What a tracer should look like (before spazzing just look).
 

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...3338237/1.html

This is what a tracer should look like imo (I have seen them once before in RL too, as well as with a high speed camera). This is what alot of people were talking about, the current tracers are too thick as they are using geometry to simulate the "glow" instead of actual lighting. The way around this is to keep the core tracer (the bullet/tracer round) and just make it very bright which I think looks better (and more realistic). Like the poster says its not perfect, but I think they should move in that general direction once more important things are fixed.

Note: Only other thing is that while looking at a tracer from a 90 degree angle while it is moving (from the side) if you are close it is blurred but at any distance (a few hundred meters) it is a dot btw (we already talked about this but never about the visual from a normal viewing distance of an incoming plane).
I never really argued in these threads much because there were so many people saying so much stuff everything got lost in translation. But also wanted to say for the record that 1. fat tracers on camera are that way because of resolution in many cases. 2. A camera viewing a tracer at a distance sees more or less what the eye sees. If you want to see what your eye sees at a close distance then you need a highspeed camera which frame/capture rate is similar to a human eye (of course mechanically it is not, just talking about the rate of information the brain receives from your eye). The faster the camera, the more the tracers look like dots instead of bars aswell.

This is my initial comments about those new tracers...

Its a start...We will have to see those in action...I was watching one of the (hundreds!) of COD's video in slow motion, and I noticed that the last fired tracer " appears" almost at the same place as it predecessor....And all tracers being identical in length and brigtness, it gives this strange and unnatural flickering effect we see. So instead of being able to follow one tracer until it fades away, it looks like it has been "replaced"....Also, the effect of " slowing speed with distance" is not well implemented yet....
I beleive IMHO, that when those issues are fixed, it will be very good RL representation...Until then, this is a step in the right direction....

Salute !

I don't care what experts say. The tracers should have a squiggle like on Tv. Why? Because you are pressing a button that vibrates the crap out of your body , the aircraft is vibrating , the perspex would be vibrating.

It just makes sense.

*Epic facepalm*

learn-resistant is the right expression, i believe.

Except that it doesnt happen that way, eyes are not cameras they have better anti shake sofware ;)

For the poll, as long as there is no official version its a strict no go for me.
No inofficial mods on my rig!

I do love how the experts opinion (those who have seen tracers in combat) are disregarded for the internet experts opinion who's combat experience is fighting with their mother because their toasted cheese is burnt on one side.

there are some good points here. Human eyes can indeed deal with a good amount of shaking, the tracers (i assume) would not squiggle like we see on gun camera film. However the current model is so perfect it looks like lasers from an FPS or something. The vibrations, although they wouldn't affect your vision of the tracer, would affect its trajectory. There should be some randomisation there. Also, they should lose speed and be affected by gravity which would be clearly visible. Anyone remember the trace effect from CFS3? that was pretty much spot on I think. shorter tracers - faint smoke trail - more trajectory randomisation and gravity effect.

I think they should be more similar to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtU-Q_ClkwY

anyway, too much faultless lasergun-looking 4 me. i don't know how they appears in RL, all I know is what I see in vids and films and the well discussed technical implication of filming (what u see is what a camera 'electronically' sees)
Cheers

Well looking at those tracer in the video above it would be good to know what shutter speed was being used as 1/2 second shutter speed would give a tracer about 40-yards long per round, but a shutter speed of 10000th of a second would give a tracer length of about 10-inches. Sadly unless you see tracer first-hand there is no-way that a video can represent the length

HOWEVER... it can represent the thickness and looking at the above they all seem pretty thin and like the new version and not that great big thick slab of light-sabre that currently appears!

So I would certainly load this mod and ask for it to be made official.

MP

Hmmm, so funny. If one mentions the propeller disk everyone jumps you and tells, that in real life the propellers are invisible and what we see on telly is caused by framerates - okay, I get it.
But when talking 'bout tracers, suddenly movie effects are ok???
Tracers doesnt look like they do in game - it is again framerate that causes long laser effects...
Again, and now I will seek cover, the tracers in Il-2 wings of prey, they seems to have got it almost right - so why can't it be in this game???

I'm well aware about the lenght of tracer is determinated by frame rate and shutter-speed and other factors. I accept all is said about in the past, is technically correct and convincing. i'm aware the video I posted has a relative valor for this discussion cause the gatling is not comparable with spitfire armament etc. If u assure me the ingame (modded or non modded) tracer effect are 100% lifelike, however I'dont like them, it give me the impression of a banal visual phenomenon even if full real. I'd like some cinema fx even if not full realistic. I find nothing wrong in 'warming up' the game ambience with some (well calibrated) effects.
Just my thought ;)
Cheers

Completely and utterly indifferent.


