yep: Tracers, WOP and Il-2 COD

[winny]

Just being pedantic but the tracers are wrong in one respect, and it's not the way they look.

The RAF didn't mix ammo in 1940. Thay tended to have only one gun of the 8 loaded with tracer. This was because they encountered problems with the firing mechanism if they mixed ammo, (because of the slight difference in recoil characteristics among other things). Many pilots didn't want tracers at all except for the last few rounds in each gun because it alerted the enemy if you managed to sneak up behind them and missed with your first burst.

[Gomer Pyle]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

A title that is VERY old called 1942 The Pacific Air War by MicroProse had ricocheting tracers. Way before IL-2. I hope CoD will have them too. IL-2 has them by "another way of incorporating changes" and adds for sure to the immersion when strafing ground targets.

Thanks Flanker; that was the title I was looking for: "1942 The Pacific Air War" I loved it back then.


/Daniel

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Gomer Pyle

Thanks Flanker; that was the title I was looking for: "1942 The Pacific Air War" I loved it back then.


/Daniel

Yep - I played it a lot to and loved it as well - and I remember I liked the tracers too... To give this discussion a bit of perspective I downloaded 1942 from an abandonware site (as I cant find the original) here http://www.freegameempire.com/games/...acific-Air-War and fired up DOSBox 0.74 so see how they really looked?

Here we have me attacking a hangar (???) - lasers there at the wing roots and a spray of 1x1 orange pixels that appear far in front but nothing in between (you can see two orange dots above the "hangar" and some yellow hits ). Most sims did it like that back then as I remember it.

The thing is that in 1994 when this was released it was as good as it gets - and it was not a long time ago for us that are getting old (41 myself).

EDIT: another thing we didn't have whining about then was markings as you can understand from this shot - or if the rivets are correct on the cowling... We had a good time anyway.
EDIT2: I hope you notice the two AA-guns (???) I knocked out on my first run to the left of the field!
EDIT3: Seven years after this we got IL2... There was a bit of Mores law with real results for simmers back then!
EDIT4: And no - i did not turn on anti aliasing for the shot



Did it really look this bad? Yes it did, but we thought it looked splendid then and I remember no one whining of the tracers - rather the opposite First time playing it with a G940 at least that works fine in DOSBox if you disconnect the throttle and pedals that get mixed up otherwise

Added a shot from the side so the high fidelity ballistic modelling can be seen:

[Upthair]

Originally Posted by lbuchele

Bullets doesn't have an "S" trajectory, right?
This kind of "snake" effect is only a visual effect caused by a shaking gun camera doing the register at the moment of firing.
So,that tracer effect in WOP is totally wrong from a real world physics point of view.

I was just going to say that. The guns shake when firing, causing the camera to shake and, in turn, causing the tracers to "shake" in the film.

[Koyan]

Originally Posted by mazex

...Did it really look this bad? Yes it did, but we thought it looked splendid then and I remember no one whining of the tracers - rather the opposite

If those tracers were 2 pixels wide there would be a lot of whining... Silently, at home... no internet forums yet.

[Heliocon]

Yea, I found the WOP tracers are very good and not zig zaggy in game. I am fine with straight tracers as long as they use the correct lighting (I am not sure if the tracer round is bright because of heat or fluourescence but it "emits" light so should be bright.
As long as it doesnt look like I am shooting star wars laser beams... But it should be a "streak" not a "bar" although in a ss we dont get a sense of speed so its hard to tell. WOP did a very good job on the trails except they seem to be smoke trails which in reality they arent. Its the bullet compressing / warping the air which creates a "whirl as spotters call it I believe". So when the bullet first leaves the gun there maybe should be slightly darker trail but after that it needs to leave a ripple, imagine with dx11 shooting through smoke or clouds and having the bullets stir it up?

[Upthair]

Originally Posted by Biggs

well actually now that i think of it.. the only reason why we know about squiggles is because of the rigid gun cam mountings which transferred the vibrations really well, whereas a human's eye is not mounted to his skull, but cradled in a cushion of fat (IIRC).... and therefore wouldn't see the tracers as squiggles... but straight lines.

And perhaps the biggest reason is this: the vibration of the fuselage of the aircraft is negligible compared to that of the gun camera, which was usually fitted in the wing during WWII (the explanation involves a lot of physics). And if the fuselage does not vibrate, the seat of the pilot, and therefore the pilot, does not either.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Koyan

If those tracers were 2 pixels wide there would be a lot of whining... Silently, at home... no internet forums yet.

We used newsgroups back then which came long before the web, but with the same basic functionality like these forums (and the same trolls and flamings). I have found posts from me from 1994 discussing other games (as Google have indexed the old newsgroups) but not regarding 1942 though

Here is a post I found searching the old favorite rec.aviation.simulators regarding which is the best sim from 1994 where the tough demand on 8mb for best experience regarding 1942 is mentioned I don't agree with him - I would have said Aces over Europe back then

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...dc155e88c28540

And here we have a classic "when is the patch coming" post regarding 1942 from 1994:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...836aa146f71ee8

[Erkki]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

As long as it doesnt look like I am shooting star wars laser beams...

Where do you think George Lucas got the idea?

Thats it. Thats how they look IRL. They do lose speed and fly a curved path, though, and the "bars" are short enough to appear as dots looking from behind.

[T}{OR]

Originally Posted by kirq

Let's wait and see. No need to worry, if tracers will disappoint us I believe they will be replaced by modders witin few months If moded IL Sturmovik 1946 can look like this, imagine how CoD will look with couple mods.

That is based on the presumption that you will be able to modify this in CoD.