be honest, since i was expecting to be posted at some kind of operational airfield with jets and what not and hoped to be an armorer or something similar, but overall i liked the kind of stuff i was trained on and did well thanks to having some flight sim background.

I always scored well in the simulation, often better than commissioned/professional personnel, at some point the squad commander even assigned me a training session explaining some of the gun's procedures (how to set the no-fire sector) and how to lead targets to them in advance of some kind of exam they were about to get :-P
That gun is excellent and one of the most reliable pieces of machinery i've ever come across, it worked just fine at -10C and 90% humidity in the winter as well as at 30C and an atmosphere full of dust in the summer.

Well, i'm rambling again, let's go back on topic. ;)

I have effects set to medium too. i can hardly see anything from 200-300 meters.. not the bright flashes of the hits like in il-2 anyway. When i'm VERY close i can see some sort of persistent red/orange flashes that compare on the aircraft skin and then fade away very slowly... don't really know what those are supposed to be. I'ts with the british 303s.

Perhaps i loaded my Hurricane's ammo belts with plasma rounds by mistake ;)

The lingering flame effect also exists in some of the Luftwaffe rounds. According to the manual, they are so called "observer rounds" which burn on the surface but don't cause any real damage, apparently they serve as an indicator of whether you are hitting anything or not.

Ah o.k. I did not know that Germany exported their Rheinmetall Flakcannons to Greece. But thankyou for the answer!

Yeah, I don't know if I'd go that far.. getting hit with something traveling that fast is going to hurt.. like..like.. a bullet :)

Served in Norwegian army, and have fired 9mm, 7,62 NATO and 12,7 HMG rounds and can conform your description. I too find the tracers are a tad light and too long from the clips we have seen so far (I have to get my new rig before playing the game).

The tracers in Cliffs of Dover are the most realistic I have seen in any simulation or game.
However, they do appear too "thick" (at close range) from the photos and vids I've seen.
Make them a little thinner and they will be perfect.

Here is a good film showing tracers. Start watching at 1:20.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFKT_...eature=related

Here is another good one from Germany.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgmDi...eature=related

"Here is a good film..."

A good FILM...

And if your eyes are not video cameras...

I don't understand the problem.
These movies are showing the same thing that my eyes have seen.
That's what makes it a good film.

I have seen many answers to this tracers topics (many have been created) from ppl that has actually fired tracers, and some of them have slight different perception of what they saw, so i imagine that even different eyes - brains percieve tracers in different ways.
So I think the coclusion is that representation of tracers in COD are faithfull enough.

Another interesting conclusion is that ppl should do a little search on the forum before posting about things that have been largely debated in many threads.

I can't agree more. But the smoke trail already look very realistic. Just some more work need to be done on the tracers to make them look a little more unstable and not so laser-like. :) I'm sure there will be mods.

Where did you get the idea that a tracer is "unstable"?

I think he just means that if you were sitting in the pit squeezing the trigger then with the engine vibration plus the vibration of the cannon/MG's at speed pulling G they might look a little less perfect then they do.

I dont know this for a fact because i wasn't there in 1939-1945 to see it first hand but im pretty sure there would have to be some vibration felt by the pilot and this would translate to his eye and thus make the tracers look just a little less then a perfect streight line from start to finish from the pilots point of view that is.

As for the thickness of the tracers im not sure what the exact tracers from that time period looked like because again i wasn't there, but 8 years in the navy watching the GM's do test fires at sea involving tracers and also using up the remaining SEAL ammo for target practice after picking them up from places i can tell you, that as i remember the tracers from even the larger caliber ammo that they used didn't look as thick as the wonder sperm flying from the wings of COD lol had to be said.

NOW........ before the nerd rage kicks in and i get beat to death for having an opinion lol I dont care what they look like until the game is running tops and even then i will probably be so enamered with the damage model and the parts and pieces flying off the bomber formations that i wont really pay any attention for at least a year or so.

I do have to say that I really liked all of the tracer effects in IL2 very much. If those were realistic then I see no problem in sticking with what works even if it is a new sim.

