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

[Wolf_Rider]

Originally Posted by II./JG1_Wilcke

As for the 20mm cannon ammo, yes the barrels were rifled. Oh and projectiles do not fly in a straight line the definitely follow a curved flight path affected by ballistics and gravity. Bullet design, along with muzzle velocity also affect how flat the barrel will shoot; but there is always an arc that intersects the line of sight twice.

true, the round does "arc" (depth of arc depending on various conditions present and how much bang went into pushing it out the barrel) but in that arc they fly straight... they don't wobble about like seen in guncam footage.

[Iamsnip]

Just wanted to say that the title of this topic made me lulz - IMO the nicest (although it may be incorrect) tracers that I've seen in game were in B17 the old microprose game - esp in fighter.

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by bw_wolverine

With regards to the 'shaking' effect. I discovered a simple little experiment that might help explain what people are talking about with regard to the human eye 'smoothing' it out.

If you're in a car, look at the car in front of you. Is it bouncing around? Certainly the car you're in is vibrating and shifting with road condition, etc. Maybe the car in front is going over bumps and such, but it's not 'shakey' in how it appears to you.

Now look at the car behind you in the rear view mirror. Notice anything different? The car viewed through the mirror, no matter how hard you try to focus or whatever will look more 'shakey', like it's vibrating. Both the car in front and the car behind are being subjected to the identical conditions of the road, so why do they appear different? I believe this is because the view that you're getting of that car is 'fixed' (the mirror) instead of the view of the car ahead of you (your eyes) as mentioned by a few people about guncameras being fixed positions. Someone said in this thread that the human eye has great anti-shake software. It's quite true.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is similar to the effect produced by filming the bullets rather than viewing them live.

This is a very easy experiment. I encourage everyone to try it if you are in any way invested in this argument. It's interesting to think about anyway.

Well I dont know if this is what you mean but when you look at a car infront of you, your brain automatically has your eyes track the object and compensate for relative movement (eyes following the car). Also vibrations are reduced by your body. However when you look at the car in the mirror behind you, you are looking at the car's image in the mirror. Therefore when your car vibrates the mirror does too, while your eyes are focused on the car behind, which makes the image of the car in the mirror move relative to the mirrors position and therefore since your eyes are compensating for the car's reflection movement and not the mirror, the mirror obviously vibrates. You would get the opposite effect in extreme situations if you looked at a part of the mirror that had black tape on it, so you would be following the mirror but see the car in your perepheral vision behind you can be seen to move more since you are not focused on it.

Basically the eye picks out an object for you to see, while a camera sees everything "equally" and does not track objects like an eye does.

[klem]

Originally Posted by pupaxx

I think they should be more similar to this:

anyway, too much faultless lasergun-looking 4 me. i don't know how they appears in RL, all I know is what I see in vids and films and the well discussed technical implication of filming (what u see is what a camera 'electronically' sees)
Cheers

Thats the last time I go to a boot sale!

[ATAG_Bliss]

Originally Posted by winny

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.

Except your whole argument is flawed. The tracers appear as streaks of light, offset of the weapon, because the speed of the round produces a streak of light. It doesn't matter where you are positioned one IOTA. That streak of light coincides DIRECTLY with the path of the bullet being fired and your perception is such. The only time you will ever see dots is if you are directly behind the weapon being fired. Your perception may change if you are trying to focus on a single round being fired, but the game shows tracer rounds as if you are focusing on the target you are firing at (which is exactly what you should be doing 100% of the time when you fire a weapon).

As someone who specifically trains the special forces on weapons, even more specifically, machine guns, I've seen and fired more rounds of various amounts of ammunition in a single work day than most will ever in their whole life. I know EXACTLY what they look like being fired from virtually every type of situation.

The tracers in game look fine. You're used to Hollywood effects. Stop thinking that you want to focus a specific round. You never do that when you are firing a weapon and that is the ONLY way what you are saying would EVER happen. And that's why your arguments over at SimHq about staring at a flashlight,pen, candle and waving it around don't hold any water. Once you realize that you don't focus on what's coming out of the weapon, but instead, the target you are firing at, it should start making sense to you.

What we have in game can never be truly 100% accurate simply because the game is shown across a 2d screen in the same exact fashion as a video camera. If you are looking down the sights on a target, virtually everything else is not in focus. In an airplane this effect is much much less, but still present. The game has 100% of your viewing angle perfectly focused all the time, but as stated over at SimHq, this is simply because of hardware limitations. But what we have now, is more correct that some zig zag bs tracer that you want from a movie. Star Wars at least got them right. And if you didn't know "the blaster" in Star Wars came about after watching tracer ammunition. It's modeled directly from a tracer round. So when someone says star wars tracer rounds, I laugh and think to myself, this is actually a compliment.

[PissyChrissy]

Originally Posted by machoo

I don't care what experts say. The tracers should have a squiggle like on Tv. Why? Because you are pressing a button that vibrates the crap out of your body , the aircraft is vibrating , the perspex would be vibrating.

