Friday update and duscussions 2011-02-18

[sallee]

Originally Posted by 4H_V-man

I didn't read every page, so somebody may have already noted this...that isn't corn. It's wheat.

Depends where you come from! In the US corn is what we in the UK call Maize. In the UK corn means wheat or even barley.

[Richie]

I wonder why English started to change when we came over to North America? Centre center zed zee etc...Of topic I better shut up.

[major_setback]

Originally Posted by Richie

I wonder why English started to change when we came over to North America? Centre center zed zee etc...Of topic I better shut up.

The Centre to Center change was implicated by Webster (of dictionary fame). He had some very odd ideas when it came to spelling. Some of them stayed with us, others didn't. (He changed Aluminium to Aluminum in USA too, and also changed the American pronunciation of 'schedule' to 'skedule', and Luitenant to 'lefftenant').

Lots of old English terms were kept by Americans, but sound strange now to our English ears...but they are actually older English terms...such as ''sidewalk.
...And the term 'gotten' : I only found out today that it is old English (from Bill Bryson's 'Mother Tongue'). It is a term we British have not used for a long time, but Americans have preserved.

[Strike]

As much as this tracertalk has been debated, I think I'd like to chip in my 2 cents or rather, my experience on firing tracermunitions.

I fired 7.62x51mm ammunition from a H&K AG-3 (Norwegian version of G3A3 with some small improvements). That's relatively close to our BOB type spitfire/hurricane/blenheim whatnot ammo.

My opinion is that when firing a shot, the tracer burns in the "wake" of the projectile, and in reality it's our own eye that cannot capture the small lightsource with enough speed. So that what we see is a "laser" because the lightsource is blurred. I have never seen a twitching twirling zigzag tracer like we see in guncam videos because the bullet DOES NOT zigzag. However, a zigzag effect would be natural for the human eye to see if the eye is vibrating. That is, if your body is vibrating because you're firing 8x guns from a hurri or spit, or in turbulence or just shaking cause engine is going max rpm or something. I think shaking tracers are REALISTIC for guncams, and for a shaking aircraft, BUT the thing that bothers me the most with the screenies is the "Girth" of the tracer. It's too fat. I shot tracers during the night, and we had illumination rockets/flares over the targets so that the tracers seemed thin, but bright orange/red. However in the pause when the illumination rocket burned out, and the next was being prepared, the tracers apperad MUCH larger, longer and fatter because they were the only light source and kindof "blinded" us. In daytime however, tracers do still look like lasers, but are much thinner and stick less out. I think these tracers look ideal for night conditions, but not daytime.

Here is what I in real-life can relate to and say "Ah, that's just like what I experienced with my own eyes".

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

The first being seen through NVGs, the tracers seem to "Glow" much more because of the surrounding darkness and sensitive NVGs. - thats how they appeared to me too without nvg in pitch black darkness... glowing orange lasers from starwars!!

and then daytime without nvg.. much thinner, slim tracers, to the eye they appear to be about 2-3 m long, whilst in reality it's only a small light in the rear of the bullet. If however, you are firing tracers and looking down your ironsights, they appear to be small "orbs" that slightly fall down until they ricochet off the ground and again appear to be about 2-3 meters long. So when firing a tracer round, with your eye at the same level of the bullet trajectory, it only looks like a small glowing ball.. but seeing the tracers from the guy next to me, they look extremely long coming out of the barrel, and then they look shorter and shorter the further away they are, until they ricochet off the ground and fly upwards... so it's all because of the BLUR of the human eye.. I HOPE that's what Oleg is doing with this game. Letting motionblur decide how tracers look that is the most realistic approach to it then tracer length would depend on bullet speed too which is realistic!!

I'm really excited about the "ball" tracers we have. Let the graphics card make it blurred that way, detecting tracers being fired at you is harder when looking forwards, than when looking at your 3 and 9 O'clock because then they will look long as they're wizzing by!!

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by Strike

So when firing a tracer round, with your eye at the same level of the bullet trajectory, it only looks like a small glowing ball.. but seeing the tracers from the guy next to me, they look extremely long coming out of the barrel, and then they look shorter and shorter the further away they are, until they ricochet off the ground and fly upwards... so it's all because of the BLUR of the human eye.

Interesting observation.

On the Hurricane the inboard guns are about (very roughly) 1.8m (6') from the centerline of the plane. Hopefully these will look different (from the pilots perspective) in operation than the nose cowling guns on the Me109!

Cheers!

[winny]

Here's what OM said about shutter speeds etc..

Originally Posted by Oleg Maddox

You are prefectly right (writing at home already...)
The leight of tracer depending of the sutter speed. As shorter shutter speed - shorter tracer fixed on the image.
If we will have the speed, say for example, 1/100000 sec, then we will see the light of tracer like the exhaust of small jet engine on a fixed image. But in reality the inertion of the human eye/brain is close to shutter speed of 1/125 sec fixing image.

In the beginning we have variable leight of tracers (Roman Denisking did right calculation and programmed it) depending of frame rate (which is really almost the same like shutter speed of camera, iof the frame rate is constant.)... But when we have slow frame rate of the game... the tracers had too great leight.
So now they are fixed as a middle possible for all realistic frame rates and human eye inertion.
You may see we really did the good job of searching and programming for such things...