I don't have the game yet, but I assume the cockpit shakes when you fire the guns. Not having been in a WW2 fighter while the guns are fired makes it tough for me to judge how much vibration there should be, but I'd like to think the devs are able to make a pretty good estimation.

yes, that's right... camera mounted on a stable surface or on a surface subject to vibration...

the human eye will see after an image from a moving bright light source - it is inescapable

People claim that film (or video) gives an unrealistic portrayal of how a tracer "looks" in real life...but the human eye will "blur" a fast moving bright object. It will blur the flight path of the object a lot in the dark and less so as the environment brightens.

I HAVE A THOUGHT...maybe someone should make a mod that changes the pilots (the gamers) view of the game to remove the "steady cam" effect we now have...In real life the pilot is getting shook around and bounced and vibrated by the machine guns, and engine...ect. Maybe people would find this view of the game to be "more realistic" then the steady cam we now have... sharp shooters might have an issue with aiming (ect), but things might look "more real" to some people...just a thought.

Anyone have a thought about this????

I'd be interested to hear what a WW2 pilot has to say. Everyone else is just guessing.

When i drove my motocross bike crosscountry me and my bike where shaking and vibrating, yet my vision wasn't!
Thats the way the brain influences and compensates for a disturbed vision.
But all this has been discussed to death at least 10 times.
Leave it at rest, please.

Did any of the British .303 rounds have tracers that emitted smoke like the cannon rounds do from the 109s?

The 109 tracers are very cool and I would very much like something similar for the Spits and Hurricanes..... BTW why are the tracers not showing up for the Spits - If I do a custom load (and IF it works) I can sometimes get tracers in a Spit.

One of the .303 incendiaries (mkIV) should leave a spiral smoke trail.

It depends on how much shaking is going on... Shake your head from side to side whilst trying to read, the more you shake the harder it gets. Vibrations do effect vision.

I once was testing a speaker installation in a night club, a new design of bass bin. When we pushed it we all found that the low frequency vibrations meant that we couldn't focus on anything... We had to turn them down.

this is exactly the danger of a sim where the lunatics, eventually, run the asylum through sheer force of posted ignorance.

This thread should be locked with the final admin post linking to the 500 other threads started on this, that all have the same military/firearm familiar people concluding that the tracers in CoD are actually quite accurate.

No, again, tracers do not look so tall and dense in real life (1).

But again, this could be solved easily by a setting in the game setup, letting the user choose the transparency of the tracer.


(1) best tracers I've seen until now are those of the latest "tracers" mod in IL2.

you need to prove what you say, otherwise it's just another fart in the forum.. :rolleyes:

All my military service on this (1) :

http://www.loutan.net/olivier/archiv.../11/12/dca-54/

Never seen a single laser !


(1) canon built in 1954, but just basically an improved WWII design.

Not exactly the same type, but that was basically what I saw when firing on the Oe54 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOxAA...eature=related

Same experience when looking at Oe35 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml7Ie...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUaS...eature=related

No lasers !

Perhaps some kind of "ray of light" near the tube, but extremely rapide and very transparent, certainly not solid "Star Wars" lasers. And in the distance, tracers looks like some kind of irregular dots.

Some good colour footage and 2 lucky fishermen 4mins in :cool:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uhpo...el_video_title

Would it be safe to consider that radar-guided AA guns don't have the same requirement for visual aiming aid as a manually aimed gun? I mean honestly, tracers are seriously un-tactical considering that they are a very visible give-away to any aircraft looking for action.

What I am saying is that tracers are a means of helping you aim, and if a gun is radar-guided there's not really a need for tracers unless you have to use the gun in "back-up" mode.

Also one can only assume that different manufacturers make different tracers with different burnlengths, colours and strength. So why is this Oerlikon footage "evidence" ?

And isn't this the same Oerlikon 35 millimeter gun you so kindly provided us footage of? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La9pk...800DADC3BB4E03

And then you have the allmighty Bofors (hats off for the swedes, though they are pacifists :p ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h_zgA7-sQg These tracer rounds seem to produce more light than conventional lightbulbs :p

I'm just saying the tracers in IL-2 CoD seem fine. And yes I've unloaded mag upon mag with only tracer rounds and I know what they look like. Night and day.