Would be cool with more effects from fire hitting targets/ground targets etc. though.

Is your vision blurry when driving down the highway in an older car or a truck? Because there's all sorts of vibration in that one too ;)

The amount of tissue in your body and the reflex motions of your eyeballs can dampen these vibrations out to the point that they are non-perceivable until the vibration gets really severe.


As for the topic at hand, i agree with Heliocon that making them slightly thinner and using lighting instead of geometry to give the impression of glow would make them just right, but i disagree that viewing them 90 degrees off to their line of travel would give off dots (unless one was very far away). At least that's my perception from personally firing 20mm rheinmetal AA guns while i was serving my conscription term in the local air force, the whole gun was shaking when i was watching others fire but when i was firing myself i was on the gun and didn't feel a thing, tracers didn't squiggle at all, etc. All i would see is thin lines of light that turned into small dots as they got about a kilometer or so away from me. I could estimate range from knowing the shell's maximum flight time (it has a self destruct fuse) and the amount of time it flew before it turned into a dot, so it was easy to make a rough calculation, eg "it turns into a dot 1/3rd of the way before it explodes, i know it explodes at 2km, so it's about 600-700 meters".

As for extra effects, there are ricochets modeled in CoD. Best way to see it is to have a steady firing platform with a battery of rapid firing guns: just crash land a 110 and let it rest with its nose low, then start firing those mg17s and the rounds will start impacting a few hundred yards off your nose, you can easily see the ricochets.

what? It's common knowledge that when the ground you are standing on vibrates your eyeballs vibrate as well, making everything blurry!
Also the propeller should look like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxdLg50il20

it's just common sense! :grin:




{that's sarcasm btw}

Weres darth vader:confused:
They look far to long, and far to neat and tidy

Sorry. Even the when human body is shaking or vibrating our eyes are "cushioned" and have the ability to see things clearly, unlike a camera that is hard mounted to the plane.
If you fire some machine guns for yourself, you will see that this is true.

You never experienced life on board of a slow running, 2stroke 40MW diesel engine driven vessel I guess? But vibrations can render you vision blurry to even hurting if you even try to focus something at certain revolutions and certain points in your cabin. ;)

But I don´t think wing mounted cannons or guns can induce such vibrations into the pilots seat.

I don´t mind the look of tracers, in my limited playing time (maybe 4hours of abt. 150 hrs in FMB logged via steam) I now don´t use tracers anymore. But I would like the option to switch off guns sounds, because in all the literature I read, it was mostly mentioned that the pilot could not hear the guns being fired, only notices the shaking and nose dropping of the plane, when he pressed the trigger. But that`s another story...

Good point MP.
I did see somewhere on these forums (from Oleg) about the shutter speed of the average human eye. I cannot remember exactly the duration. 1/60th of a second or something like that. If this is true, how many of us have rigs that can display ClOD at this speed? If our rigs cannot keep up with the shutter speed of the human eye then how can we expect to get "realistic" tracer effects?
On to the thickness. The thickness of a tracer also depends on the amount of ambient light. Of course at night, tracers are much more defined and have a greater apparent thickness.
On the other hand I have been in places that were so bright, from the sun reflecting off the sand, that tracers (5.56x45) were not even noticeable even with dark sunglasses. The 7.62x39 and 50 cals were more distinguishable. The difference is that the "tracer hole" diameter varies from one type of bullet to another. The bigger the hole that the tracer burns through means a brighter, thicker and more visible tracer.
I am probably not the foremost "expert" on this forum, but the literal millions of tracers I have seen throughout my career of all types and calibers should certainly have my opinion respected.
I still have not had the pleasure of flying around with ClOD so until then I cannot say, aside from Youtube vids, how I feel about the tracers in ClOD.

Probably true but oh my god can you imagine the whining if anything like that was ever implemented, if it ain't how holywood or the media shows it it ain't real.....



Oh and something about tracers...........

That`s why I would ask for the option, but we are getting offtopic, so everybody would be happy. ;)

As you mention the sound I'd like to add a very short part of an anecdote that was told to me by P-51 'Ace' Art Fiedler.

He recalled the first time he fired his guns as it went something like this;

"I got my sights on the target and squeezed the trigger......I nearly jumped out of my skin as the roar of the guns was so loud! It doesn't sound anything like you hear in the movies, you can't here the guns, it's just a load roar and vibration!"

Cheers, MP

I read also read contradicting stories, that is right. I interpret these contradicting stories in a way, that the pilot could sense a structure-borne noise I, but not hear a distinct sound of the guns.

Well it would make sense, when I do formation flying the noise of the other aircraft is barely noticeable because of sound attenuation from my headset, and an aircraft up close is louder than most guns, yes I have the relevant experience.

I will almost always opt for the more "realistic" approach.

