Ballistics or Tracers?

[zangoo]

Please Read Before You Vote


Me, mosquill and jonny have been working on creating realistic trajectorys for the guns in project reality. Now after working on this for some months we have run into a very large bug, the tracer bug... It appears that it is hardcoded in bf2 that all tracers go 75% the speed of normal bullets,
Now this isnt noticable in pr right now as the bullets are going about 1km/sec constant and have very little gravity but it is still there.

So we have come up with many possible ways to try to fix this bug and get the ballistics working with real tracers, but 90% of our ideas are hardcoded and not possible. So here are the choices that we have to get ballistics into project reality. Now remember no matter what this poll says, it will be up to the devs in the end.


Here are the possible ways.

1) All or Nothing. This bug will only effect guns if there is a mix of tracers and normal rounds. So to fix this would could make guns use all tracers or no tracers at all. eg: Sniper uses no tracers, Automatic rifleman everyround is a tracer.


2) No tracers at all. This would cause alot of issues on guns like mounted .50s and would also make it very hard to see what team is firing at you, or to direct fire. This would also make it very hard to gudge where your rounds are hitting if you dont see the effects draw at longer distances.


3) Keep the tracer bug. This would be ok if everyone learned to never trust the tracer rounds and only use them to direct fire. All tracers would have about twice the drop at any range and could be very hard for newer people to learn.

Edit: Here is what the trajectory would look like when a m16 is zeroed at 300m, Graph is in meters.



4) No realistic ballistics for pr....

[gclark03]

Why did this thread disappear before?

Option 3 is the best because it can be bypassed with experience. The other three cannot be bypassed, no matter how well the player has learned to fire tracers on target.

[zangoo]

i missed the poll, So i asked cas to delete it.

[Tirak]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Tracers IRL already have a bigger drop than actual bullets, I say keep the tracers.

[M.Warren]

Originally Posted by zangoo

Keep the tracer bug. This would be ok if everyone learned to never trust the tracer rounds and only use them to direct fire. All tracers would have about twice the drop at any range and could be very hard for newer people to learn.

Although you've already said that "All tracers would have about twice the drop at any range" but by how much? Is it barely noticeable? Slight? Moderate? Or significantly different?

As much as I'd love realistic ballistics in PR, the main point of tracers are to assist the user in directing line of fire and also judging bullet drop, not to mention deviation aswell. The use of .50 caliber jeeps, APC's and Tanks depend upon watching those tracers even as slight as they may be.

I think we're all in need of a video to help paint a better picture for us all. Because something as serious as this needs to be theroughly compared and contrasted before I cast my vote or anyone else.

[[R-COM]Sadist_Cain]

A further factor affecting military projectiles is the addition of tracer elements. These generate gas which helps to fill the low-pressure area at the base, reducing drag. This gives them a different trajectory by comparison with non-tracer rounds, not helped by the fact that as the tracer burns up the weight of the projectile reduces, thereby worsening its sectional density. Tracers can therefore never achieve a perfect match with other projectiles and can only ever be an approximate guide to their trajectory

Realism my dear chaps?

Way I see it tracers DO behave differently and have different ballistic characteristics and trajectories compared with normal bullets... Albeit this deviation probably isnt as severe as what the tracer bug will make it out to be imho it gives us exactly the same effect, still use tracers to identify firing points but dont trust the tracer round because it is innaccurate... trust your aim and so forth

[Waaah_Wah]

Voted for the wrong option

[Wolfe]

PRv8 deviation has been completely overhauled and is now completely different than any previous version of PR. Moreover, we have moved away from prefect "realistic" deviation" in favor of "realistic in the hands of a soldier" and based upon pre-determined in-game effective ranges of the different weapon types.

What impact would this have on a deviation system that doesn't follow realism as closely as ballistics?

Before choosing what to do with ballistics, it may be good to wait for the new PRv8 deviation model before presenting these 4 options to the players. I'm still working on refining the deviation, so unfortunately there is nothing yet to officially test.

PM me and I can give more details of the new deviation system.

[Celestial1]

I'd say a combination of 1 and 3 is proper.

All weapons that have tracers only (tank coaxial) should be that way and made so that the effects of the bullet are as a normal round would fire.

Assumming that the tracer rounds don't drop like 10 meters, and that the drop is noticable but not overpowering: properly spaced tracer rounds in regular rifles.


Is there no way to fashion tracers of your own, like creating an animated 'tracer' that would just be a floating colored spike of gas that would move quickly along the path the bullet would take, or (easier) a perfectly straight line? The bullet would still hit where you aim, but the round would be trailed with the 'tracer' animation. The tracer rounds in a cartridge (not in tracers-only weapons) would start this?

I know that tracers are supposedly less accurate, but I'm just tossin out a suggestion.

[Psykogundam]

All or nothing...

So be it if the .50 cals have tracers, we need them to have severe bullet drop ANYWAY! no more rediculous tracers flying through the mosque building for example. If a sniper doesnt have tracers thats fine too and so is the assault rifles, the only ones that are most dangerous and need tracers are ARMOUR and .50 cals which are rediculously high powered and people need to know for sure what is being fired at them. If a technical is firing at a person and it's tracers are obvious, then everyone will know what it is and blow the living daylights out of it with concentrated firepower. The technical is an overpowered monstor and it should be limited signifigantly imo. Rifles make sounds and now have distant sounds that can be localised with the player's ears, and even in most cases surround sound, i dont think tracers are as important as ballistics in any case...progression for PR isnt in the form of shine bright lights, its in statistics and exactness...just my two cents.

BRING ON THE BALLISTICS!!!