Tracers Rounds (From SimHQ)

[White Owl]

Without having any sources ready to cite offhand, I know I've read multiple reports from combat pilots who described seeing enemy tracers flying towards them. However you need to bend your understanding of how it works, yes, they are visible from the front.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Vasilj_Mitu

wouldn't that defy the better part of tracer's purpose?

Which purpose?

You use tracers for two reasons:

- mark a target (inf.)
- observe where the bullet goes(tanks, airplanes, inf at night)

And yes, you give away your position.
Even if your target does no observe the tracers, anybody with a slightly different angle will - and ricochets offer a nice firework for everybody.
Oh - and there's the muzzle flash too.

I doubt you will find a unit using tracers for covert ops.

[Erkki]

Originally Posted by Vasilj_Mitu

imho, when Luthier said that the tracers look perfect, I think he wanted people to stop whining about such small detail in that thread. to be quite honest, at that moment I also thought it to be nitpicking and complete waste of time to bitch about it. but when people start to take statements like Luthier's as axiom, without any backing of it... then it's time to start asking questions, no matter how dumb or annoying they might seem. I had some experience with firing the tracers from AK47 during my military service, but I wouldn't call myself an expert on the matter, since that wasn't aerial gunnery. and yes, they looked as group of bright dots in the daylight, without elongated light streaks effect. but, I might be wrong there. where I'm almost positive that I'm not wrong is this:

if we have a random tracer bullet whose construction usually is like this:



meaning, that the tracer mixture is in the recess of it's base. so now, how come that we can see product of that mixture burning when bullet is fired in our direction in COD movies? wouldn't that defy the better part of tracer's purpose?

If you've seen tracers from the side, they're just like in the latest CoD videos. Lasers, that turn down to an arc only further away whilst slowing down. With the yet-to-be-seen mad ricocheting when they hit something. Thats where George Lucas got the idea for the famous Star Wars lasers!