However, it's a matter of degree and practicality. It's funny how some will want absolute realism in an effect for one thing while being completely content with some other effect that is less realistic.

At some point we have to realize that we are perceiving the sim through crappy colour LCD monitors (most of us) in 2D representing 3D and some "Hollywood" effects that aren't over-the-top might actually be welcome in some effects.

As for the framerate of the human eye, it is far, far more than 60fps in some circumstances and difficult to quantify anyway since it has little to do with the eye itself and more to do with the way the brain processes the information using a sort of "fuzzy logic".

Anyway, let's try not to get too anal about it - tracers are far down the list right now imho - and go for something that's mostly realistic and partly just "good" looking for the sake of immersion whether it be narrower laser blaster shots or a bit of squiggle even.

Personally, I'd be happier with more immersive sounds (not necessarily super realistic engine samples) but things like those deep low frequency flak bursts like in BoB:WoV for example.

I'll let the armchair experts debate the ultra-realistic aspects.

its the other way around as well sir :) I have seen plenty of different tracers from plenty of different types of ammo up close and personal but it does not stop me from getting blasted for thinking they look too fat and too long. :)

I'm not one of the gun camera/movie style folks but I do think they need to be refined. The new mod that just came out is a step in the rite direction but still needs tweaking.

OK You are kidding which means your other post.,...u know the airsoft one was also a joke.

In which case it WAS funny after all

Seems to me I read all this berfore in SAS & AAS Forum postings for Il-2 Mods.They came up with alot of variations all of which ( to my eye) look better than the death ray tracers in CloD...sadly....

If you want that squiggly gun camera tracer look then they need to cook up a gun camera feature that records as soon as you press fire and records for 3 seconds after you release it. Build it where it looks like it is indeed a camera that is bolted down where it gets all the vibration in the field of view. Blackdog is correct. Your eyeballs are surrounded by soft tissue and that helps to reduce this affect you normally see with all this old footage from WWII.

Speaking of this. How hard would it be to create a menu item that you could enable within CoD that would act as your guncam? Can't be all that hard.

Just add a recording view that is 30 degrees FOV record to gif file.

Does this get anyone else excited??

a tad thinner and just a little less glow? i find these ones pretty convincing (3:42)

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

Can we have some screen shots or vids in game of the tracer mod?

gun camera recording option would be awesome, you could review just your shooting so you could see how you could improve gunnery:grin:

well, seems like those who saw real tracers and those who didn't agree that CODs tracers aren't right...:rolleyes:
So what would be the good compromise here so everyone feels that we get
realistic impression of what would be real tracers as seen by humans in a real plane flying at 250 mph ?....What would be a common ground as reference in that case ? The best thing would be to have something on film or video that would bring unanimous agreement as a basis to work from....

Am I dreaming ?;)

salute !

Eyes do yes. But you have on goggles too. Goggles are never clear.

Stop making so much sense Charv, would ya?

Oh, and I am utterly indifferent and in no way do I want mods in my stock install.

Sorry I might not have been clear with this. Watching from the side 90 degree angle at close range makes the tracer look even longer than from behind. However the farther away you are the shorter the tracer length looks.

(also in general) I am not in the military so I cannot attest to higher calibre weapons like a .50 or 20mm equivalent.
In the end its all just physics though.

@ Heliocon: Yep, your revised explanation is in agreement with my personal experience, if that's worth anything ;)




It's very simple really. Just make them a bit thinner and make the amount of glow dependent on ambient light conditions. I don't know how simple it is to do in coding/graphics design terms, but that's the only thing two things they would need to change.

That's why i've been a supporter of the initial stock tracers. They may not be 100% correct but they are a much more sound foundation and starting point for getting correct-looking tracers as viewed by the human eye with a couple of modifications, while what we've usually had in other sims in previous years is harder to modify into what the eye actually sees.

The basic idea behind the CoD tracers is totally correct as far as i'm concerned and they exhibit all the correct traits in terms of shape/size depending on angular separation and amount of streaking depending on distance. They just need a bit of fine tuning and i mean that in the literal sense of the word, they just need a tiny bit of touching up and they'll be looking exactly like what i've seen in real life.

that's a landscape that i would like to see in sim btw:grin:
nice video though

So if i'm both do i still get a say?

Gunfire of ww2 had mostly lined shots However the smoke behind the tracer shot was in a spiral The detail of this must be hard to do and time consuming for 1 little detail when so much more could be done Advance gunfire grafixs should be on the back burner untill sound, bugs and other things are fixed

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.

true, the round does "arc" (depth of arc depending on various conditions present and how much bang went into pushing it out the barrel) but in that arc they fly straight... they don't wobble about like seen in guncam footage.

