Best ways to recognize if friendly or enemy aircraft

[Racetrack]

Hi guys! I was wondering how the other players do recognize/understand if the small black dot in front at their 12 o ò'clock is an enemy or a frienldy aircraft..
Too many times I folow hard a plane to bring myself near enough to see the markings or the flag...
How do you do that?

[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..

[Racetrack]

I don't use any icon while flying online, i just see the planes

[DD_crash]

Colour of the aircraft can help eg green/black pale blue underside = Soviet.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by Racetrack

I don't use any icon while flying online, i just see the planes

Fair enough.. I need assistance.. my eyes are in a state of flux right now..

[EJGr.Ost_Caspar]

As said, colors help. A grey/yellow mishmash of pixels is most likely a Bf109. Dots are not to divert. But very farest LoDs can tell you already a bit. I.e. If it could be a bomber or a fighter (size). Some very old models tend to be quite fat in their farest LoDs, I.e. Bf109s and La5s.

[Woke Up Dead]

Behaviour combined with location on the map are often good indicators online, maybe offline too. Planes usually fly high and fast over enemy territory, lower and slower (taking off and landing) when they feel safe over their own land. If you see a plane arriving high from the direction of the enemy base, or running away low towards an enemy base, then it's almost certainly an enemy. Online, they usually won't let you chase them in a straight line deep into your turf, they will want to turn back towards help.

Specific plane types are often flown in a specific way too: 109's boom and zoom with a very steep climb at the end, 190s boom and zoom in more shallow angles, Spitfires and Zeros do impressively fast horizontal turns.

It's hardest to identify a plane if you're just chasing a lonely dot along the front-line.