This all depends on the tracer type. Some tracers lit in the barrel. Others lit a few feet away after being fired and others lit even further away, out to a couple hundred meters before they lit.
The typical WW2 tracer lit in the barrel causing the streak like appearance upon exiting the gun.
As far as the tracers to appear too fat, Some of them may appear to be a little on the fat side, but again, this all depends on the size of the hole the tracer is burning through, plus its apparent brightness. The brighter it is, the fatter it looks.
Perhaps "brightness and fatness" are an option but I doubt it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC6lQ...layer_embedded

this video GUN CAM is very detailed ye BRAVO.

COMPARE this video whit CoD TRACES ok ok i loock the tracer is white short good good BUT i not loock the smoke tracers?
Attachment 4837contrails of the projectile


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YkTo...layer_embedded

I agree...But even Blackdog feels the tracers should be more like a "string" of light, rather than a "stick"...Wobbling was ideed caused by the shaking of the camera so it is ok not to have this effect. In every single exemple we have been given or shown, or in every WW2 guncams you may find, the tracers are always thinner than what we have in COD...Always..And it is , IMHO, the only flaw in COD's tracers...But the smoke trails, the exploding ammo, everything else is perfect...;)

Salute!

I agree, seen it with my own eye in daylight and nighttime, at night, it's way more intense and can nearly blind you, but the muzzle flash usually takes care of that first.

if there's anything I might say it's the tracer girth at the moment. For daytime tracers I would say they are much thinner, but no dimmer at all. Same brightness, but thinner. At night, this "HDR BLOOM" effect occurs.. making them look wider :)

Just my 2 cents and IRL experience

Actually, this is from army footage probably, but exactly the same program I went through with the airforce. EXACTLY what it looks like with the naked eye (cept better quality-non-pixelated) and exactly how they look in CoD at the moment (yay!) :) But I think they're still too fat for daytime, when seeing them close to the aircraft.

Sometimes the tracers keep burning in the ground..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZiqNk_AL_8

and here you go..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx5aR1Knpb8

It's not a huge difference, but still.. It looks like a 20cm diameter tracer now, I believe it should look morel like 2-5cm max for < 8mm rounds





EDIT:

Heres a real plane firing real ammo with time-delayed fuzes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVIJD...tailpage#t=23s

Ok...Thanks again Strike....Now...Could we all agree on that:

Tracers in COD are very good and , by experts opinions, very close to reality.
BUT: Also by experts opinions and members observations, one thing should be modified to make them prefect, and that would be to make them " string-like" or thinner, or "less fat", as you wish, for day time , and keep them as they are now, for night time ?
If everyone agrees with that conclusion, that would put a final rest to this debate !!! ;)

Good night!

+1
/debate

You won't believe the amount of recoil and vibration that goes on when you're watching a 20mm flak gun firing, yet your vision doesn't get compromised at all and tracers still look straight.
On our test fire exercise in training while waiting for my turn, i kept watching how each time the gun was fired it actually kicked up dust. The firing range was on a sandy beach, every time the gun was fired it kicked up dust that then settled on the gun. Then, when the next soldier got on the gun and he fired, it would kick up the dust it had on itself, along with more from the ground.

However when i actually sat on the gunner's chair, strapped myself in (you have to do that because the gun can rotate terribly fast and stop even faster, it could hurl you a good few meters across if you're not wearing the safety belt) and pressed the trigger pedal to fire, there was no amount of vibration whatsoever in what i was seeing. My gunsight picture was steady and the tracers were straight. There's so much soft tissue in our bodies to absorb the oscillations plus our eyes auto-adjust instinctively, that i only felt the movement of the gun through the tactile feeling...as far as vision is concerned everything was steady.


Also, on the matter of how "fat" the tracer is

I guess in reality it also depends on ambient light conditions. My experience was mostly in clear and often sunny days, so maybe that's why the tracers i saw were thinner, they were "washed out" by the ambient lighting. I'm sure that if i fired them at night they would appear not only a lot brighter but thicker as well. I think i'm going agree with the following quote.


The important parts are in bold. Strike obviously understands that image retention in our eyes is affected by ambient light, so that's why he makes the important distinction to define that daytime tracers should be a bit thinner. Brightness, transition from streak to dot and overall movement is just perfect. At night, maybe they should be thicker and they would definitely seem brighter


That would more or less be the perfect in-game tracer for today's technology ;)

Unfortunately, while I have a lot of shooting experience, I have virtually none with tracers. I will however chime in and say that I agree CoD's are fine as they are with the possible exception that they might be a little "fat" for daytime. All in all though, I'm going to reserve any further judgement till I have game in hand and get to see them "firsthand".

Amen!!

You are saying that there arent smoke trails?If that is what you are saying then,you havent seen recent pictures posted by Oleg, theres even a video showing some amazing spiral smoke trails.http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/il2cod-sc...ts-24-02-2011/Look for the pictures with the Defiant.