Chris I served in the Army and shot with both M2 50cal and MG42 (although in 7,62 NATO ammo). We used tracers regularly and the ones in CoD are by far the most realistic I've ever seen in a game. You're posting videos of cannons that are not using tracers or whose ammunition muzzle speed is way too fast.

As that is not enough, there's been an extensive research on the subject, the conclusion is that 1) you're wrong 2) we're right. Have a look at the fantastic video on the Wellington posted on the main page to have an idea of how realistic it all looks.

Now you can either accept this and go back to your closet or put your head in a pan, smack it with a spoon and go NANANANANANANANANANA!!!

...whichever your option, don't forget you're wrong.

I was looking at the 5th photo in your 20mm cannon link.
The tracer looks like a laser to me ;)
Seriously though, we don't know the exposure time of the camera, ambient light conditions, etc.
All in all the Cliffs of Dover tracers (except being a bit "fat") are the best representation I have seen.

Second video: It's clearly visible that when the camera shakes the tracer appears wobbly. When the camera isn't shaking it's a laser. :mrgreen: Most clear video to show this. :)

If I may, since I took part in the few previous threads regarding tracers, I would like to remind you this:
In conclusion, what experienced military have said on this forum is that COD's
tracers are pretty good BUT, they are a bit to bright for daytime, a bit too long and "fat" . They should be more sting-like.
And about COD's tracers being to "steady and equal" ( and I am not talking about the camera squiggle effect), the best thing would be to find in the hundreds of WW2 guncam movies available on the web, just 1 that shows a spit or a Hurri, or any kind of plane with those kind of tracers...;)

Salute !

i also ride motocross and the vibration and shaking of vision only stops when you stand on the pegs or nerf bars. when you sit back down on the seat things can look a bit shaky depending on your motor size compression ETC, and thats with a pretty thick seat pad.

WWII aircraft probably didnt have the best seat padding and multiple machine guns and giant engines...you get the point:)

why does he have to prove it but you dont ???

all i see in this thread is people sharing what knowledge they have on the subject and not really bothering anyone.

plenty of us. my self included have fired plenty of tracer rounds from plenty of different types of weapons fixed and mobile, we didn't all say they looked like crap just a little to wide and perfect looking.

anyway with lots of things to be fixed yet that are way more important whats wrong with talking about things to pass the time while we wait?

i think this video fery much illistrates what were all talking about.

NOT that they should look like squiggly lines through the air, we agree that is a result of the camera shaking but this footage very clearly shows the thickness of the tracers and they are actually pretty skinny not sure what caliber of weapons are being used but this thickness and brightness along with just a bit less perfect profile and they would be perfect.

great video thanks for posting that.

Most of you would have seen this - DBW. The tracers look good when he attacks the train...too much smoke perhaps? I wish the Spit's tracers in Clod looked more like this - thin and smoky.

Also, check out the cockpit view when Karel is crash landing.... head bob looks like clod and the oil on the windscreen looks like my CEM efforts....lol :o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0stVlJXAsbQ

read my lips: BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN DISCUSSED BEFORE.

I hate it when people get in the forum, don't have the decency to use the "Search" feature to see if their point has been discussed BEFORE, then blurt out sentences like "hey you lot, that's wrong, I know what it is in real life, I've seen it in a movie!" :rolleyes:

The problem with the tracers brightness is linked to the whole game brightness: it seems like you're flying over a radioactive field for the green glow!! Once again, have a look at THIS video and see what tracers (and the rest) looks far more realistic when brightness and gamma are adjusted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjZ8kwQr1so

uh and if you guys want to, I can post you quality videos where tracers are as bright as a Xmas tree.. but you know what? Use the SEARCH button and look at them yourself, I'm tired of this endless crap...

Moderators can you PLEASE do something about this?!?!?!

See Luthiers post below.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...488#post171488

I dont mean this to be insulting Sternjaeger but why post in this thread,it is
a forum about ww11 a/c and this kinda posting about tracers will be done over
and over again till were blue in the face as you know.I actually find these kinda threads interesting, im not a yay or nigh about how they look cause i never flew
a ww11 a/c or any a/c for that matter so i have no idea how the looked in RL.

oh simple, because:

1) it is ANNOYING.
2) it is ANNOYING.
3) it gives no fruitful information, but just moves back down more important topics than this senseless whine.
4) uh have I mentioned that it is ANNOYING?