I think he's saying that a camera running at 125 fps would show the same view as the human eye.

Originally Posted by Strike

As much as this tracertalk has been debated, I think I'd like to chip in my 2 cents or rather, my experience on firing tracermunitions.

I fired 7.62x51mm ammunition from a H&K AG-3 (Norwegian version of G3A3 with some small improvements). That's relatively close to our BOB type spitfire/hurricane/blenheim whatnot ammo.

My opinion is that when firing a shot, the tracer burns in the "wake" of the projectile, and in reality it's our own eye that cannot capture the small lightsource with enough speed. So that what we see is a "laser" because the lightsource is blurred. I have never seen a twitching twirling zigzag tracer like we see in guncam videos because the bullet DOES NOT zigzag. However, a zigzag effect would be natural for the human eye to see if the eye is vibrating. That is, if your body is vibrating because you're firing 8x guns from a hurri or spit, or in turbulence or just shaking cause engine is going max rpm or something. I think shaking tracers are REALISTIC for guncams, and for a shaking aircraft, BUT the thing that bothers me the most with the screenies is the "Girth" of the tracer. It's too fat. I shot tracers during the night, and we had illumination rockets/flares over the targets so that the tracers seemed thin, but bright orange/red. However in the pause when the illumination rocket burned out, and the next was being prepared, the tracers apperad MUCH larger, longer and fatter because they were the only light source and kindof "blinded" us. In daytime however, tracers do still look like lasers, but are much thinner and stick less out. I think these tracers look ideal for night conditions, but not daytime.

Here is what I in real-life can relate to and say "Ah, that's just like what I experienced with my own eyes".

The first being seen through NVGs, the tracers seem to "Glow" much more because of the surrounding darkness and sensitive NVGs. - thats how they appeared to me too without nvg in pitch black darkness... glowing orange lasers from starwars!!

and then daytime without nvg.. much thinner, slim tracers, to the eye they appear to be about 2-3 m long, whilst in reality it's only a small light in the rear of the bullet. If however, you are firing tracers and looking down your ironsights, they appear to be small "orbs" that slightly fall down until they ricochet off the ground and again appear to be about 2-3 meters long. So when firing a tracer round, with your eye at the same level of the bullet trajectory, it only looks like a small glowing ball.. but seeing the tracers from the guy next to me, they look extremely long coming out of the barrel, and then they look shorter and shorter the further away they are, until they ricochet off the ground and fly upwards... so it's all because of the BLUR of the human eye.. I HOPE that's what Oleg is doing with this game. Letting motionblur decide how tracers look that is the most realistic approach to it then tracer length would depend on bullet speed too which is realistic!!

I'm really excited about the "ball" tracers we have. Let the graphics card make it blurred that way, detecting tracers being fired at you is harder when looking forwards, than when looking at your 3 and 9 O'clock because then they will look long as they're wizzing by!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah ! Thank you Strike ! The guy who saw it all for real !
So, to conclude, if the "daytime" tracers were thinner , more like a string of light and getting much shorter with distance, you would say this would be a perfect rendition of what you saw for real ?
And at eye level, we would only see a kind of a "dot"...
Well, I would be happy with that !
Thanks for your input !

Salute !

[Skoshi Tiger]

Also it's the angular distance that the tracer in travels in relation to the observer in that shutter period that determines the apparent length of the tracer.

If you think of the observer at one vertex (A) of a triangle, the position of the tracer when the shutter opens at B and the the position of the tracer when the shutter closes C, then the apparent length is determined by the angle BAC.

Of cource this triagngle is in the 3D space represented the simulation world, but when its plotted on our 2D monitors it will look like line of various lengths determined by the angle.

If your behind the sights that angle would be very small forming a dot in our view, If the guns to either side that angle would be a lot larger forming the laser effect.

Cheers!

[Il2Pongo]

Most stream features on the map would not be visible from such high altitude.
Most of them would not appear blue at all. They might be a shadow in the trees.
Many flight sims seem to do this, grossly exaggerate the visibility of small streams from altitude.

[Strike]

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Also it's the angular distance that the tracer in travels in relation to the observer in that shutter period that determines the apparent length of the tracer.

If you think of the observer at one vertex (A) of a triangle, the position of the tracer when the shutter opens at B and the the position of the tracer when the shutter closes C, then the apparent length is determined by the angle BAC.

yeah you're absolutely right! I was going to add that but decided to keep it simple. If being shot at by a tailgunner when coming from a six o clock position you would have a harder time seeing tracers infront of you, then looking out to either side as they pass by. Our eye's "shutter speed" is an EXCELLENT and afaik first feature in computer simulations ever!

Also like you say.. Firing from a messerschmitts cowling guns should really limit the tracers to looking like small dots, while wing cannons initially look very long, they look more like dots once they reach convergence distance!

Can't wait to see more! Tracers should look more dim in daylight and "stringlike". And more fat and blinding in night conditions.. Based on my own experience! Thanks for commenting on my first post which such positive feedback! I hope i brought some concerns to ease

Cheers!