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

[Wolf_Rider]

Originally Posted by PLebre

Hi,


A shaking effect will be more than well come in my opinion, it will help the immersion, I belive that those planes did shake a lot on certain condition like firing heavy guns and starting engines.
Something like head shaking effect seeing on Sim Racing games.

A good mod it's always welcome, and you are free to use it or not.

Regards

P.S. I am off to check Arma2 tracers.

Edited: Ups, just notice, the planes do shake when firing and when engine run bad. It was a long time I didn't fire my CofD.
Anyway it could be a more foreshadowed effect, helped with some sounds.

Real life rounds fly (shoot) straight though, they don't wobble about... its the camera doing the recording which is shaking (more like vibrating).
The kind of thing you're talking about would be like driving over deep corrugations on a dirt road

[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.

[Mysticpuma]

In which case (and very well put) maybe one of the camera views should have a "Gun Camera" option for replay so that the vibration, squiggle, wobble effect could be seen, but only during replay if it is enabled in the replay gun-camera?

Just a thought and that way there is a best of both worlds as the option is switch-able?

Cheers, MP

BTW, currently the vote pretty much says that no-one likes the current effect, but as we don't hear anything from the dev's who knows if there was a point in making a poll?

MP

[Blackdog_kt]

Not really, i do like the current effect even though i want them tweaked. I'll just like it even more if the two tweaks i mentioned are applied, but i don't consider the stock effect an immersion killer because it's the closest to reality i've ever seen.

As such, i consider it the most acceptable effect so far in my time of flight simming (in terms of closeness to reality) and it's the reason i didn't vote (i don't 100% agree with any of the poll's options).

I do agree though that having extra options to please everyone would be best in the long run. Maybe in the future we'll have a toggle in the graphics options, cinematic vs realistic effects and/or a gun camera feature that will simulate the camera induced wobble effect and play back in black and white at 1/4 - 1/2 speed like it used to be in the real ones.

[CharveL]

Sorry about all the effort everyone is putting into splitting the hairs of perception but we are not looking at the sim in a holodeck.

We're looking at it on a flat screen. In other words we ARE seeing a camera representation of the world along with sun flare effects, somewhat less than realistic land, plane, sky, etc. textures and models, all by necessity.

All these things are, by necessity, interpreted for representation on a screen under the limitations of performance and technology. Is there room for improvement? Yeah, for sure, and I'll help carry the flag but even though we want realism - even the most hardcore amongst us draws the line somewhere because ultimately it has to be enjoyable.

Since we can't have perfect physics modeling of a bullet with all of it's individual physical properties and characteristics anyway, why not get it as close as feasible and elaborate on the effects just a bit?

[TheEditor]

Screenshot or Vid?

[II./JG1_Wilcke]

To get an idea of what were dealing with just take a look at a .303, .50 and a 20mm aviation type round, look at the base of the projectile and you will see the area available to setup the tracing material. Its pretty small in diameter. So that will give you a rough approximation of how 'thick' the tracing should be in game.

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.

The military folks and hobbyists that have fired a variety of tracing ammo through various automatic weapons will know what we are talking about here.

[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.

[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.