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!!