I just finished testing from 4000 into 1200 at roughly 1000 yard changes for each shooting session. I filmed it all and looked at the shots from the tank drones I targeted. Most of the shots I did from inside trees then one out in the open at 2500 on a slope above the targeted tank drones. 4000yds is about 2.25 miles. Between 4000 and 1200 you need to be looking at the flash as it happens or you will miss it at those ranges. Parking my tank inside of trees did not eliminate the brightness of the flash, it narrowed the size slightly, as for smoke, what smoke. When a tank is hidden in trees or bushes, you may well be looking in the wrong direction most of the time when you are fired at. For two years I've flown storch for many tank battles and I hear the same complaint all the time that the hidden tank was never seen. And that was part of the time I vectored my guy onto it's position.
At 4000 yards a 20ft diameter blob of flash will be 4 pixels wide. At 2500 yards it will be 42pixels wide. Not so good in a world that follows the real world physics reasonably well. In this world 1Mil = 2pixel. And 20ft is awfully tiny until about 1000yds.
Just like in the MA when I sat at the drone tank's position during the film playback. If you are not looking at the origin of the flash when it happens, or get a look at the tracer over it's full path. You are stuck waiting for the next round and hoping you have guessed right for the direction based on the impact crater or where your tank was hit. In the two films I slowed down the firing of the cannons and we do get a 20ft diameter initial flash which rapidly shrinks like real life.
I looked at WW2 photos and our firing flash is about the same diameter but way too uniform in shape for a mass of burning gas, it's a game. I looked at modern films of restored tanks and there is almost no flash but lots of white smoke. I will venture civilian entities have restrictions to the composition of rounds that can be fired from WW2 relics. WW2 photos show 20ft diameter flashes that dissipate quickly and a small amount of smoke due to the round loaded with smokeless powder. WW2 photos from tank firing ranges show great quantities of smoke and not as much fireball. Training rounds seem to produce smoke.
So is this wish really asking Hitech to penalize players who have put the time into learning how to hide their tank to ambush you? Why else would you ask for a giant neon sign over them each time they fired? I can believe the sentiment since I've had players demand I build terrains with no trees so they can see other tanks to shoot them. I would love to do that since I like shooting tanks from an IL2. In the end everyone would loose as fighting in tanks on a grass only terrain would become instant death by bomb.
Unfortunately the AH tank game is horrendously brutal in AH3 due to the Speedtree tree and clutter. That is why I did a lot to my three terrains to make tank combat a bit easier.
Here, download this offline only terrain and put the extracted file in the ah3terr folder. Then choose it for offline play. Fill the drone slots with tanks, then spawn N or E to the firing ranges where you will have 6 tank drones to shoot at from 4000 in as close as you want. Even film it to see things from the target drone's perspective. Like the hot ACM guys film their fights to see what is really going on. Spawn S in a wirble with planes in the drone slots and have fun as the drone fly as close as 800 to you.
Download: ====>
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i3N1PhAckNls_53ZA4hHPk5UnGK4jY-W/view?usp=sharing