We get repeat topics here all the time. Don't get annoyed, people like discussing things.

And.. calling for the moderators is like calling for mummy.

In fact, nothing is more annoying than a fanboy taking the charge of a self-appointed moderateror.
Also, what happened the past three weeks should have shown, with the deepest clarity the uselessness, of the yes-men team. But these pom-pom guys never learn : they are annoying AND counter-productive, but totally unable to notice it.
It's like some kind of sect.

you're lucky I'm not one, you'd be outta here in no time. As a forum member I have the right to express my opinion, and if you READ what I posted you might actually find the answers to your fears..

We talk on FACTS and EXPERIENCE, whilst you don't follow the forum rules (i.e. not looking for already discussed threads BEFORE posting new ones) and above all you have NO idea of what you're talking about. It must be really sad to be you buddy..

NO, calling for moderators is trying to have SOMEONE to MODERATE threads and closing/moving/blocking unnecessary ones, just like this one.

Cqfd

Everyone has a right to their own oppinion in these forums.
Even people that you or I don't agree with.

On the topic of this thread I think the Wellington movie looks really good as far as the tracers are concerened.
I did notice a couple times that the tracers looked a little "fat" but overall they do look good especially considering it was a daylight attack.
Does anyone know if the "Glimspur" night tracers are available in the sim?

One other thing. Considering that the appearance of tracers are dynamic with many factors in place determining how they should look, I think they overall appearance in the sim, with the Youtube movies being my only reference, look pretty good.

concur, they could do it in the appropriate thread or READ before giving lectures based on nothing, that's all I'm saying.

Facts and experience ? So if like you said you read all those threads about tracers, you would have come to the same conclusions :

Experienced military expressing facts are saying : close to RL, but still to bright, too long and too fat based on what we have been shown and have seen on video of the game play.
In his comments about tracers, Luthier begins his thread by saying that COD's
tracers are perfect, but could be tweaked for color, brightness and size...
So , we all agree that they are perfect but need tweaking :rolleyes:...That is all...
And please... keep cool...;)

Salute !

..I give up..

Im agree, it looks like some poeples here believe only in A or B choices.
I mean , most of the peoples agree that tracers can be described like a laser, but there are a wide range of ways to do so.
My point is that its not a matter of opacity, its a size matter, and i would increase the brightness in the core, and create a slight glow around it.
But i know my words will be losen in a typografic sea....:rolleyes:

also, i think that the tracers disapear too much soon in the distance, in oposite to what we had in il2, were tracers were visibles form far distances before the planes.I would like somthin in the middle.

Ahhhhh, come on ! So soon ? ;)

By the way...It is true though that watching the video with "corrected" gamma
gives a overall much more photorealistic impression. It is kind of in between COD's original "overexposed" and "overdone" WOP...Nice one...

Salute !

lol why so angry at digital words on a screen sir? :)

And correct me if I am wrong but wouldn't the same people (yourself included) be just as angry if some poor chap went and resurrected a very old thread? Im sure they would hear something like this

"OH for *&^%& sake this topic has been dead a long time quit bringing up %^$% that has already been discussed"........ or something to that effect:)

its almost as if you are trying to forbid anyone else who may not have had a chance to comment on old threads the chance to discuss the topics there related to because you have already said your peace...... not very sporting :)

anyway i still don't see anything wrong with everyone having there own opinion about things that they may even know something about.

PS the video you posted with the adjusted gamma looked great.........but...... the tracers still look too fat :)

Cheers

does anyone else think its hilarious that every time he posts in here he personally adds to his number 3 reason for hating this post?

just an observation please don't point your nerd rage at me as only one of our blood pressures will be effected and i assure you it wont be mine sir:)

You seem like such a pleasant person that i wouldn't want you to send your self to an early demise over video game tracers being discussed again:)

What is the big deal... You have made a lot of the other properties of the game selectable between realistic/game... Why not tracers ? Make a lot of the public happy for the people who like the Hollywood-ised style of tracer... And the ones that don't...they are already happy..

