Tracers are not Visible Enough

[phookat]

Originally posted by JTs
from my point of view the tracer looked like a very bright firefly with a rocket strapped to his a**

I think you'll agree that the tracers we have in-game certainly doesn't look like a very bright firefly

Originally posted by JTs
at night the main disadvantage of tracers is they gave away the ambush site and increased the pucker factor.

True.  Even in-game in daylight this applies.

Originally posted by JTs
in ah i still dont use tracers(lol) turn them off and your gunnery will improve.

Before going tracerless, you have to have practiced with tracers on...especially true of big guns, which have poor ballistics *and* very few rounds to experiment with.  So you need to see where the rounds are going to get a feel for the gun.

With big guns and tracers off, I am basically just guessing and getting lucky once in a while--and you really can't learn from that.

[Hack9]

Use the .target xxx, the x's being the distance you want the target at while flying offline.  A classic circle target appears in the North at about your flying altitude and you can practice your gunnery with or without tracers.  

I originally turned off the tracers in the game for two reasons:

1) the smoke and tracers were distracting due to the cone-like dispersion of the rounds fired.  (you'll really see how much lead goes flying around in places other than where you are aiming when you use the offline target since the holes show up nicely against the white background)

2) I don't have the best computer system for running the game, and I experienced a lag in frame rate when firing (thanks to the already graphically intense tracers that we do have)...which often would cause me to miss horribly beyond my already terrible gunnery.

After using the .target command, I discovered my guesswork with the various calibre guns was only slightly off, but with practice, I can now pull fairly nice 1 burst kills in my 190A-5.  Now that I'm learning to shoot better...I have to learn how to get more shots.  That means I have to fly better.  I figure I'm only a few years away from being a good AH pilot.  hehehe.

I agree the tracers might need some rework...but I won't use them anyway because they are still quite distracting in my opinion and making them even more visible would make them even MORE distracting.  

Using tracers just lets the guy you sneak up behind suddenly become aware that you are there in the event that you miss your first shot.  Without tracers, you might miss that first shot...but with a quick correction and a second burst...you might just get him.

[phookat]

Yeah, I knew about .target...but that's not useful for learning how to shoot with any deflection or while pulling any Gs.  And since that is almost always the case, flying against other planes is IMO the only way to learn.

Also, in the 190 you have a lot of rounds to spare, so you can spray a little which makes no tracers easier.

Hack9, try no tracers with a low vel gun like the 30 or 37.

Actually, what I find distracting is squinting at the screen trying to find the tracers...when actually the tracer should jump out at me at a glance.

I agree that smoke is distracting.  That's the price of tracers...but the benefit should be clearly visible rounds.

[moot]

tracers would be incandescent if pixel shaded.

It'd be neat to be able to choose each gun's tracer color, or at least have their color the same as irl, red for US 50s, blue for D 151/20, green for VVS 7mil, etc.

[phookat]

Originally posted by moot
tracers would be incandescent if pixel shaded.

No, even then they wouldn't.  The problem is that the brightest color displayable on a computer monitor is white.  The monitor is not capable of displaying incandescence beyond that.  For example, your monitor can never be as bright as the sun.  It can never damage your eyes from being too bright.

Originally posted by moot
It'd be neat to be able to choose each gun's tracer color, or at least have their color the same as irl, red for US 50s, blue for D 151/20, green for VVS 7mil, etc.

Although this might be nominally more realistic, I'd say it would end up being effectively less realistic because of the brightness issue.  They might be different colors, but they shared the characteristic of all being brighter than a monitor.  The latter is more important to simulate than the former, IMO.

[DoKGonZo]

Be more fun to have different colors for each country.

The smoke trail on the 20mm's seems the most overblown.

[moot]

[Flayed1]

Ok I've been trying the ack guns on he field an I do agree that they fire so slow that tracers are a bennifit for them.
  How ever I still say turn them off for fighters. My usual ride is an A6M2 and you can't get much lower on actuall killing rounds than that (120 cannon I think) I have been able to get 1 or 2 kills more each flight with out tracers than I usually did with them.

[phookat]

Originally posted by Flayed1
My usual ride is an A6M2 and you can't get much lower on actuall killing rounds than that (120 cannon I think) I have been able to get 1 or 2 kills more each flight with out tracers than I usually did with them.

Try 65 rpg with the 109's 30.  And lower muzzle velocity.

No tracers are fine once you learn how the gun handles....or if the gun is easy to handle to begin with.  But to learn, especially when you have little ammo and low muzzle vel, you need to see where your rounds are going.

With the 30 in the nose, I often can't see whether I missed below or above, unless I have a blank sky as the backdrop, am flying totally straight and level, and I focus really hard on the tracer itself.

I really don't think it was that way in real life.   The tracer should jump out at you unless you are flying into the sun.  Again, I'm not asking for something unrealistic...just to emulate the real situation in the best possible way.  Hot pink sounds absurd on the face of it, but I think effectively it is most realistic.