What a tracer should look like (before spazzing just look).

[winny]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Well that would make sense, I dont know the exact chemicles they used in the bullet (some variant or replacement of gunpower? It certainly would be more "smokey" then modern amunition) but when the bullet leaves the barrel it is of course rotating very fast from the rifling which would create a smoke whirl/spiral (the bullet would be trailing smoke and the particles/air would be disturbed by the bullets rotation causing it to form a spiral). Is that correct?

.303 definitly had rifling in them, .50cals too but no idea about the 20mm cannon as the term "cannon" implies to me that it was not rifled (but I truly dont know in this case).

-Also if you go look at ww2 guncam videos of enemy AA firing at the plane while its coming in for a run, at a distance you will notice the tracers are just very slow moving dots, but as the plane got closer those fireflies get very fast and very dangerous!

The spiral somke trails come off of the ammo because that's how they were designed. As you said, all modern bullets spin due to rifling.

The british .303 'smoke' tracer/incendiary had a small hole in the side of the round (not the back) the smoke comes out of this weep hole and creates large (relativley) spirals. It had no visible light. I don't know if German smoke tracer was the same.

The only other comment on tracer (I've done it to death over on SimHQ) is that they should be relative to the viewer not the object being viewed.

In Game they behave like little comets with a physical tail, when in fact they are little dots that leave a trail inside your eye. This means that they do not always appear parallel to the line of flight and are always relative to the movement of the viewer. The light trails in CoD are always parallel to the line of flight.

The other issues are frame rate side effects.