It just makes sense.

Incorrect. They "squiggle" in gun camera videos because the camera is bolted hard to the aircraft, and there's metal-on-metal connection all the way between the guns and the optics, which ends up transferring the vibrations to the lens.

For humans, there is a lot of meat and cartilage absorbing the vibrations long before they can ever reach your eyeball.

I've fired many rounds from the 25mm bushmaster M242 in a LAV turret, and i can tell you first hand, that when you watch tracers go downrange through the optics, they squiggle, but when you pup your head out of the turret and watch with the naked eye, they do not. This is simple fact.

[winny]

Originally Posted by SYN_Bliss

Except your whole argument is flawed. The tracers appear as streaks of light, offset of the weapon, because the speed of the round produces a streak of light. It doesn't matter where you are positioned one IOTA. That streak of light coincides DIRECTLY with the path of the bullet being fired and your perception is such. The only time you will ever see dots is if you are directly behind the weapon being fired. Your perception may change if you are trying to focus on a single round being fired, but the game shows tracer rounds as if you are focusing on the target you are firing at (which is exactly what you should be doing 100% of the time when you fire a weapon).

As someone who specifically trains the special forces on weapons, even more specifically, machine guns, I've seen and fired more rounds of various amounts of ammunition in a single work day than most will ever in their whole life. I know EXACTLY what they look like being fired from virtually every type of situation.

The tracers in game look fine. You're used to Hollywood effects. Stop thinking that you want to focus a specific round. You never do that when you are firing a weapon and that is the ONLY way what you are saying would EVER happen. And that's why your arguments over at SimHq about staring at a flashlight,pen, candle and waving it around don't hold any water. Once you realize that you don't focus on what's coming out of the weapon, but instead, the target you are firing at, it should start making sense to you.

What we have in game can never be truly 100% accurate simply because the game is shown across a 2d screen in the same exact fashion as a video camera. If you are looking down the sights on a target, virtually everything else is not in focus. In an airplane this effect is much much less, but still present. The game has 100% of your viewing angle perfectly focused all the time, but as stated over at SimHq, this is simply because of hardware limitations. But what we have now, is more correct that some zig zag bs tracer that you want from a movie. Star Wars at least got them right. And if you didn't know "the blaster" in Star Wars came about after watching tracer ammunition. It's modeled directly from a tracer round. So when someone says star wars tracer rounds, I laugh and think to myself, this is actually a compliment.

My argument is not flawed, you just don't get it.

It is a physical impossibility for a point of light that is moving away from you, whilst you are moving left to right, to trace a straight line over your retina. Explain to me how they would stay straight if you are so sure. Like I said cods light trails always stay at 180 degrees to the line of flight. If you actually bothered to work this out you'd realise that a light trail always has to be at 180 degrees to the 'percieved' movement. It's a very subtle difference.

Again, the tracers in cod (and most games) behave as if they have a physical tail. They dont. The tail only exists in the eye and it would be impossible to keep every round in focus if you were looking through the sight with an infinite focal depth, like in CoD. Therefore the path they trace over your eye would only be perfectly straight if you were still. It's a simple fact.

[robtek]

Winny,
the speed difference between the bullet and the possibly highest lateral movement make the distortion you are trying to describe so minuscule that it is so unimportant to waste even 1 computing cycle on it.

[winny]

Originally Posted by robtek

Winny,
the speed difference between the bullet and the possibly highest lateral movement make the distortion you are trying to describe so minuscule that it is so unimportant to waste even 1 computing cycle on it.

You are thinking outside the eye.

It only takes a very small movement for this effect to happen. The speed of the bullet is irrelevant. It's all about relative speed across the retina. regardless of actual speed (which is the reason that tracer coming in from the side appear to have a longer tail), they move across the retina quicker than ones moving away from you.

Again, this effect does not hapen anywhere except in the eye. Any movement of the head/eye/aircraft will effect it.

To understand this you need to stop thinking in 3d, tracer light trails are a 2d effect on the back of the eye, like a pen on paper. They are not affected by perspective.

To say that the effect is miniscule is missing the point, if the tail appears to be 2 feet long or 22 feet long it should still be aligned to the relative movement over the 2d image in the back of the eye, not the actual movement in 3D space.

As for wasting cycles.. That's what they are doing now, by drawing in 3d bars of light.

I'm no games designer and this may actually be horrendously difficult but..

Surley it would be lighter on resources to simply not render the tracer in 3D but to draw them in as a 2D overlay, with the tail at 180 degrees to the movement across the eye/screen? ie. treat it exactly as it is, instead of rendering a 3d bar of light that doesn't actually exist anywhere except inside your eye.

[Mysticpuma]

The problem I have with the current effect is the thickness and also the tracer is always perfect. I never see any randomness in the bullet decay or fade as it falls away, they all burn perfectly, almost like switching 'realistic gunnery' off in IL2:1946. There needs to be variation in the animation. MP