Just wanted to say that the title of this topic made me lulz - IMO the nicest (although it may be incorrect) tracers that I've seen in game were in B17 the old microprose game - esp in fighter.

Well I dont know if this is what you mean but when you look at a car infront of you, your brain automatically has your eyes track the object and compensate for relative movement (eyes following the car). Also vibrations are reduced by your body. However when you look at the car in the mirror behind you, you are looking at the car's image in the mirror. Therefore when your car vibrates the mirror does too, while your eyes are focused on the car behind, which makes the image of the car in the mirror move relative to the mirrors position and therefore since your eyes are compensating for the car's reflection movement and not the mirror, the mirror obviously vibrates. You would get the opposite effect in extreme situations if you looked at a part of the mirror that had black tape on it, so you would be following the mirror but see the car in your perepheral vision behind you can be seen to move more since you are not focused on it.

Basically the eye picks out an object for you to see, while a camera sees everything "equally" and does not track objects like an eye does.

Thats the last time I go to a boot sale!

Except your whole argument is flawed. The tracers appear as streaks of light, offset of the weapon, because the speed of the round produces a streak of light. It doesn't matter where you are positioned one IOTA. That streak of light coincides DIRECTLY with the path of the bullet being fired and your perception is such. The only time you will ever see dots is if you are directly behind the weapon being fired. Your perception may change if you are trying to focus on a single round being fired, but the game shows tracer rounds as if you are focusing on the target you are firing at (which is exactly what you should be doing 100% of the time when you fire a weapon).

As someone who specifically trains the special forces on weapons, even more specifically, machine guns, I've seen and fired more rounds of various amounts of ammunition in a single work day than most will ever in their whole life. I know EXACTLY what they look like being fired from virtually every type of situation.

The tracers in game look fine. You're used to Hollywood effects. Stop thinking that you want to focus a specific round. You never do that when you are firing a weapon and that is the ONLY way what you are saying would EVER happen. And that's why your arguments over at SimHq about staring at a flashlight,pen, candle and waving it around don't hold any water. Once you realize that you don't focus on what's coming out of the weapon, but instead, the target you are firing at, it should start making sense to you.

What we have in game can never be truly 100% accurate simply because the game is shown across a 2d screen in the same exact fashion as a video camera. If you are looking down the sights on a target, virtually everything else is not in focus. In an airplane this effect is much much less, but still present. The game has 100% of your viewing angle perfectly focused all the time, but as stated over at SimHq, this is simply because of hardware limitations. But what we have now, is more correct that some zig zag bs tracer that you want from a movie. Star Wars at least got them right. And if you didn't know "the blaster" in Star Wars came about after watching tracer ammunition. It's modeled directly from a tracer round. So when someone says star wars tracer rounds, I laugh and think to myself, this is actually a compliment.

Incorrect. They "squiggle" in gun camera videos because the camera is bolted hard to the aircraft, and there's metal-on-metal connection all the way between the guns and the optics, which ends up transferring the vibrations to the lens.

For humans, there is a lot of meat and cartilage absorbing the vibrations long before they can ever reach your eyeball.

I've fired many rounds from the 25mm bushmaster M242 in a LAV turret, and i can tell you first hand, that when you watch tracers go downrange through the optics, they squiggle, but when you pup your head out of the turret and watch with the naked eye, they do not. This is simple fact.

My argument is not flawed, you just don't get it.

It is a physical impossibility for a point of light that is moving away from you, whilst you are moving left to right, to trace a straight line over your retina. Explain to me how they would stay straight if you are so sure. Like I said cods light trails always stay at 180 degrees to the line of flight. If you actually bothered to work this out you'd realise that a light trail always has to be at 180 degrees to the 'percieved' movement. It's a very subtle difference.

Again, the tracers in cod (and most games) behave as if they have a physical tail. They dont. The tail only exists in the eye and it would be impossible to keep every round in focus if you were looking through the sight with an infinite focal depth, like in CoD. Therefore the path they trace over your eye would only be perfectly straight if you were still. It's a simple fact.

Winny,
the speed difference between the bullet and the possibly highest lateral movement make the distortion you are trying to describe so minuscule that it is so unimportant to waste even 1 computing cycle on it.

You are thinking outside the eye.

It only takes a very small movement for this effect to happen. The speed of the bullet is irrelevant. It's all about relative speed across the retina. regardless of actual speed (which is the reason that tracer coming in from the side appear to have a longer tail), they move across the retina quicker than ones moving away from you.

Again, this effect does not hapen anywhere except in the eye. Any movement of the head/eye/aircraft will effect it.

To understand this you need to stop thinking in 3d, tracer light trails are a 2d effect on the back of the eye, like a pen on paper. They are not affected by perspective.

