Friday update and duscussions 2011-02-18

[Strike]

As much as this tracertalk has been debated, I think I'd like to chip in my 2 cents or rather, my experience on firing tracermunitions.

I fired 7.62x51mm ammunition from a H&K AG-3 (Norwegian version of G3A3 with some small improvements). That's relatively close to our BOB type spitfire/hurricane/blenheim whatnot ammo.

My opinion is that when firing a shot, the tracer burns in the "wake" of the projectile, and in reality it's our own eye that cannot capture the small lightsource with enough speed. So that what we see is a "laser" because the lightsource is blurred. I have never seen a twitching twirling zigzag tracer like we see in guncam videos because the bullet DOES NOT zigzag. However, a zigzag effect would be natural for the human eye to see if the eye is vibrating. That is, if your body is vibrating because you're firing 8x guns from a hurri or spit, or in turbulence or just shaking cause engine is going max rpm or something. I think shaking tracers are REALISTIC for guncams, and for a shaking aircraft, BUT the thing that bothers me the most with the screenies is the "Girth" of the tracer. It's too fat. I shot tracers during the night, and we had illumination rockets/flares over the targets so that the tracers seemed thin, but bright orange/red. However in the pause when the illumination rocket burned out, and the next was being prepared, the tracers apperad MUCH larger, longer and fatter because they were the only light source and kindof "blinded" us. In daytime however, tracers do still look like lasers, but are much thinner and stick less out. I think these tracers look ideal for night conditions, but not daytime.

Here is what I in real-life can relate to and say "Ah, that's just like what I experienced with my own eyes".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juUJdzFFORs

The first being seen through NVGs, the tracers seem to "Glow" much more because of the surrounding darkness and sensitive NVGs. - thats how they appeared to me too without nvg in pitch black darkness... glowing orange lasers from starwars!!

and then daytime without nvg.. much thinner, slim tracers, to the eye they appear to be about 2-3 m long, whilst in reality it's only a small light in the rear of the bullet. If however, you are firing tracers and looking down your ironsights, they appear to be small "orbs" that slightly fall down until they ricochet off the ground and again appear to be about 2-3 meters long. So when firing a tracer round, with your eye at the same level of the bullet trajectory, it only looks like a small glowing ball.. but seeing the tracers from the guy next to me, they look extremely long coming out of the barrel, and then they look shorter and shorter the further away they are, until they ricochet off the ground and fly upwards... so it's all because of the BLUR of the human eye.. I HOPE that's what Oleg is doing with this game. Letting motionblur decide how tracers look that is the most realistic approach to it then tracer length would depend on bullet speed too which is realistic!!

I'm really excited about the "ball" tracers we have. Let the graphics card make it blurred that way, detecting tracers being fired at you is harder when looking forwards, than when looking at your 3 and 9 O'clock because then they will look long as they're wizzing by!!

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by Strike

So when firing a tracer round, with your eye at the same level of the bullet trajectory, it only looks like a small glowing ball.. but seeing the tracers from the guy next to me, they look extremely long coming out of the barrel, and then they look shorter and shorter the further away they are, until they ricochet off the ground and fly upwards... so it's all because of the BLUR of the human eye.

Interesting observation.

On the Hurricane the inboard guns are about (very roughly) 1.8m (6') from the centerline of the plane. Hopefully these will look different (from the pilots perspective) in operation than the nose cowling guns on the Me109!

Cheers!

[winny]

Here's what OM said about shutter speeds etc..

Originally Posted by Oleg Maddox

You are prefectly right (writing at home already...)
The leight of tracer depending of the sutter speed. As shorter shutter speed - shorter tracer fixed on the image.
If we will have the speed, say for example, 1/100000 sec, then we will see the light of tracer like the exhaust of small jet engine on a fixed image. But in reality the inertion of the human eye/brain is close to shutter speed of 1/125 sec fixing image.

In the beginning we have variable leight of tracers (Roman Denisking did right calculation and programmed it) depending of frame rate (which is really almost the same like shutter speed of camera, iof the frame rate is constant.)... But when we have slow frame rate of the game... the tracers had too great leight.
So now they are fixed as a middle possible for all realistic frame rates and human eye inertion.
You may see we really did the good job of searching and programming for such things...

I think he's saying that a camera running at 125 fps would show the same view as the human eye.

Originally Posted by Strike

As much as this tracertalk has been debated, I think I'd like to chip in my 2 cents or rather, my experience on firing tracermunitions.

I fired 7.62x51mm ammunition from a H&K AG-3 (Norwegian version of G3A3 with some small improvements). That's relatively close to our BOB type spitfire/hurricane/blenheim whatnot ammo.

My opinion is that when firing a shot, the tracer burns in the "wake" of the projectile, and in reality it's our own eye that cannot capture the small lightsource with enough speed. So that what we see is a "laser" because the lightsource is blurred. I have never seen a twitching twirling zigzag tracer like we see in guncam videos because the bullet DOES NOT zigzag. However, a zigzag effect would be natural for the human eye to see if the eye is vibrating. That is, if your body is vibrating because you're firing 8x guns from a hurri or spit, or in turbulence or just shaking cause engine is going max rpm or something. I think shaking tracers are REALISTIC for guncams, and for a shaking aircraft, BUT the thing that bothers me the most with the screenies is the "Girth" of the tracer. It's too fat. I shot tracers during the night, and we had illumination rockets/flares over the targets so that the tracers seemed thin, but bright orange/red. However in the pause when the illumination rocket burned out, and the next was being prepared, the tracers apperad MUCH larger, longer and fatter because they were the only light source and kindof "blinded" us. In daytime however, tracers do still look like lasers, but are much thinner and stick less out. I think these tracers look ideal for night conditions, but not daytime.

