Project Reality Forums

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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....

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.

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

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

zangoo wrote: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.

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

Voted for the wrong option

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.

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.

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!!!

Thats a hard one. I just cant say it. I'm sure you already tried everything i could think of to fix it so... I dont know. I'd love ballistics, but tracers are important, at least at the heavy machine guns. But... every round of them being a tracer would look a bit spammy too...

And keeping the bug? Meh, i dunno, how useful are tracers if they land 100 meters off target?

I cant vote for any option... But it doesnt depend on me anyway

Keep the tracer bug, but if the drop is way too much you should just forget about ballistics for now. IMO

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

irl tracers have about the same trajectory as the other bullets, But we could use this common mistake to make this seem even more real, Yes this isnt a bug it is a feature that we worked very hard on putting in

Sadist_Cain wrote: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

I couldnt agree more, I think if everyone would do what you stated this would work great. This could also make shooting more of a skill then point and click.

M.Warren wrote: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.

I will post a graph conparing the drop of a normal bullet and a tracer bullet to help you decied. Just to give some info, The m16 @ 300m had 65cm of drop for the normal round and 120cm for the tracer. So not a huge amount.

Celestial1 wrote: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.

Tanks, Apcs, Attack heli are not going to have ballistics as they have fire controll computers that would calculate where to aim the gun so the person firing the gun doesnt have to think, Just point and shoot.

We have tried to make tracers using effects, Like the missiles use and alot of other things but we couldnt get it to not be every round, So instead we would just attach a mesh that looks like a tracer.

Waaah_Wah wrote:Keep the tracer bug, but if the drop is way too much you should just forget about ballistics for now. IMO

Here i will vote for you as i didnt plan on voting.

zangoo wrote: i will post a graph conparing the drop of a normal bullet and a tracer bullet to help you decied. just to give some info, the m16 @ 300m had 65cm of drop for the normal round and 120cm for the tracer. so not a huge amount.

That is when a weapon is zeroed at 0 meters?

is anyone picky about 55cm of drop at 300m? I can see it bein a pain when your doing a well aimed shot at such long range as that and the round goes off target but infantry are rarely engaging at these distances anyway...

As for tanks and 50.cals n such I'd rather no ballistics that see an endless laser canon stream coming out of them lol, It'll start feeling like a star wars mod then

I would say keep the bug but reduce the amount of tracers in some clips for certain soldiers so you have more "good" rounds to aim with

zangoo wrote:tanks, apcs, attack heli are not going to have ballistics as they have fire controll computers that would calculate where to aim the gun so the person firing the gun doesnt have to think, just point and shoot.

we have tried to make tracers using effects, like the missiles use and alot of other things but we couldnt get it to not be every round, so instead we would just attach a mesh that looks like a tracer.

Right, wasn't accounting for Fire Control.

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing the tracer bug, if it's really less than a meter off.

Tracer rounds at shorter ranges would still likely hit the target, and tracer rounds at longer ranges will drop accordingly (a normal rifle shouldn't be magically sniper-rifle accurate).

Voting for keep the bug.

Waaah_Wah wrote:That is when a weapon is zeroed at 0 meters?

Yes it was when the guns were zeroed at 0m

Edit: Added graph to first post

Sadist_Cain wrote:I would say keep the bug but reduce the amount of tracers in some clips for certain soldiers so you have more "good" rounds to aim with

There are usually about 4 to 6 bullets between tracer rounds.

111101111011110111101111011110
for thirty bullets with 4 regulars between tracers (1s are non-tracer, 0s are tracer rounds), You have 6 tracer rounds, and 24 regular rounds in a 30-round magazine. And assuming you aren't trying to be a sniper with a carbine, it shouldn't be that much of an issue. Remember to shoot more than once at an enemy, a single round is never as good as 3 in the same area.

Is there no way to mod the gravity setting for the tracer round. Or how bout increase the gravity setting for the regular round, and then adjust it's velocity?

Are there any settings in the game code that deal with air density? Or maybe air temp, and humidity? If so, is it possible that they could be different values for each ammo type somehow?

The drop on the graph is displayed in meters right? So -0.6 on the graph means a .6 meter drop at 300m right? Which turns out to be 23.62 inches drop at 300m.
That's pretty close to real world numbers, good work

I voted all or nothing, but I keep on changing my mind...

I'd have to try two builds, one with and one without to see which I prefer