Tracers....

[begorra2 0]

... summary of comments:

- tracers are an issue of ArmA - part of the community dislike them

- BIS should make the option to TURN OFF tracers work

- BIS should either make create the option to use ENHANCED tracers or the possibility for addon makers to create these

Correct?

[Opticalsnare 12]

This is a pretty good video of some tracers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhGMWh7cDjY

I agree i dislike the tracers in arma, so ive been trying to find out how to edit them but cant seem to find out where the scripting for them are, i know how to change the color of them but i really would like to see bigger tracers for differnt weapons ie 50cal, 20mm and anti-aircraft tracers that really light up the sky.

Might Wanna check out the config.bin in the dta folder there seems to be alot of stuff in there might be helpful, atm im trying to edit....

1. Tracers

2. Muzzle Flashes

3. Make AI rate of fire faster

[MaceUK71 0]

I don't have a config.bin in my dta folder.....

[Opticalsnare 12]

unpack the bin.pbo

[Radic 0]

After reading all this, I personally would like:

Nice full travelling tracers for large cal Mguns/cannon - a`la FFUR

Smallarms tracers represented as "blob" type appearance BUT only on rounds below a certain velocity - this would bring a very nice effect to long range fire/firefights (plus that's where tracer is useful as it gives a correction visual cue for drop) and a really nifty effect to riccochets (ie. once the bullets hit something presumably their velocity would drop enough for the blob tracer to be activated) - in fact overall I REALLY like this idea - I think it would really make the game!!!

EVERYONE GET BEHIND THIS IDEA PLEASE AND PUSH IT TO BIS :-)

You are all aware that right now ArmA does show really quite impressive riccochets/bouncebacks?? Just fire at a wall and watch - unfortunately the streakiness doesn't light my fire tho - so blob type effect would be absolutely shit hot for me!!!

[froggyluv 2130]

After reading all this, I personally would like:

Nice full travelling tracers for large cal Mguns/cannon - a`la FFUR

Smallarms tracers represented as "blob" type appearance BUT only on rounds below a certain velocity - this would bring a very nice effect to long range fire/firefights (plus that's where tracer is useful as it gives a correction visual cue for drop) and a really nifty effect to riccochets (ie. once the bullets hit something presumably their velocity would drop enough for the blob tracer to be activated) - in fact overall I REALLY like this idea - I think it would really make the game!!!

EVERYONE GET BEHIND THIS IDEA PLEASE AND PUSH IT TO BIS  :-)

You are all aware that right now ArmA does show really quite impressive riccochets/bouncebacks??  Just fire at a wall and watch - unfortunately the streakiness doesn't light my fire tho - so blob type effect would be absolutely shit hot for me!!!

Agree 100%

[max power 21]

After reading all this, I personally would like:

Nice full travelling tracers for large cal Mguns/cannon - a`la FFUR

Smallarms tracers represented as "blob" type appearance BUT only on rounds below a certain velocity - this would bring a very nice effect to long range fire/firefights (plus that's where tracer is useful as it gives a correction visual cue for drop) and a really nifty effect to riccochets (ie. once the bullets hit something presumably their velocity would drop enough for the blob tracer to be activated) - in fact overall I REALLY like this idea - I think it would really make the game!!!

EVERYONE GET BEHIND THIS IDEA PLEASE AND PUSH IT TO BIS :-)

You are all aware that right now ArmA does show really quite impressive riccochets/bouncebacks?? Just fire at a wall and watch - unfortunately the streakiness doesn't light my fire tho - so blob type effect would be absolutely shit hot for me!!!

You should make a mod.

[Radic 0]

I much prefer to play these games than churn away for hours modding them - I wish BIS or some other modder would implement this sort of thing.

In OFP I play the ECP mod these days - in that I've modified the sound files to quieten down forground really loud sounds like gunfire and vehicle engines so I play with the overall sound volume up very high - so I can hear riccochets and bullet hits, footfalls, all the comments and noises of other soldiers (ie. all the environmental sounds). I also modified the smoke definition parts of the config so that the destroyed vehicle smoke is taller, denser and lasts longer - and I changed the visual model that's used for the M1 Abrams so that it's one of the more recent beaustifully detailed ones. But those sorts of things are relatively easy to do - this tracer stuff is way beyond me.

Like I say - lets all press BIS to do it!!!

