After reading some write-ups on the subject I tried to fly with tracers turned off.
I have about 10 months of experience in AH now but I think a lot of people I see on-line fly more in a month than I do in a year… Nevertheless I'm not a newbie anymore and am still getting better. I also seek ways of improving myself, like flying fighters I can't really seem to get to grips with and of course switching off tracers.
After a weekend without tracers I don't really see any difference in succes rate yet. What I noticed though that although I tend to 'miss' the visual help tracers provide, I compensate by getting a bit closer and aim better. What's the most surprising thing to me is that I simply do not use the gunsight. A potential target is always maneuvering and so is your own aircraft. There seems to be some internal algorithm at work that tries to compensate and compute lead. Therefore looking at the target instead of the gunsight seems to work better for me.
Still, when spraying a bit during high deflection shots I still miss tracers (and that P-38 I only got smoking yesterday and killed me instead ). I know that in real life tracers have different ballistics than ordinary rounds. Is this modelled in Aces High?