Tracers Rounds (From SimHQ)

[Royraiden]

Originally Posted by ChrisDNT

Yep, Kraken, exactly like this, what I see here looks perfect to me.

Definitely.

[Biggs]

it really doesn't matter what any of us think about the tracers in the vids (bad or good), as they are both beta leaks... and dont represent the final build.

In case any of you missed it....

Originally Posted by luthier

Just so you guys know, this is a rare case of a true leak, i.e. not a marketing ploy but a real rogue user doing something really lame for self-promotion.

The stuff you're seeing is obviously from a beta, not indicative of release, and I'm really way too upset to address this in a calm manner at this time.

The person who leaked this is a personal friend of one of our programmers. I anticipated exactly this kind of issue, Oleg warned me about this specifically. The programmer asked us to give his buddy beta access as a personal favor to him, and I in turn took the responsibility on myself. I got chewed up for this big time, and I'm seriously considering letting the programmer go. It goes without saying that the author's beta access is revoked, and I'm cutting all further communication with him.

We caught this a bit too late, by which time it was way too late to try to delete it, so we'll let you guys continue discussing it but probably won't check the thread or respond to anything related to these videos.

We'll release final gameplay videos once we go gold, where you can judge the features that are shipping with release.

[ChrisDNT]

"it really doesn't matter what any of us think about the tracers in the vids (bad or good), as they are both beta leaks... and dont represent the final build."

Fanbois are so repetitive, they always act like some zelots of a sect, even if the guru asked them nothing !

Discussing about tracers in a COMBAT sim is by nature interesting. And if what we have seen is perhaps not final, it's nevertheless an indication of what could become final.
And according to my 10 years experience as an AA gunner, I find the latest picture (with the Me110) quite convincing (irregular shapes and color of the dots really well done, perhaps just a little transparency more and its' perfect).

[Biggs]

Originally Posted by ChrisDNT

"it really doesn't matter what any of us think about the tracers in the vids (bad or good), as they are both beta leaks... and dont represent the final build."

Fanbois are so repetitive, they always act like some zelots of a sect, even if the guru asked them nothing !

Discussing about tracers in a COMBAT sim is by nature interesting. And if what we have seen is perhaps not final, it's nevertheless an indication of what could become final.
And according to my 10 years experience as an AA gunner, I find the latest picture (with the Me110) quite convincing (irregular shapes and color of the dots really well done, perhaps just a little transparency more and its' perfect).

keeps your pants on buddy. I wasnt referring to the people talking about tracers in a general conversation, I was talking about the people (zealots, if you dont mind me borrowing your phrase) that are up in arms about the 'horrible tracers' in the two vids that were put up yesterday.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by ChrisDNT

And according to my 10 years experience as an AA gunner

You may want to add those 10 years are in fact some 300days.
Which firing range did you use; S-chanf?


And I dare to ask again: Which part of Switzerland are you from?

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by ChrisDNT

"it really doesn't matter what any of us think about the tracers in the vids (bad or good), as they are both beta leaks... and dont represent the final build."

Fanbois are so repetitive, they always act like some zelots of a sect, even if the guru asked them nothing !

Discussing about tracers in a COMBAT sim is by nature interesting. And if what we have seen is perhaps not final, it's nevertheless an indication of what could become final.
And according to my 10 years experience as an AA gunner, I find the latest picture (with the Me110) quite convincing (irregular shapes and color of the dots really well done, perhaps just a little transparency more and its' perfect).

I've done a year of service as a conscript in the local air force and also received flak gunner training, so i've fired a few rounds on a 20mm dual-barreled rheinmetal RH-20 at a high angle of gun elevation.
My observation was that to the human eye, the tracer looked like a short, thin streak of yellow/white light when it was near the gun (and the gunner's viewpoint as a result). However, it moved away so fast that it took less than a second for it to become a small bright dot, just like in the 110 picture.

What this does is create the illusion that the shell is slowing down significantly more than it really is, because you see a thin streak near you moving with extreme speed turn into a small, easy to track dot within less than a second.

As a sidenote to this, i hope the speed of sound is modeled in the sim. What i really liked about firing those AA guns was how the tracer would arc up like i described then there was nothing and bit of silence, but within seconds from firing the gun we would all see small white puffs of cloud. The shells have a self destruct fuse to prevent falling down on friendlies if they miss, which they will do a lot as it's a barrage fire weapon and not a precision one...think of the small flak in IL2 that gives off a load of small puffs of white smoke, it's actually pretty close to what i saw in real life.
So, the thing is, you could see those little puffs of smoke about 2-2.5km away but you couldn't hear the explosion until a few seconds later, when a series of muffled and distorted thumps would start echoing in succession.

In any case, that screenshot of the 110 shows something which looks realistic enough and yet it happens to be one of the screenies that got royally chewed when it was released
The encouraging thing in all this is that it's now obvious the shutter speeds will be adjustable to create the kind of view we want when snapping screenshots or making videos.
I think it has been talked about by the developers themselves, but it can also be confirmed by simple comparisons: the same type of gun having different looking tracers from one screenshot to the next, plus in one of the recent videos on a Russian gaming site the propellers change from visible discs to totally invisible between different parts of the video.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

As a sidenote to this, i hope the speed of sound is modeled in the sim.

That would so rock - and shockwaves for the bombs too.

[ChrisDNT]

"My observation was that to the human eye, the tracer looked like a short, thin streak of yellow/white light when it was near the gun (and the gunner's viewpoint as a result). However, it moved away so fast that it took less than a second for it to become a small bright dot, just like in the 110 picture."

Exactly, perfectly described.

[Erkki]

Blackdog;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7uWhp_aMZg

Again, its just a camera-shot record, but still.

[Blackdog_kt]

Erkki, the colour and how thin the tracers look in the picture match exactly what i saw in real life.

What doesn't match is the length. In reality, they would appear shorter when close to the observer (that is, when leaving the barrel) and almost immediately "shrink" to the size of a dot, just like the ones in the 110 picture.

Of course, the human eye is like a camera shutter too in some respects and if we accept that variation in "eye specs" between most people is less than the variation between human eye and camera, then we should all perceive motion in a more or less similar manner.
In this case, the type of shell being fired will also have a small effect on how we see it. For example, a faster shell will produce the impression of a longer streak.
That being said, i think the guns in your video are Oerlikon 30mm or 35mm guns. They are different from the ones i fired but maybe not perceived as too different by the human eye, as it was a 20mm cannon itself and their muzzle velocities might be in the same speed range.

For a better explanation of how those rheinmetalls i fired looked in real life, it was like having the length, width and "reduction to a dot at a distance" effect of the machine gun rounds in the videos posted in the first page of the thread, but with the speed and colour of the tracers in your video. I hope this makes sense