Friday 2010-07-23 Dev. update and Discussions

[JVM]

@kgwanchos

I am not lecturing Oleg, I do not have this pretention...I explain for the people who are not aware of these aspects...the tracer issue was already there in Il2...the screen shot is not taken using a camera and should show the tracer for the dots they are, nothing else...but this is only my opinion!

@swiss

I agree but do not forget they were less tracers in WWII than nowadays (presumably tracers were more expensive?) and the rates of fire were also lower so the tracers were more clearly separated! Did you see this tracer firing directly IRL, without a camera intermediary?
At altitude you should not be able (or barely) to see tracers if fired toward you from in front of you (almost no light scattering compared to lower atmospheric layers close to the ground). In Il2 you see tracers from 10 km away like they were fireworks!

I understand however there may be compelling reasons to not being completely faithful to reality on this subject, but I prefer pointing it out now than after the game release..you never know!

[HFC_Dolphin]

Thanks for the update.
One note though: I guess explosions/fires are not final, right?
They don't look that good yet. Too red maybe? I don't know what seems wrong to me, but I think you should work more on them.

Once again, thanks!

Edit: Just saw that other guys mentioned fires as well.

[IceFire]

The age old tracers debate

So long as they are useful to me as a simulator pilot I'm not going to complain too much. I hope everyone remembers that tracers look like lasers because we all saw StarWars at some point or another and StarWars is based on World War II air combat videos. Real laser beams travel at the speed of light in a continuous stream rather than defined pulses like a tracer (but unlike StarWars).

The pictures themselves look great. I think it's sometimes silly to complain about the visuals of an explosion until it's seen in motion. Often the various frames of an animation have an overall effect that cannot be seen from a single frame.

[TUSA/TX-Gunslinger]

Thanks Oleg!

Amazing as always. Wishing you good luck in the final efforts of finishing!

S!

Gunny

[erco]

Enjoy your vacation Oleg!

I hope Luthier is OK.

Great work!

[Thunderbolt56]

This thing isn't out yet?

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by IceFire

The age old tracers debate

So long as they are useful to me as a simulator pilot I'm not going to complain too much. I hope everyone remembers that tracers look like lasers because we all saw StarWars at some point or another and StarWars is based on World War II air combat videos. Real laser beams travel at the speed of light in a continuous stream rather than defined pulses like a tracer (but unlike StarWars).

The pictures themselves look great. I think it's sometimes silly to complain about the visuals of an explosion until it's seen in motion. Often the various frames of an animation have an overall effect that cannot be seen from a single frame.

This. The pictures look excellent once again and I especially love the battle damage with the torn cloth. Awesome detail.

On tracers....didn't different countries use different tracers? I've never seen it modeled in a game that I can remember (did not play IL2 so can't comment there), but gun camera footage from German planes tends to show "smoke trails" on the tracers.

Here is a cool quote from 5ad.org:

"It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th found with a tracer round to aid in aiming. That was a mistake. The tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target, 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet, the tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. That was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down."

I'm not sure how one would lead another aircraft without tracers though, I know I couldn't lol.

Pie in the sky here, but one thing that would be a great addition in the sim is the option to load out and sight your guns to your own preference. I know some pilots wanted all of their bullets to pass through a single point at a given distance while others wanted a spread. Others used a combination. They also ran combinations of tracer, AP, and incendiary ronuds.

Anyway, GREAT photos, can't wait!

Splitter

[ECV56_Lancelot]

Originally Posted by Splitter

On tracers....didn't different countries use different tracers? I've never seen it modeled in a game that I can remember (did not play IL2 so can't comment there), but gun camera footage from German planes tends to show "smoke trails" on the tracers.

Il-2 have´s diferent color tracers according to country and ammo since the original IL-2 release.
Green tracers from I-16 and I-15 have been an issue because they do look too much like taken from Star Wars. But nobody researched seriously if they look and are realistic, only judge if they like it or not, like here.
Still, tracers should be judged only from ingame video, not by screenshots, they can be very deceiving on an screenshot. And also they look very diferent when saw from a distance (like small lines moving fast) or from behind when you fire them (like dots), but it seems most people do not realize that.
Also, if tracers give away your position and all that, its another subject, they were used and were an standar part of the ammo loadout, so they should be there. Even if some pilots or squadron preferred not to use them. Or else provide data that the real policy of the RAF or Lufftwaffe was to not use tracers.

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by IceFire

The age old tracers debate

So long as they are useful to me as a simulator pilot I'm not going to complain too much. I hope everyone remembers that tracers look like lasers because we all saw StarWars at some point or another and StarWars is based on World War II air combat videos. Real laser beams travel at the speed of light in a continuous stream rather than defined pulses like a tracer (but unlike StarWars).

The pictures themselves look great. I think it's sometimes silly to complain about the visuals of an explosion until it's seen in motion. Often the various frames of an animation have an overall effect that cannot be seen from a single frame.

This. The pictures look excellent once again and I especially love the battle damage with the torn cloth. Awesome detail.

On tracers....didn't different countries use different tracers? I've never seen it modeled in a game that I can remember (did not play IL2 so can't comment there), but gun camera footage from German planes tends to show "smoke trails" on the tracers.

Here is a cool quote from 5ad.org:

"It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th found with a tracer round to aid in aiming. That was a mistake. The tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target, 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet, the tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. That was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down."

I'm not sure how one would lead another aircraft without tracers though, I know I couldn't lol.

Pie in the sky here, but one thing that would be a great addition in the sim is the option to load out and sight your guns to your own preference. I know some pilots wanted all of their bullets to pass through a single point at a given distance while others wanted a spread. Others used a combination. They also ran combinations of tracer, AP, and incendiary ronuds.

Anyway, GREAT photos, can't wait!

Splitter

[swiss]

Originally Posted by JVM

Did you see this tracer firing directly IRL, without a camera intermediary?

IRL?

Yes, with my own eyes, no camera or night vision device.

At altitude you should not be able (or barely) to see tracers if fired toward you from in front of you

Of course not.
Well I guess, in fact i cant tell - I've never been in this position I really never want to...

My 45° agrees are based on 0° when directly behind/gunner sight.

In Il2 you see tracers from 10 km away like they were fireworks!

Of course, but since we have no recon maps or radio contact to ground units, this is our only way of recon.

Real laser beams travel at the speed of light in a continuous stream rather than defined pulses like a tracer (but unlike StarWars)

Check out Babylon 5.