Best ways to recognize if friendly or enemy aircraft

[Bearcat]

The color of the tracers helps... or icons.. The icons in this sim can be set in many ways.. You can turn them off on the map altogether which I prefer.. and you can also fly in the pit which will eliminate trhe arrows around the screen.. and you can set your icons so that certain parts of them appear at certain distances or not at all.. If all you want to see is the plane type .. you can set that .. if you want different settings for friendlies and enemies or one side or the other exclusively you can also do that. It will also come with experience.. Like real life in this sim there is a certain point at which identification will be impossible .. but those distances are not the same and are determined by different factors not the least of which is the capabilities of one;'s hardware and the graphics settings.. at certain distances there are distinct differences in shapes..