Obviously, many here have only seen tracers on pictures or videos.

Basically, when you fire something with a tracer, you just see the shining ass of the bullet, some kind of a moving point, but again no "Star Wars" lasers.

This is the first I have asked this question and I may as well ask it here.
For those complaining about the "Star Wars Laser" look, ask yourself this.
Having never seen tracers in person, do you want them to look like what you think they should look like, or do you want them to look as they would appear in reality.
I am telling you all that the tracers I have seen in Cliffs of Dover are the most realistic I have seen in a game.

Agreed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-7geGhY0jY

You are right about the shining ass of a bullet but they very much do look like Star Wars.
Take a laser pointer and shine it at a wall.
You see a point of light but move it around quickly and it becomes a streak. The human eye can no longer see it as a point of light when it moves around at speed.

I have fired weapons with tracers and they do look like lasers until they hit a body then they dont look like lasers anymore.:confused: fisrt time i fired a 105 m from the tank commanders hatch it blew my helmet off that was fun:grin:

Of course I am referring to those that have never seen them in person. :)

It's certainly interesting that even people with real-life experience can't seem to agree on whether it's right or not, and that opinions cover the full range between "crap" and "perfect". I wonder if that also applies to other areas where people point out their expert opinion (like flight models, in-cockpit sound or grass colour ;)).

I don't think anyone even knows what a laser looks like, yet we are discussing just that!

I was a tank commander in the danish army some years back and during live fire exercises we often used the turret machinegune in our Leopard 1A5 :cool:
From the commanders hatch it was easy to see the tracers fired each 5th shoot in the ammobelt and as I recall they actually looked like lasers from Star Wars. So I also think that the effect shown in COD is spot on.. :-P

Good job guys :grin:

PS: One time we loaded an entire 250 round belt with tracers and fired them in one salvo. This looked like one continious red line to the target.

This is true only if you're looking down the sight of the gun that fired it.

If you're off to the side and slightly above (in the cockpit for example) then you'll see some degree of streaking.

I do think that the tracers are too fat though. I think I remember Oleg saying that they had to compromise them slightly in order to make them work though.