To say that the effect is miniscule is missing the point, if the tail appears to be 2 feet long or 22 feet long it should still be aligned to the relative movement over the 2d image in the back of the eye, not the actual movement in 3D space.

As for wasting cycles.. That's what they are doing now, by drawing in 3d bars of light.

I'm no games designer and this may actually be horrendously difficult but..

Surley it would be lighter on resources to simply not render the tracer in 3D but to draw them in as a 2D overlay, with the tail at 180 degrees to the movement across the eye/screen? ie. treat it exactly as it is, instead of rendering a 3d bar of light that doesn't actually exist anywhere except inside your eye.

The problem I have with the current effect is the thickness and also the tracer is always perfect. I never see any randomness in the bullet decay or fade as it falls away, they all burn perfectly, almost like switching 'realistic gunnery' off in IL2:1946. There needs to be variation in the animation. MP

And now we get to the crux of this issue.

Gamers, like winney, want SFX, and will totally discount a professional's real world experience.

There is no room for Hollywood SFX in a simulation.

I can't wait for the new sound engine and complaints that the weapons don't sound right. Well, here is a clue to start chomping on, firearms in movies sound nothing like real weapons being fired.

Thank you SYN_Bliss for your post and putting sanity into this issue.

[/thread].

No SFX? Ok, so just model dots of light. Tracer by it's very nature is an effect. If you're happy with the current tracers then fine. They do however, defy the laws of physics, but it's only a game.

I'n not arguing for hollywood, i'm arguing for realism. No amount of 'i've fired 1000's of tracers' type posts can change some very basic laws of the natural world.

if SFX can represent the RL
Then fine with me :grin:
i'm looking for a close as its gets not an arcade style good looking picture


Salute..

Winny, enough with the pseudo science OK?

You are lobbying for a special effect designed in the manner that pleases your eyes and perception. It doesn't seem to matter to you that many folks who have seen the real thing are arguing that what we have is basically correct. You want it your way.

Have you ever fired a weapon winny?

Hi El, can I just ask your opinion of my point above and also if you think from r/l that the tracers are too thick for their calibre and also if they should decay, losing brightness as they dirperse in the distance? Currently they all look too thick and perfect (imho) and show no visible decay while the tracer is burning, they all seem to burn out equally and vanish, surely it should have a more evident decay. MP

Why do people think that calibre is relevant, the point of light is a glow produced by a phosphor based substance, it burns bright and bigger than the calibre, that phosphor also burns at constant rate like a match so its all or nothing, it just burns and dies suddenly, and tracer rounds 'will' appear as a streak of light even if viewed from directly behind...at least initially when the round has just left the muzzle, when the round gets further down range the streak becomes a point and then it just dies.

I have fired a weapon. Not that it matters, i was pretty stationary at the time thought.
It's not pseudo science. It's simple geometry.
It's not my way, it's physics.
I don't want it the way i described, i just suggested it.

If you can tell me which part of my pseudo science is wrong i'll happily admit i'm wrong.

Thanks, saved me the trouble.

What a nana.

I understand what you're saying, but I actually do think it's more difficult to implement this optical illusion than to do what we have now.
I would guess that what we have now is a visible "light bar" simply riding on the already calculated trajectory of the bullet.
To get a dynamic representation of tracer fire someone would likely need to create such a function from scratch. Perhaps the Devs aren't aware of the effect or they just didn't think it was worth the effort to implement.

I never said there was no streak, just that its angle is off. That's all.

Winny. When you pull G's in any plane in this sim, you can see the effects of the tracers. They are not always straight. (arcing) But they will never zig zag EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about with relation to movement. When you are sitting in a moving aircraft the guns and your body are moving the same speed. In other words, you might as well be stationary. It's no different than thinking that you can jump at the last second when an elevator is falling to save your yourself. Your problem is you think your body (in this airplane scenario) isn't moving right along with the weapon.

Anyhow, I'll say it one last time. Tracers go straight. Tracers look straight. Regardless if you are firing from an MRAP bouncing all over the place at 70mph or from an airplane going 200mph bouncing all over the place.

It's quite obvious that you don't have any experience in the matter.

I don't need experience, just a pen and paper.

I admit it's an abstract concept, but it's something that you can measure.

I really have to emphasise the difference between the bullet which I know always goes straight, and the streak effect in the eye.

If you were right behind a tracer bullet it would look like a circle getting smaller, no streak. If you pull up hard the tracer bullet will move down your view until it disapears. At the points it is actually moving down the scene the streak must be behind it this would mean that something mving away from you would have it's streak in front of it (relative to it's flightpath). It's this that I'm trying to get across, not zig-zag, hollywood etc... just something organic that happens that is subtle.

I am not campaigning for this to happen in CoD either. It started as an observation as to why some people find CoD's tracers slightly off.