[max power 21]

They'll do it if it's in their design plan when they have time, according to their own design parameters.

[Radic 0]

Yeah, that's why I reckon if enough people want it, it might become one of the design priorities? (can only hope) For those guys it would probably be all of 2 hours work to implement this - and then of course include it in the next patch.

[Opticalsnare 12]

Woohoo ok ive managed to edit the tracers so they no longer appear on rifles but only machine guns, im also trying to make them Larger for differnt weapons.

Tracer MOD Screenshot

Il add some more later on once ive fiddled about with some others and upload the config.cpp it will be sorted today

[Aart 0]

Wow nice work! Getting it for sure when you're ready!

[HamishUK 0]

Also the main problem is that every round in this game is represented by a tracer.

Tracer rounds are usually issued as 1 in every 4 or 1 in every 7 as they are much lighter than a normal ball round as as such lack the same ballistics and accuracy. Therefore having every round as a tracer is less effective than standard ball.

So you should see the trace much farther apart.

Having been part of SF Platoon with 2 Royal Anglian I do find the tracer use within this game unrealistic.

[Opticalsnare 12]

ArmA Weapons & Tracers MOD

Basicly all i did was edit this line

Quote[/b] ] class B_762x51_Ball : BulletBase {

hit = 9;

indirectHit = 0;

indirectHitRange = 0;

visibleFire = 18; // how much is visible when this weapon is fired

audibleFire = 18;

visibleFireTime = 3; // how long is it visible

cost = 1.2;

airLock = true;

tracerColor[] = {0.2, 0.8, 0.1, 0.6};

tracerColorR[] = {0.2, 0.8, 0.1, 0.6};

And edited the numbers from 0.4 to 0.6 at the end.. Think it might be brightness or something.

Im still trying to find out how to make the the tracers bigger for differnt weapons.

[dracul72 0]

Sounds good! I'm going to try it. Thanks.

Gave it a quick try and like it so far. It seems like the tracers are more visible, so I think you're correct on the brightness.

[RUKH 0]

After reading all this, I personally would like:

Nice full travelling tracers for large cal Mguns/cannon - a`la FFUR

Smallarms tracers represented as "blob" type appearance BUT only on rounds below a certain velocity - this would bring a very nice effect to long range fire/firefights (plus that's where tracer is useful as it gives a correction visual cue for drop) and a really nifty effect to riccochets (ie. once the bullets hit something presumably their velocity would drop enough for the blob tracer to be activated) - in fact overall I REALLY like this idea - I think it would really make the game!!!

EVERYONE GET BEHIND THIS IDEA PLEASE AND PUSH IT TO BIS :-)

You are all aware that right now ArmA does show really quite impressive riccochets/bouncebacks?? Just fire at a wall and watch - unfortunately the streakiness doesn't light my fire tho - so blob type effect would be absolutely shit hot for me!!!

Why would tracers activate after velocity drop and/or impact? Why not make them behave as they do in real life?

"Blobs" look fine in real life because your eyes do not have a hertz/fps limit like your monitor does. On 60hz blobs will "skip" across your screen.....remember we are talking of exit velocities in the area of 8-900m/s.

My hope is that BIS makes the tracers correspond to your ingame eyes (like the HDR) meaning during night the tracers will elongate because of your eyes trying to take on more light thus giving the tracer a "laser" look, and during the day they should be pretty short and harder to see.

[MaceUK71 0]

Thank you Opticalsnare you are a gent!

[Aart 0]

Opticalsnare, can you upload it somewhere else? I can't download it.

[Opticalsnare 12]

Fixed

[Radic 0]

After reading all this, I personally would like:

Nice full travelling tracers for large cal Mguns/cannon - a`la FFUR

Smallarms tracers represented as "blob" type appearance BUT only on rounds below a certain velocity - this would bring a very nice effect to long range fire/firefights (plus that's where tracer is useful as it gives a correction visual cue for drop) and a really nifty effect to riccochets (ie. once the bullets hit something presumably their velocity would drop enough for the blob tracer to be activated) - in fact overall I REALLY like this idea - I think it would really make the game!!!

EVERYONE GET BEHIND THIS IDEA PLEASE AND PUSH IT TO BIS  :-)

You are all aware that right now ArmA does show really quite impressive riccochets/bouncebacks??  Just fire at a wall and watch - unfortunately the streakiness doesn't light my fire tho - so blob type effect would be absolutely shit hot for me!!!

