Tracers....

[HamishUK 0]

I disagree in part that tracers are blob like.

Every tracer round I have ever fired from both a GPMG and a 30mm Rarden Cannon on the Warrior is a streak. It will be a streak as it's just a small amount of Phosphour that ignites at appx 100m after it leaves the barrel. It's inline with the round and only burns at the same diameter.

The only blobs you ever see are on Image Intensifiers. The latter is especially 'blob' like as the light is being enhanced by about 1000 x as a result the image you see is somewhat unrefined.

[Col. Faulkner 0]

The thing I somewhat disliked about the OFP tracer addons

was that tracers were an attribute of the man, not of his

ammo (eg. if you were "tracer enabled" you could draw

your pistol and fire tracers from it too! ).

[Radic 0]

I disagree in part that tracers are blob like.

Every tracer round I have ever fired from both a GPMG and a 30mm Rarden Cannon on the Warrior is a streak. It will be a streak as it's just a small amount of Phosphour that ignites at appx 100m after it leaves the barrel. It's inline with the round and only burns at the same diameter.

The only blobs you ever see are on Image Intensifiers. The latter is especially 'blob' like as the light is being enhanced by about 1000 x as a result the image you see is somewhat unrefined.

Well, actually it's probably more accurate for me to be calling these in game tracer effects "specks" as they're really quite tiny (tho they can be enlarged I think?) - I use the term "blob" to differentiate clearly from line type streaks - they move hell fast too so essentially I guess they look more like streaks unless following them downrange for quite a distance and at the right angles - or more accurately they are definitely solid little "specks" but they "streak" along. The most impressive thing tho prob not particularly realistic is the slow effect - ie. riccochetes and bouncebacks etc.

Anyhoo - I'm looking forward to someone like bn880 making them for ArmA.

Unfortunately that config for the bn880 tracers does go by man class - it would be much better to have it according to weapon - I think I read of people doing that with either or both the bn880 and the wbtracerfx ones - but unfortunately those configs I haven't been able to find or understand and apply.  Once again a lot of these mods are made by modders for modders - i find it frustrating that any mods made are not in the first instance supplied in a form that they can be put into the original campaigns quickly and easily by casual players.

[max power 21]

OFP doesn't track weapons, apparently, so applying those properties to weapons is impossible.

[Radic 0]

bugger - yeah, it's wierd to pick up an AK and still have orange tracer.

Further to what I was saying above about them being more like "specks" - a good example is that in full daylight they're pretty much not visible unless against a darker background or on the bounce where the eye picks them up due to the lower speed.

I'm playing the PMC Fury campaign in ECP and am REALLY enjoying the heck out of these tracers - beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!!!

EDIT - this is really ghoulish I know - but just saw footage of Ciacescue's (ie. the Romanian dictator) execution and the tracer bouncing around as he and his wife were machinegunned were very much like these bn880 ones I have now in OFP.

[wamingo 1]

I did some night fighting and made a couple of observations:

1. Musleflashes doesn't show unless you're within ~100m, ~130 zoomed.

2. What tracers? You need to be within very few meters to actually see them.

I tried running 40 man vs 40 man squads in the editor a few times from different angles, in the hopes of seeing a lot of action and bullets flying, but I can't say that I did. The only infatry fired tracers I've noticed in arma, night fighting or any other hour of the day, are the ones coming straight at you and straight away from you, and only within a few meters. It helped a little bit with night vision on, which is something I suppose. What was ackward was that the tracers were far easier to see when they passed through a lightsource like a street lamp or explosion.

Now I've only ever seen tracers on the screen (film/games/youtube...), but honestly I don't really mind what is realistic or not in this case. Be it blobs, streeks or specs. Visible tracers make for good atmosphere. Invisible ones are just pointless.

Seing as the engagement ranges are pretty large, this type of thing needs effects that have a minimum scale up to a pretty far away distance. Eg a 1+ pixels up to perhaps several hundred meters away. That way even people running at a lower resolution can enjoy them.

my 2 cents anyway.

[churnedfortaste 0]

In real life aren't tracers only easy to see in low light conditions?

And I thought they were only used on LMG's/HMG's/HE cannons to compensate for range by being able to see the bullet drop yourself.

I honestly think that the way most guns have tracers is unrealistic, as even sniper rifles fire tracer bullets, and that gives away the shooters position too easily and they should be limited to MG's and HE cannons, as this is supposed to be a REALISTIC simulator isn't it?

[Kirq 0]

You can find some info about tracers in Wikipedia.

I think this answers you question :

Tracers are usually loaded between one in four rounds to one in six rounds. Platoon leaders will sometimes load their magazines entirely with tracers to mark targets for their men to fire on.

[shataan 1]

I say just give peeps the ability to turn them off or on depending on player choice. I personally don`t need em, or use em. I do however like muzzleflash. Which imho is way more an important visuals effect.

Tracers are great for helping HMG users to line up their rounds on very distant targets, and good for night fire. On every 3rd round only tho.

[overkill 0]

This is how I think tracers should look like in the game. Slightly larger than they are now and have it's own lumenesence rather than the bland green/red thin string effect. They should also continue to burn for quite sometime if they richoet. In doing so  it gives you a greater sense of speed, distance and space, not to mention a much more emersive experience.

[RogueRunner 0]

This is how I think tracers should look like in the game. Slightly larger than they are now and have it's own lumenesence rather than the bland green/red thin string effect. They should also continue to burn for quite sometime if they richoet. In doing so it gives you a greater sense of speed, distance and space, not to mention a much more emersive experience.