No. To know what you are talking about with regards to how something looks like, you need experience. You can jabber on your pen and paper all you want to but that will never change the fact to what a tracer round looks like to your naked eye.

If you are right behind a tracer, it looks like a dot, not a circle. The streak effect in the eye is ONLY (let me reiterate this for the 1000X) Only is going to happen if you are FOCUSING on that individual round. NEVER will it happen if the round simply comes into your vision.

I have to ask, because it seems like you are lobbying for something that is already there. Have you played IL2COD? Because the relationship between how straight the tracers appear (in game) are all relative to where you are in relation to firing them. If you turn hard when you are firing they do exactly like they should (which seems like that's what you are promoting)

Please go fire up the game. It seems like you are arguing for something that you didn't even know already existed in the 1st place.

What shape is a tracer round from behind? Circular. What shape is a dot? Circular. I didn't say sphere. (Very petty too)

So you're saying that you can only see tracers that you are focusing on?

How does a 'dot' of light that is travelling across the back of your eye not leave a trail? If you're focused on it or not.

I'm not lobbying, I don't care if it's included or not, as you mentioned the current ones are quite good . It's merely an observation.

I'm actually just defending my argument.

It's a fact that the streak should always be at 180 degrees to the movement across the screen and it's length dictated by the relative speed across the screen, there is no depth involved the dot just gets smaller and dimmer. CoD sometimes breaks this rule, ever so slightly - all I was doing was trying to explain the subtle difference that some people have picked up on.

It's the constant 'you don't know what you are talking about' posts that make me want to reply.
All I need to understand is that bright light leaves a trail behind it when it moves. Then work out the path it would take relative to the camera/eye/screen.

Oh boy. Here's an example of a circle ( O ). Notice how the inside is void. A tracer from behind does not look like that as it has no void.

The streak effect I was referring to is the effect YOU were talking about. (Remember your flashlight / candle analogy?) That only can happen if you are trying to focus on a single round.

Who said a dot of light didn't have a trail? A tracer produces a streak of light meaning not just a dot (depending on your offset position) And once you actually fire them, you'll realize that the front of that trail and the back of that trail look virtually identical (aka a straight line). And that line is there because your eyes are not good enough to simply focus on an object moving at that rate of speed. That's why once you TRY to do this that line can get all sorts of goofy looking.

I'm done arguing. This is pointless.

If you'd said you didn't think it was worth including, or that you don't want it including or that you're 100% happy with the CoD tracers then I would have let it go, that's your opinion. I have no problem with that. None.

When you are telling me that 'my' theory is wrong when its demonstrably right, then I'll defend it.

'O' is an example of the outline of a circle. Colour it in, guess what? it's still a circle. Why are you even arguing this point?

You have nothing to defend because when you are firing a weapon you do not focus on the round coming out of the weapon and therefore any thought about what that looks like is completely moot.

It's as if this entire conversation is completely over your head.

And yes I'm completely happy with COD tracers because they are one of the few I've ever seen in a game that actually look realistic.

And why would I ever say what you are wanting is worth including? It's not worth including because if you are 1st of all, firing a weapon with live ammunition, and 2ndly at a target, if you are sitting there trying to watch the rounds instead of the target, you shouldn't even be allowed to hold a gun in the 1st place.

And the way they look is not my opinion. It's fact. You should let it go because you don't know what you're talking about. And your back peddling on the issue shows just that.

Here's a video showing what I think winny means. The tracers seemingly curves away.
It's quite obvious at 1:23 and 6:55.
Some skilled formation flying at 7:23 too.
Overall a good guncam video (except that some moron thought there was a need for music to dramatize it) if a bit grim when you consider what it is you're watching.
Is this in the game already?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv8rFPLN_Fg

I'm not back peddling.

So in your opinion tracers stay straight no matter what movement occurs at the viewing end? That just shows ignorance of some very basic rules.

If they dont bow slightly they are breaking the laws of physics.

If you are flying in a tight right hand turn firing your guns in cod you can see the tracer go off screen to the left. This means that they must be moving right to left and if there is movement right to left this has to effect the streaks angle as the dot of light has to draw the streak at 180 degrees to the movement across the eye/screen.

If you draw out 5 'frames' from cod and trace out the starting point and end point and 3 points between of the dot of light, accounting for sideways movement, you get a curved path.

At any point along this path the streak must be inside it because thats where the dot of light went. CoD is in effect drawing in light where it has never been.

I 100% know what I'm talking about.

You just don't get it.

Like I said I'm not asking for anyone to implement this in game.

This about what I can prove that happens against what you say doesn't.

