taka taka taka taka taka ...

you're dead.

Serves you right for studying those streaks instead of your tail.
This has to be the umpteenth thread on this over-taxed subject. It isn't likely to change. Check the other threads.

Ahh, Ok thankyou for enlightening me on that. could still argue it should be present in game.

Yes I agree, but the warbird itself is certainly not firmly fixed and would vibrate quite a lot (even the airframe itself can and will flex) especially when firing heavier calibre cannons and such. Like I say is very apparent in not just a few but every single piece of gun camera footage you can find. The rounds should spread more. ATM they don't seem to spread at all, or just barely. I guess this could be a flight model issue though as opposed to a bullet model. Maybe the plane just needs to shake more...

No, really? I'm not getting that, could you explain it again? no need to be patronising SYN_Bliss. Even you must admit that they are too long though.


All rounds arc in reality its due to gravity and friction. As the friction with air slows the round down, gravity changes its trajectory more and more. No fired round ever followed a straight line. ever. period. Across a distance of more than a few hundred yards, this would be apparent, particularly looking down the direction of travel, unless you have a very high muzzle velocity then it would take a greater distance, but still.

I'm getting personal because no matter what I show or tell you, you still don't listen.

Take a light source, say a laser pen light with a room full of smoke and point it towards something 5 ft away in a fixed position, so you can see the beam of light. Now have this light pattern repeat very rapidly. As this light source is switched on and off it will not matter one IOTA where you are standing or viewing the light. It will always be in a straight line UNLESS, you got hit by a freight train or decided to pull a few G's out of your butt while standing still. Your eye's WILL ALWAYS SEE THIS LINE AS STRAIGHT.

That is simple physics. You may see the line shorter or at a different angle depending on your viewing angle but viewing the trajectory of said moving object that produces the light trajectory will always be viewed in the in the same direction and trajectory that said object is traveling. (UNLESS as stated above)

If you can't understand that, then you need to take a remedial science class. Or you could quite simply fire and observe 1000's of rounds of tracer ammunition from fixed and high speed moving positions.

You'd be surprised at how little shake a .303 round would have on an being fired from a heavy warbird let alone just hip firing that same machine gun.



Actually, in same cases, they may be too short, but I think what they have now is good middle ground.




Now this is patronizing, but has nothing to do with the discussion. The only point of the arc we care about is the miniscule amount that you'll actually see while a tracer is moving (which funny enough, you can't even see!). If you only see a 5ft section of movement till it disappears from leaving the weapon to out of visual range,.,... that 5ft section (streak of light) following the round will always appear perfectly straight because in the short time frame of the tracer you see (5ft) the trajectory drop is so insignificant it's not even worth mentioning.

This is true. If viewed long enough, it would be apparent that the trajectory of the bullet is curved (due to gravity).

However, the tracers in this game burn out mostly between 300 - 500 yards. During this initial distance, the tracers should appear roughly in a straight line. Even a .303 round (small fry in this sim) has sufficient energy to maintain a relatively flat flight path over the comparatively small distances they were used in by the RAF.

I think there is a tracer round that burns up to 800 yards, but I haven't tried it in game.

Anyway, it's a trifling point. The tracers in game do their job. I'm not too bothered if there are any inaccuracies. I'd much prefer them to fix the sound issues etc! ;)

that, with respect, is just plain wrong... the MKI Eyeball has no shutter and sees in fluid capture.

you run a CRT monitor refreshrate at (min) 60 Hz and FPS (similar to a shutter but in reverse, to avoid getting eyestrain/ headache from the flickering screen


actually, the stream will arc physically if the barrel tip is being moved about at a great manner, such as in deflection shooting, or "hosing" down a target with a GAU... but only in relation to the round fired immediately after (the same as "hosing" off the front path and seeing what the water stream does as the nozzle is moved about) But, in any case, the tracers still are straight and the round still flies straight (taking into account, as mentioned earlier, gravity, projectile launch power, and atmospheric conditions)

Yes. That's why I said equivalent of shutterspeed...

And 60 Hz is used as that is the limit of human "shutterspeed", 1/60 s.

The thing is that under the right circumstances the light streak will bend. And as with all tracer streaks it's not really happening but is only an illusion that occurs in the eye of the beholder so to speak.

No one is talking about bullet trajectory - the trajectory could be straight as a laser, the discussed effect would still occur.

And unless you have experience flying an aircraft and firing loads of tracers in sharp turns any amount of firing tracers from fixed positions will not get you to observe the phenomenon, so that experience is for this discussion completely inconsequential.

I for one would really like to see the effect in the game as it would probably look really good from external views.

There is no "equivalent" to shutterspeed or anything like your train of thought there, yellonet, for the human eye. The human eye does not have a shutter.
All that lovely flowing milk, etc, you see in tv adverts, is usually shot at up around 300 ~ 500 frames/ second and sync'd.
Light doesn't bend, except supposedly under extreme magnetic influence... you're confusing afterimage in relation to the eye and the round's velocity... as for the human eye can following the round, I have seen Samurai slice an oncoming bullet in half with a katana but that is in an exceptional circumstance after dedicated training.

the tracer streak doesn't bend, twist, distort or anything, yellonet... the stream does, but not the individual streaks

A Laser beam is physical, tracer streak is not, it's an effect. You cannot compare. As you already said, tracer rounds are dots not beams of light. Different.

You need to take the basic science class not me. If the tracer left a trail of smoke that would be straight no matter what becuse it actually exists. Tracer streak can only exist when it's being viewed. It's not 'there' all the time. It's a dot, or is it a circle or is it 2 circles on top of each other?

You are all over the place. Trajectory is an objects path in a 3d space and we're not dealing in 3d.

Have you ever seen the wobbly pencil trick where you take a real pencil and move it up and down in such a way that it appears to bend? It must be real magic to you...