Hope the guy in that video was not firing at something cause then he kinda suck!

Those tracers are a tad big though! Real life it's much much smaller! It looks big due to the camera and I think it's called lens flare! But anyway, you can see the bounce of some tracer early in the movie and that has never been done quite correctly in a game, they tried with marginal success but not just the same.

I miss my LMG days in the army

[Radic 0]

You'll find I think that the light level IRL was MUCH lower than is apparent in the video - hence the tracers are very nicely contrasted.

I recall a friend who owned a Trike (powered hang glider) and video recorded a DC3 landing at the country airfield he used to operate his little machine from - it was very late in the day and he'd finished flying and was putting his machine to bed when the DC3 showed up. In the video it LOOKS like it's maybe 4pm - everything clearly visible including the lovely old DC3 tho obviously no bright sunshine was visible - in fact it was close to 7pm and he said that IRL that DC3 was just a set of Navigation/Position lights to the naked eye!

[zinc 0]

Don't forget to turn up the volume for this one:

And my personal favorite, apologies if this link has been posted already:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-6ThJBc9a4

The Shilka is getting a bit long in the tooth, perhaps we need some newer technologies available in game 2?:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4897647549985392214

- Enjoy

[Ilyushin 1]

you should also edit the colour of the russian ammo its not red tracers but green lovely green

[RjC_77 0]

that last video.... isn't that the goalkeeper system? Thought it was a naval platform...?

[causticwindow911 0]

But anyway, you can see the bounce of some tracer early in the movie and that has never been done quite correctly in a game, they tried with marginal success but not just the same.

I miss my LMG days in the army

"marginal" success? Load up the editor, choose Rhamadi, plop a UH60 down and make player gunner. Make the time of day night and shoot at a hill with the mini gun. I have never, ever seen - in any game - tracer rounds bounce as realistically. Infact it looks exactly like the video you quoted, albiet shooting 2000rpm as opposed to the 800 or whatever in that video.

It seems like everyone has a different idea on what a tracer should look like. I don't think it should look like the lasers currently in the game, but what is in now isn't that bad. It just needs to be toned down.

[zinc 0]

that last video.... isn't that the goalkeeper system? Thought it was a naval platform...?

I remember seeing an anti-missile gattling system mounted on a ship, I'm not sure if it's the same system as that one. The one in the video can takeout a mortar round and possibly an artillery shell.

[4 IN 1 0]

its the modded CIWS you see on almost all USS, the difference is that one is a ship based CIWS and the other is land based mainly designed to counter artillery

[Bald_Maggot 0]

As an update to a thread closed by the lovely mods

I wanted to know if there was any updates on this problem

Ta

Original Post ;

For GOODNESS sake is there going to be a fix for the blasted Tracers anytime soon?

I mean you can turn the things off in the difficulty setting but it doesnt make any difference.

I could understand it if the machine gunners had a tracer round for every round they shot (although this is hardly ever used in real life, more like every 3rd or 5th round)

But riflemen? id never use a flippin tracer round!

Is this being fixed, been fixed, or planned to be fixed caus its starting to annoy me a lot, just give us the option of turing this silly thing off.

Also this is not a thread about what a tracer round should look like, so no whiners as to "it should be a round blob of light" etc i simply just want to know if there is any way to disable the "lasers" ingame

Many thanks

Chow Chow

[Bald_Maggot 0]

p.s i also noticed that the patch very kindly provided by Opticalsnare is also a little buggy, i can seem to use my static m2 or dshk anymore!

Can anyone confirm that this is a problem to them too?

Thanks

[Guest]

The existing lousy tracers are one of the great disappointments

of ArmA.

Tracers should be 3D and emit light.

There are numerous 1-st person games with great tracers, like COD.

Appeal to BIS - rework them (in some future patch) or include the possibility for addon makers to change them !!!

I agree, as it is, the sounds (imho) are not very good for weapons, the traces look like lines you'd draw in with the mouse pointer in Paint shop pro, my opinion, if the tracers will lag due to making them look *the way they should* (plenty of games mentioned here on this thread give excellent examples of this) then Id prefer to shut them off, or have them removed.

[ThePredator 0]

I don't think the tracers are bad the way they are. At least we have tracers.

I made a little video, don't take it too serious, though.

The Tracers Strike Back

High Res

[Dwarden 1125]

don't forget that laser system (tested in USA and deployed in Israel where it was originaly developed) ...

that one is capable to fire arty shell and any type of rockets and misiless (if i remember right it was against terrorist strikes on civil targets)

[fireship4 0]

There is an easy way to fix the problem with the rifle tracer toggle not working.

If you browse the weapon config you can see there are tracer settings for each weapon - one with "r" beside it. These are the tracer settings used when the rifle tracers are turned ON.

So if you change the transparency on the normal tracers (the transparency is the last number in the line) to zero on weapons you want without tracers, thats what you'll get.

Also, if you want thicker looking tracers for heavier weapons, try decreasing the transparency in line with the size of the projectile.

###EDIT### I changed my description to be in like with the wiki, i had mixed up [r] tracers and normal tracers

I still need someone to write a script to change between magazines every few shots! Someone PM me!

[Dwarden 1125]

value applied to clip/magazine which define tracers status

- on all rounds or each 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc ...

and then script activated in moment when weapon is fired to determine if it's bullet or tracer ...

could be part of any unified ammo initiative ...