Yes tracers stay straight. Why do you think a sniper rifle can and will hit someone at over 1 click away? Because the path of a speeding bullet is a very straight line. It doesn't matter if I'm wearing a ballerina suit and smoking pixy dust. That bullet will always go straight. As far as what you SEE is changing, for the upteen time, THIS HAPPENS IN GAME. Pull some G's and you'll get bending light to your visual view, based EXACTLY on how you are turning, climbing, or diving while firing.

So you can't ask for someone to implement something in game that is ALREADY THERE. Good god.

Exactly.

Bullets do have a trajectory in the form of an arc. They rise after exiting the barrel then fall off (down) after some distance (100s of yards in the case of rifles and heavy machine guns). Bullets do not curve to either side no matter how fast the barrel is traversing. Once it leaves the barrel it travels in a straight line.

They are not like baseballs that can be made to curve mid flight because of aerodynamic effects on the stitching on the ball's cover. Bullets spin at a high rate for a reason. This is to make them stable in flight so they go straight.

My main concern with the current tracers effect is its way too clean looking.

I would imagine in real-life a tracer would have a sort of burn-in effect on your eyes where you would see an afterimage of the tracer which would make it appear longer with a fading trail. The tracer rounds in ArmA 2 are like this and to me it looks more like the real-thing.

I'm only just going off things that I've seen that are really bright such as burning magnesium and welding, but I imagine tracer rounds would be very similar.

I agree... a fading out, not a tapering off

How many times have I said that the bullet goes straight? Quite a few!

Forget about what the bullet is doing in 3D, its irrelevant, it's the path across the screen that matters.

I'm not takling about the cause, I'm talking about the effect.

It's not already there. The ones in game dont curve, it's a secondary effect created by the rendered streaks, in effect, tracer off the tracer.

Why are you shouting at me ?

I assure you I'm not stupid.

You've gone from telling me that what I said does not happen, to now say it's already in the game.. Despite the fact that according to you it doesn't happen.

Bullets only rise because the barrel is pointing up, and there's no set distance for when the bullet drops below the aim point, that's up to bullet speed and how high you aim. They don't curve, but the sidewards motion of the barrel will be transferred to the bullet. If the bullet travels in direction x while being fired it will continue to do so after it leaves the barrel.

Could someone please create a movie of this effect in the game, I have not seen it.

That's because you've gone from saying tracers should look like the same effect as someone waving a candle or flashlight to back peddling and saying the viewing angle is incorrect.

And for someone that says they are not stupid, then why don't you heed to the advice of someone who knows exactly what tracer ammunition looks like by being part of their job? You're trying to say that my daily experience with something is wrong because of what you read in a physics book.

All I can say is what we have in game, with regards to bending light and what your eye ball will see it as, is spot on. And unlike you, I know this from 1st hand experience virtually on a daily basis. I'm sick and tired of hearing the same BS from people like you that don't have the 1st clue about the subject in the 1st place. If you actually knew anything about physics then you'd also realize that at the speed of the bullet, your body would have to be jolted in such a way that's almost, if not entirely, life threatening to have any effect whatsoever with regards to how the round will look.

That's why it's laughable when your whole argument that you were talking about at SimHq with regards to a waving flashlight or candle is ridiculous. Once you realize that a tracer round from start to finish (in your viewing angle) disappears in a split second (depending on your offset / ammunition) you'll also realize that for the light to do anything in that short amount of time (through your naked eye) that your body has to be jolted in a HUGE way to even think about having any sort of effect of straightness of a tracer round to your naked eye.

You are not getting it, and by you arguing with someone that works with the subject matter on a daily basis, it's quite clear that you never will.

Has anyone even bothered to watch the video I linked to? :confused:
So that we know that we are talking about the same effect.

yellonet,

Yes I have. Seen it before some time ago. But that slowed down video in no way, shape, or form represents anything close to what your naked eye sees with regards to tracer rounds. That's why there's this huge retarded argument in the 1st place. Everyone thinks tracers look like either what they see with a video or old gun cam footage and they simply don't. The camera is creating that effect. About the only time you can trust video footage is if both the camera and the weapon are stationary and/or it's a modern digital video recorder. Even then, streaks of light are much longer than what your eye will see them as. This is why modern electronic weapons use image stabilization to try and create a "float" effect with regards to how the weapons IR/VIS cameras are non-isolated, compared to a solid fixed mount that you would stare out of the optics with. Before imagestab was created, just watching a gunner screen (monitor) would make you have a headache with all the shaking around of the image. Imagestab is a huge improvement, but absolutely nothing like the ability of the water/flesh suspension system are bodies have for stabilizing an image.

The tracers in game do not look realistic, Syn_Bliss. For a start there are far too many, there is no (faint) smoke trail, and the recoil does not effect the trajectory as it should. the result is that each tracer round follows almost an identical path to the previos one and among other obvious things from gun camera footage (I already agreed that the wobble is down to camera shake) there is a much greater spread when these guns are fired.

