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#12
03-05-2011, 06:45 PM
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Quote:
There's only one thing that might benefit from some tweaking and that's how wide the visible "rod" of light is. It seems a bit "fat" when compared to what i've seen in real life, but only when it's close to the player's viewpoint (ie, when the round is near our aircraft, as it moves away it shrinks into a more realistic size). However, the CoD tracers are perfect in displaying another property of tracers as viewed in real life: the transition from an elongated line to a dot. When the tracer is close it appears as a thin, straight line (despite the gun vibration it is in fact straight and doesn't squiggle like in the guncam films, probably because the human body has better shock absorption than a wing mounted camera from the '40s), but as it moves away it rapidly transitions into a bright dot. This has the effect of creating an illusion that the tracers slow considerably more than they really are. The degree of accuracy is hard to prove with numbers, because both the slow-down illusion and the point that the tracer becomes a dot happen a good distance away from the gun. Also, the slow-tracer illusion is probably more pronounced when firing a static mounted gun like the ones i fired (it goes from a super-fast streak to a small, wallowing dot 2km away in the span of a second or two). I guess that when firing from a fast moving platform like a fighter aircraft and also with WWII guns of lower muzzle velocity, the optical illusion of slowing down would be less pronounced because there is less of a gap between the velocity of the round and the platform from which it's fired. I can't accurately estimate the distance of the optical transition from streak to dot, but knowing my flak guns had a ~2km effective range and the shells self-destructed at that point to avoid falling on friendlies if they missed, i would eyeball it to be anywhere between 1/3 and 3/4 of the way from the gun to the self-destruct point 2km away. If you do the math, this means that anywhere between 670 and 1500 meters the tracer has transitioned from being seen as a streak to being seen as a dot. However, even the lower limit of 670 meters is way farther than the distances we shoot at in a flight sim, so the tracers are probably very accurate in being displayed as streaks during their first few split-seconds. Watch one of Oleg's latest videos to see this, see here around the 0:35 mark: Let's go one step further now. If we gauge the distances in the videos with the help of the Defiant's wingspan, it seems like the engagement is filmed very close up (i'd say around 300m, definitely less than 500m in any case), with the attacking fighter opening fire even closer. At that point, the first few rounds overfly the Defiant with tracers still visible as streaks, which is consistent with what i've seen in real life for these ranges. Then, a couple of seconds later we pause at 0:37 and we get this: It clearly shows the effect of the tracer transitioning from a streak to a dot as it moves away from our viewpoint. Furthermore, the defiant is about 300 meters away and the distant, "dot" shaped rounds that missed and flew over it are 1-2 seconds into their trajectory. This means than in a broad sense, even the relative timings of the transition effect and the approximate ranges (allowing for different muzzle velocities, etc) are almost 100% consistent with my real life experience. I didn't actually know it was that accurate until now, in fact i just realized it because i went into the trouble of snapping screen captures and comparing. Bottom line, in the eyes of this reservist flak gunner these tracers in the video are so close to real-life it's scary. Yesterday my buddies and me were at a friends house, so i also showed the video to them. The guy who was having us over was a sergeant in a heli-borne/air assault infantry brigade during his time as a conscript. This guy has fired countless more rounds than i have and has seen even more being fired on the range as he was a trainer at some point, just not on flak cannons but smaller guns (light MGs, infantry rifles, .50s and so on). I asked him "what do you think of the tracers?" and he goes "isn't it supposed to be one round in four?". That's right, the only thing he complained about was how many of them are flying simultaneously, until i explained to him that the hurricane has 4 guns per wing and the game has customized belting, so they could be synchronised to have at least one tracer in the air at all times. After that i asked him if that was his only criticism and he said "yes, the actual tracer looks just like the real thing". So, my personal take on the matter as someone who's fired AA cannons somewhat similar to the ones the 109 in the video is firing...i'd say that apart from the initial width of the tracer streak when close to the player's viewpoint (it should be just a bit thinner), this is the most accurate tracer implementation in a flight simulator i've ever seen in my life. Living in a country where 95% of the male population has been in the army and fired guns at some point in their life, it's also not hard to find people with similar military experience and ask their opinion which usually confirms the CoD tracers as being very accurate. In fact the only guys among my friends who thought the tracers were weird, were the guys who haven't been to the army and haven't fired a gun yet. I hope this helps to seal the deal and provide a satisfactory explanation for everyone 
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