Why would tracers activate after velocity drop and/or impact? Why not make them behave as they do in real life?

"Blobs" look fine in real life because your eyes do not have a hertz/fps limit like your monitor does. On 60hz blobs will "skip" across your screen.....remember we are talking of exit velocities in the area of 8-900m/s.

My hope is that BIS makes the tracers correspond to your ingame eyes (like the HDR) meaning during night the tracers will elongate because of your eyes trying to take on more light thus giving the tracer a "laser" look, and during the day they should be pretty short and harder to see.

Ummm - well firstly you've answered part of your own question - it's only further out / at lower velocity / and in riccochetes / at lower velocity - that "blob" type tracer effect will indeed look half decent (close to origin it is all just streaks and sparks).

I'm thinking use velocity as the regulating parameter - but perhaps just time interval would be just as good - and I guess more realistic as the real thing takes some time / travel distance to "light off" (velocity also seemed like a good trigger in the context of ricochetes etc. - ie. at longer range the effect would be activated already before impact but we'd at least still get the pretty arcing sparks effect in close firefights too :-)

And in general I'm after GAME ENHANCING tracer - notsomuch true realism as such - any reference to realism from my point of view is in the context of "it's so far from realistic already that surely this type of tweak won't hurt?".  AND I stand by what I've said with respect to tracer really looking more loke moving blobs rather than streaks - perhaps more appropriate to say "that at intermediate and longer ranges" yadda, yadda.

At close in range tracer will be just streaking and sparks - THAT's why once again I suggest implementation in a fashion that makes it worthwhile - ie. longer range engagements and for riccochet's.  

Some time ago I did implement WBTracerFX (or it might have been the BN880 one? - can't recall exactly) successfully in OFP: ECP - I set it to every 5 rounds and it was absolutely awesome - particularly the bouncebacks and riccochetes. Unfortunatley I didn't play OFP for an extended period then buggered it and had to reinstall and lost the config section for it and haven't found the code again yet (I found the config code paragraph in a forum somewhere - in fact I think it was BN880's as it had settings for interval and colour etc.).

I hate HDR - I personally find it really annoying and UNREALISTIC (I wear sunglasses IRL to get rid of that affect!!.

Refresh rate is a good point - I found I had to address that issue with the tracerfx in OFP too - but I generally play at 75Hz or greater anyway.

[max power 21]

you should play wgl, it has all kinds of crazy effects.

[Radic 0]

Just the nice tracer will do - AI chatter, in vehicle radio background chatter and lovely explosions with periodic secondary ammo cookoff explosions like ECP would be nice too tho....

Not talking about crazy stuff anyway - when I had the bn880 tracers in OFP they weren't actually all that spectacular (not talking about thousands of blobs pinging all over the place) - every now and then they would stand out - ie. when there was an especially nice ricochete - but in general they just became a natural part of the overall experience.

I just found the old bn880 tracer thread - in that he reckons he's going to do that mod for ArmA too, so looks like I'll have the tracers I'm after eventually!! I've now got the config lines so am going to try and get them working again in OFP: ECP

[MaceUK71 0]

Ok, how do I unpack the .Pbo file?

[Radic 0]

For OFP .pbo's I use a program called WinPbo (google for it - I think it's on ofpec) - don't know if that will work for ArmA as for example one of the options is something about do you want it packed for resistance - worth a try tho - just don't check the pack for resistance box.

I've got the bn880 tracers working again for OFP: ECP - I gotta say they are absolutely gorgeous and add and indescribable "something" to the whole experience. They are not obtrusive - much less so in fact than the original streak tracers - and are just.... lovely. I know sniper rifles shouldn't have them but for example: in the Battlefields single mission I often wrap up by getting hold of the Dragunov from the sniper up on the hillside - using that with the tracers is awesome - utterly beautiful watching that tracer travel "downrange" and hit. And overall just the atmosphere and look of various tracers zipping (they are blobs but man they are moving! )about during the firefight and ricochetes arcing up etc. - Lovely, lovely, lovely stuff

[max power 21]

What I mean by crazy stuff is bn880's tracers.. sometimes regular bullets will bounce off of something as a glowing, red spark.. lots of dust is kicked up by bullet hits... very realistic special effects. No annoying radio chatter, though. That really bugged me, hearing the same like 3 radio messages in an endless random spamming.