So, if I've understood all this discussion well, the "Hollywood tracers" are less big, less gloomy, less fat than the "real-life" laser tracers :!:

First time I see something coming from "Hollywood" in a more sober way than the "reality" :cool:

Dear Bryan,

have you ever heard of the saying "None so blind as those who will not see"?
If it has been discussed over and over again, if the community and developers have reached a conclusion, why then insisting for the sake of it, without even giving a valid reason for your conclusions? It's a matter of tone and netiquette. You can resuscitate a dead thread only if it's worth it, but if you lot actually managed to READ the old thread, you would have seen that hey, they're gonna do something about it! Uh and another thing, the idiotic teenager assumptions a la "hey it's too fat cos I've seen it in a Hollywood movie" should be enough to have you banned out of here. I have grown really intolerant after years of forum use and moderation, but seems like the mother of Trolls is always pregnant..

I hope my reply wasn't too offensive or aggressive..

..I would read my other rather informative posts before attempting any humour at my persona..

no but i have hear the one that goes "none so hungry as those who will not eat" does that count?...another joke that you probably wont find funny either but i had to try :)

since its quite obvious that you didn't read a single post of mine carefully on this topic I wont take any offense what so ever my friend:)

If you were to read them, you would find that I never said i thought they were too fat because i saw it in a Hollywood movie once...... in fact i said i thought they were too fat because i have seen many a tracer from many a different kind of ammunition over my 8 years in the military and that is why I thought they looked too fat to me :)

Now i will concede that I wasn't present in the cockpit of any of these fighters during 1939-1945 and so cannot make a direct comparison but then neither were the developers. :)

any way all I have been trying to say this whole time is that there is still nothing wrong with continuing to discuss a topic even after the verdict has been read. History shows us that many an idea of both great and small importance has been changed years after the fact for just that reason. People who were passionate about it kept talking about it and some things were changed and some were not.

If you don't not think this topic is worth discussing any more well then you are entitled to think that. You are also entitled to express that :) I do not believe that you should be entitled to silence others because you personally are finished speaking about it. And the fact that this thread remains, possibly means that the mods agree. :)

as for my humor at your expense well I cant help but continue to find a direct contrast with your desire to see this thread die, and your inability to not post inside of the thread there by re distributing it to the very top of the threads list...... and there by making it more accessible to those who haven't seen it yet, allowing them to voice their own opinion. I just find this funny :)

But as with most forms of art humor is very subjective and it doesn't surprise me that you did not find it funny:)

oh and I am glad it sounds like you have calmed down a bit in your tone it will only work to lessen the stress on the old ticker :)
cheers

no but i have hear the one that goes none so hungry as those who will not eat...

Well, I've fired thousands of tracers in my life, and I can say from experience that the visual effect in game is not nearly as accurate as it could be.. The tracers from the .303's appear to be far larger in diameter than it should appear. The visual effect of real tracers has them appearing longer up close going very fast then they appear to get smaller and slower (though they are just as fast, its aperspective issue) as they get further away

The in game tracers need a lot of work to resemble real ones.

I've been shooting with browning MG from an aircraft to ground targets. the guns were situated in the nose of an airplane, meaning that I was also flying the airplane. What rarely anybody understands and realizes here is the fact that aperture of an eye absolutely dosn't match the one of the camera. No matter what camera, video or photo. or should I say the other way arround, because there is no camera which could match the eye.

so in ANY camera shot you can see and will se the "laser" tracers, only the length depends on the camera settings (i.e. expo time and/or aperture) and lighting conditions. With naked eye you just see dots traveling towards the target.

I know it's been mentioned before, but i just (finally) tried RoF and there the tracers looks as real as i saw them IRL, by day at least (haven't flown RoF by night yet).

Hi, I have a suggestion. Has anyone here played battlefield bad company 2? Well it's a bloody realistic military fps shooter. After reading this thread, I went back to play battlefield, and noticed how realistic the tracers looked. The COD tracers looks ridiculously large by comparison. I wonder as well, with the crazy vibration of the guns on the mounting, whether the tracers should appear slightly more irregular in their trajectories?

"so in ANY camera shot you can see and will se the "laser" tracers, only the length depends on the camera settings (i.e. expo time and/or aperture) and lighting conditions. With naked eye you just see dots traveling towards the target."

EXACTLY

That's EXACTLY what I saw when firing tracers with a WWII design AA 20mm canon.