Here is what I in real-life can relate to and say "Ah, that's just like what I experienced with my own eyes".

The first being seen through NVGs, the tracers seem to "Glow" much more because of the surrounding darkness and sensitive NVGs. - thats how they appeared to me too without nvg in pitch black darkness... glowing orange lasers from starwars!!

and then daytime without nvg.. much thinner, slim tracers, to the eye they appear to be about 2-3 m long, whilst in reality it's only a small light in the rear of the bullet. If however, you are firing tracers and looking down your ironsights, they appear to be small "orbs" that slightly fall down until they ricochet off the ground and again appear to be about 2-3 meters long. So when firing a tracer round, with your eye at the same level of the bullet trajectory, it only looks like a small glowing ball.. but seeing the tracers from the guy next to me, they look extremely long coming out of the barrel, and then they look shorter and shorter the further away they are, until they ricochet off the ground and fly upwards... so it's all because of the BLUR of the human eye.. I HOPE that's what Oleg is doing with this game. Letting motionblur decide how tracers look that is the most realistic approach to it then tracer length would depend on bullet speed too which is realistic!!

I'm really excited about the "ball" tracers we have. Let the graphics card make it blurred that way, detecting tracers being fired at you is harder when looking forwards, than when looking at your 3 and 9 O'clock because then they will look long as they're wizzing by!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah ! Thank you Strike ! The guy who saw it all for real !
So, to conclude, if the "daytime" tracers were thinner , more like a string of light and getting much shorter with distance, you would say this would be a perfect rendition of what you saw for real ?
And at eye level, we would only see a kind of a "dot"...
Well, I would be happy with that !
Thanks for your input !

Salute !

[Skoshi Tiger]

Also it's the angular distance that the tracer in travels in relation to the observer in that shutter period that determines the apparent length of the tracer.

If you think of the observer at one vertex (A) of a triangle, the position of the tracer when the shutter opens at B and the the position of the tracer when the shutter closes C, then the apparent length is determined by the angle BAC.

Of cource this triagngle is in the 3D space represented the simulation world, but when its plotted on our 2D monitors it will look like line of various lengths determined by the angle.

If your behind the sights that angle would be very small forming a dot in our view, If the guns to either side that angle would be a lot larger forming the laser effect.

Cheers!

[Il2Pongo]

Most stream features on the map would not be visible from such high altitude.
Most of them would not appear blue at all. They might be a shadow in the trees.
Many flight sims seem to do this, grossly exaggerate the visibility of small streams from altitude.

[phoenix1963]

Originally Posted by Il2Pongo

Most stream features on the map would not be visible from such high altitude.
Most of them would not appear blue at all. They might be a shadow in the trees.
Many flight sims seem to do this, grossly exaggerate the visibility of small streams from altitude.

+1

In fact, most streams and rivers (most UK rivers would actually qualify as streams in the rest of the world!) are visible from the air ONLY because of the lines of trees and bushes on their banks. I can see how making those continuous lines or bushes and trees compatible with a tiled landscape is hard, so I sympathise with Oleg & his team.

The rather il2ish landscape is perhaps the least satisfactory aspect of CoD at present, great damage & engine modelling, fm sounds great.

Also, some weather that is better than il2 but not fully dynamic is surely possible.

We only can hope that Oleg & team start getting some revenue in that enables improvement.

56RAF_phoenix

[Il2Pongo]

Originally Posted by phoenix1963

+1

In fact, most streams and rivers (most UK rivers would actually qualify as streams in the rest of the world!) are visible from the air ONLY because of the lines of trees and bushes on their banks. I can see how making those continuous lines or bushes and trees compatible with a tiled landscape is hard, so I sympathise with Oleg & his team.

The rather il2ish landscape is perhaps the least satisfactory aspect of CoD at present, great damage & engine modelling, fm sounds great.

Also, some weather that is better than il2 but not fully dynamic is surely possible.

We only can hope that Oleg & team start getting some revenue in that enables improvement.

56RAF_phoenix

I am not sure on the limitations of tiled landscapes, but a line of shrubs or even something green would be way more imersive then the BIG BLUE LINE they currently render when the map says "creek, stream, river, canal"
Even just shutting off 80% of them in the map would be better then where it is.
I hope at least they shut them off at 5000 feet or so. Seeing the bright glare on dozens of "creeks" at once from altitude(like the recent MS screen shot) would be a shame.

[SlipBall]

Stream's and rivers with their unique shape and flow direction, are needed for navigation. Turn off 80% of them and then wind-up in???

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by Il2Pongo

I am not sure on the limitations of tiled landscapes, but a line of shrubs or even something green would be way more imersive then the BIG BLUE LINE they currently render when the map says "creek, stream, river, canal"
Even just shutting off 80% of them in the map would be better then where it is.
I hope at least they shut them off at 5000 feet or so. Seeing the bright glare on dozens of "creeks" at once from altitude(like the recent MS screen shot) would be a shame.

Well I can see why it's not possible to line up every river with hedges and shrubs (and then roads and railroads on top of that) without any gaps. And I've certainly seen bright reflective surfaces of even narrow rivers from the air more than once (needs the right lighting conditions though).

What I don't get though is the deep blue colour for water. At best the water appears somewhat transparent from the air, and shows the darker riverbed below. Usually though it's simply some muddy brownish-greenish tone. That would also blend a lot better with the landscape.