Remove no tracers option?

[kozhedub]

After flying with it for a day or two now don't see much difference.

Suppose it would be different if I were using banks of .50s and blazing away at 500m+

[oboe]

Originally posted by Stoney74
I've watched thousands of M2 .50 cal ball rounds go down range, and during the daytime, you cannot seem them.  At night you cannot see them.  You can easily see hits against metal, but no other indication of fire, other than the muzzle flash and report of firing.  There is a small amount of smoke and gas that exit the barrel, but for a plane flying a couple hundred mph, all of that is quickly dissipated.  

Furthermore, in a cockpit with a 2000 HP motor rumbling and vibrating away, especially at combat power settings, you're barely going to be able to hear the radio, much less the sound of near misses whizzing past your cockpit.

I'd love to have a "last 50 rpg tracer" option, but definitely want the ability to fly with the first 350 rpg being invisible.

Thanks for posting this Stoney; this was exactly the kind of first hand experience I was hoping to hear about.  I am reassured that AH's tracerless option is correctly modelled after reading your account.

Wonder if the no tracers option would be make more sense to be offered in the hangar where you are selecting your loadout though, instead of under the flight preferences section.

Shuckins, I'm not sure what you are talking about; I think you must've  misunderstood the post.

[Saxman]

Tracers as a hangar option, rather than interface, has been asked for repeatedly. I'd love to see it.

I do wonder how round visibility compares with the US .50cal API round, as opposed to the standard ball.

[AWwrgwy]

"Sometimes you miss with the first bullets and the tracers give you away"
Colonel Francis Gabreski

Gabreski, having seen tracers on his last burst, indicating he was about to run out of ammo, didnt pursue.


Did pilots like the tracers or did some not use them?

Every third round was a tracer round and most pilots he new used them. However they were not used to aim. The tracer round always had less of an arc than the actual bullet. So if the pilot aimed using the tracers the bullets would all miss. A good pilot used the gun sight and always waited till they were at close range.

interview with Franz Stigler


wrngway

[Stoney74]

Originally posted by Saxman
I do wonder how round visibility compares with the US .50cal API round, as opposed to the standard ball.

Well, I'm starting to go outside of my breadth of knowledge here, but from what I understand, the tracers loaded were standard .50 cal tracer, and the API was not a tracer round.  Therefore, the API should "look" the same as a ball round.  So, for example, a 5 and 1 load of API would still only have the tracer round as the visibile round.

I've never seen API fired on a M2; however, I have seen 20mm HEI fired from a Cobra, 20mm (F-16/18), 25mm (AV8), 30mm (A10) HE, and whatever the AC-130 40mm round is (some sort of anti-personnel round?), fired from fixed wing and you don't see them until impact.