Can I just pose some questions here..

Does anyone think that Maddox games thought that tracers were unimportant in a combat flight sim?
Or that they might just have done a little bit of research? (seeing how they are billing it as the most advnced Combat flight sim to date)

And by research I don't mean looking at gun cam footage on youtube.

If the devs say they are right then I'm inclined to believe them, it's their job, and they've been doing it for a long time.

I'll put it another way, someone prove to me that they are wrong.

imho, when Luthier said that the tracers look perfect, I think he wanted people to stop whining about such small detail in that thread. to be quite honest, at that moment I also thought it to be nitpicking and complete waste of time to bitch about it. but when people start to take statements like Luthier's as axiom, without any backing of it... then it's time to start asking questions, no matter how dumb or annoying they might seem. I had some experience with firing the tracers from AK47 during my military service, but I wouldn't call myself an expert on the matter, since that wasn't aerial gunnery. and yes, they looked as group of bright dots in the daylight, without elongated light streaks effect. but, I might be wrong there. where I'm almost positive that I'm not wrong is this:

if we have a random tracer bullet whose construction usually is like this:

http://www.frfrogspad.com/tracer.gif

meaning, that the tracer mixture is in the recess of it's base. so now, how come that we can see product of that mixture burning when bullet is fired in our direction in COD movies? wouldn't that defy the better part of tracer's purpose?

Without having any sources ready to cite offhand, I know I've read multiple reports from combat pilots who described seeing enemy tracers flying towards them. However you need to bend your understanding of how it works, yes, they are visible from the front.

Which purpose?

You use tracers for two reasons:

- mark a target (inf.)
- observe where the bullet goes(tanks, airplanes, inf at night)

And yes, you give away your position.
Even if your target does no observe the tracers, anybody with a slightly different angle will - and ricochets offer a nice firework for everybody.
Oh - and there's the muzzle flash too.

I doubt you will find a unit using tracers for covert ops. ;)

Well if you are firing tracers they "should" be seen clearly as dots. As you move away from the point of origin (the gun) the more you move to a side x/y view instead of z the more it looks like a "streak". But it seems to me maybe more of a speed problem? They move incredibly fast and realy are not something you clearly "see" at a close distance, or unless you are behind them watching them. Put it this way, they move too fast for your eye to actually follow, translated onto a monitor I am not so sure though.

If you've seen tracers from the side, they're just like in the latest CoD videos. Lasers, that turn down to an arc only further away whilst slowing down. With the yet-to-be-seen mad ricocheting when they hit something. Thats where George Lucas got the idea for the famous Star Wars lasers! ;)

I agree with Heliocon. I would imagine that when firing from near your line of sight the tracer would look like a dot, and from a more perpendicular angle it would look like a laser.

So the question to ChrisDNT is; Did you ever observe the 20mm tracer being fired by somebody else from a bit further away, rather than co-axial with the bore?

I've no experience with tracers but I know sparklers make a trail with just the speed of a hand wave :-D so I could imagine the 'laser effect'.

got no problem with that bending, just needed a sound proof of it.

"Does anyone think that Maddox games thought that tracers were unimportant in a combat flight sim? "

In a COMBAT sim, tracers are as much important as CLOUDS in an aviation sim.

"they looked as group of bright dots in the daylight, without elongated light streaks effect. but, I might be wrong there..."

No, you're right.

I just remember we technically called this group as a "sheaf".