Now you may berate me and say I have no real life experience on this matter, however, your real life experience comes from firing modern weapons with modern ammunition, on modern weapon mountings, please correct me if I'm wrong on this (I am assuming) - Therefore your view on how the tracers should look is flawed also. There are other things that can affect the rounds - tumbling and so forth - that can cause the odd round to fly off in an unexpected trajectory, even spiralling through the air (yes I know very rarely but..) Remember that the guns you fire most likely have a much higher muzzle velocity & rate of fire than these antiquated WWII weapons, causing straighter trajectories, longer looking tracers, etc. Chemicals and methods used for tracer have surely been changed and refined in the time since 1945. - Less smoke, brighter, less deviation compared to normal rounds etc...

You have already stated that rounds fired from your point of view look like a dot, no? so when in game they look like a streak something is wrong. Watch Yellnets linked video to see the spread effect I am on about, aswell as the fewer number of actual tracer rounds, and the smoke trails. The camera is not creating these effects now is it.

Especially for you chaps.

I think the tracers are fine as they are. This is max 480p, my upload speed is hopeless.
Notice the showers of sparks as the Heinkels are hit also. Very cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyM8umTulio

The human eye have the equivalent shutter speed of 1/60 s.
If you set a video camera to record with that shutter speed it should result in video that shows approximately what one would see in person.

Rubbish.
The light's / candle reference is relevant, it's a moving light source, same as a tracer round.

I have always said that they don't follow the correct path, and they dont.

I don't heed your experience because you are 100% wrong in what you say.

Are you a WW2 fighter pilot? No. So by your own rule you can't comment on this.

An inescapeable truth is that CoD draws light in where it has never been.
No matter what you say, this is the case. I can prove it.

You prove that I'm wrong if you are so confident.

I know more about physics than you do otherwise you would not be arguing.

How many times do I have to say that I don't need any experience of firing tracers, I just need to understand cause and effect and be able to plot a bullets path relative to the viewer. That is all.
CoD draws 3D tracer streaks when in fact they are 2D. It's this that causes the difference between RL and CoD.

End Of.

Just for the record can I say that they do look pretty good.

I'm not bashing CoD, I'm not arguing for 'my' way.

I'm just pointing out a subtle difference between RL and video game tracer.

Thanks for posting it. Any chance you could make it available to download?

i agree with the eyes having fps ive experienced an stroboscopic effect in real life

in fact some pilots would use the stroboscopic effect to adjust prop rpm

but you should know mainstream science disagrees with that

its called persistence of vision ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision

You are beyond help. And you are grasping at straws.

No kidding about the 2d and 3d thing. That's the 1st thing I said about the hardware limitations.

But by all means, please show me your way to PROVE how it's soo wrong.

Can't wait for your science. And I highly doubt you know more about physics than me considering I have a BSME from Rose Hulman.

Again, it's as if the ENTIRE conversation has gone over your head and I'm done discussing it with an imbecile.

Sorry Winny, I wouldn't know how! I suppose you could use fraps to capture it whilst in full screen mode, but the quality isn't too good for that.:(

Most of the ammunition that the British used did not leave a smoke trail. The "vapor" trail that you see in some gun cam footage happens because of an atmospheric condition and not the round itself. Again, this only happened when the atmospheric conditions were correct for it. That's why you can see RAF gun cams with and without smoke/vapor trails.

2ndly the guns were more firmly fixed in warbirds than any modern day turret.

I've fired about every single variant of machine gun ever made. The .50 has been around since early 1900's. That's a moot point. If someone was aiming the machine guns on a stationary plane and test firing them through a target and you had bullets flying all over the place on that target board, you have some serious weapon problems. They will maintain a certain radius for each weapon fired, and if you think you can physically see the changes in this small radius while firing, you wouldn't be human.

I'm not disagreeing that there are too many tracers, but again, that is not the point of this topic.

As far as the dot thing goes, when you have an offset (guns are on either side of you converging) that's when you'll see streaks of light, and guess what?.., with wing mounted machine guns, they are heavily offset from your POV.


All the physics in the world does not change how they appear simply because you are not calculating in the fact that you are flying and maintaining the same speed and distance as the weapons themselves on the plane. You might as well be standing still. That's why the rounds start arcing to the eye under extreme forces. And this is evident in game.

Why are you getting personal? Can't you debate a point without resorting to calling me an imbecile?

Soo wrong? It's either wrong or it's right. Now you're also getting sarcastic.

If the path of the dot of light (relative to the viewer) is curved then the streak must also be curved. Put your BSME into practice and demonstrate to me how what is essentially a continuous curved line that fades away can leave repeated straight lines that don't point to where they came from behind it?