Sitting directly behind the barrel, sure.
Throughout my tenure in the Parachute Infantry (and then Mechanized), I was a SAW gunner, a 60 gunner and the 240 before I was a squad leader.
Anyway, the tracers from MY weapon appeared as dots but those from my soldiers on the flank or next to me appeared as streaks and turned into dots as they were further down range.

I think we should have a switch somewhere in the menu to turn them either 'Hollywood Mode' or 'realistic' so it can please every1

I personally think that yeah, they look real towards some vids (from a third person perspective...away from the vibration) that ive seen but they seem highly unrealistic in the game (especially the white Tracers) cos if your firing a weapon, they wont be perfectly straight in your eyes...as you will be vibrating with the weapon and lets face it, a war plane is a big weapon but not only that....it has a beast under the bonnet also!

I think the tracers in the old il2 look good (stock and not necessarily the same colour as old), so if they can the same effect it wil look nice to me...i just cant use them white tracers...too perfect :cool:

S!

This man has it right!

Of course if you are looking down the iron-sight of a firing gun... well imagine looking down the longitude of a the tracer streak, you see a dot. It is only when you catch a tracer moving at an angle to you that you can see the streak.

Study any WW2 aircraft gun footage and you'll see the tracers SMOKE to their target.

If you have played ROF(sorry to bring this up again)they've got this nailed,they're superb,and so very realistic.Surely 1C with all the wealth of expertese that they have can sort this out for us,can't they?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz8QsBxcOMw

some do smoke, some don't it seems

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km1hz...eature=related

SWITZERLAND is not Germany!!!

:-)

McDan out

RAF wise this is incorrect, they had smoke tracers. They smoked to the target but didn't produce a visible light streak. They also had smokless 'fire' tracer.

2 seperate rounds.

Look at this video, RAF procedure during BoB was not to mix ammo types in the same gun, so you see the smoke tracer (at least 3 guns) and the light tracer (1 Gun). Notice that the 'fire' tracer doesn't produce any smoke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC6lQyxzZBA

theres no smoke without fire......

One thing is obvious though...It is clear , watching the guncams, that COD's tracers are way to " fat" , too "even" and too long.Some have also pointed out that they were too "fast" ? compared to what they saw in RL... And this has been the conclusions from "experts real military " in this forum since the first WIP were shown.
COD's tracers may be ballistically accurate, but not visually...

SAlute !

Kalimba I totally agree,the tracrs are far too fat,step one would be too thin these out by half.

sure am glad to see this thread still alive and kicking :)

Yup agreed
we don't need squiggly lines like in old gun cam footage this is obviously from extreme vibration directly on the camera itself and that is not what the pilot would have seen.

But I believe the profile I.E. Thickness of the tracer round is just too big for the calibers used on some of the aircraft. Some of them look better then others :)

this is one of the things i really liked about a lot of the Tracers and round effects in IL2. I think the 50cal was the only one where the sound and the look just never seemed rite to me.

So we're all agreed, halve(ish) the size of the tracer.
Oleg/Ilya? DO IT!!! :grin:

Yeah..That would be a "concensus" now...;)

1- too fat
2- to long
3-to "even" and we do not mean squiggling effect....

Just to add a bit of positive criticism here...:rolleyes:
After watching over and over WW2 guncams and more modern ones, there is another caracteristic that seems to appears awkward in COD's tracers...
It is the "speed" of the tracers...To make my observations simple, I would say that COD's tracers should apperar to "slow" down earlier in the process with distance and keep on being visible as a " floating " dot for a bit longer...This is a caracteristic I have observed in lots of video exemple.
Now, I assume all those mods could be done by mods experts with the SDK release.
But if Luthier wants to give it a shot when major issues are resolved, why not !??

Salute !

Also note that the smoke does not extend that far out from the aircraft like the normal tracer does...

I don't think that they are too long but too fat. Again, I don't have Cliffs of Dover yet so I really don't know. Some tracers at night are very bright and do have an apparent "fatness" to them due to the extreme light overexposing in the eye. The tracers I saw in the Wellington movie looked good for being in the daytime.

you can post as many movies of tracers as you want, but you will not prove anything, just that some people don't have even basic knowledge of photography....