New Tracers for CFS3

[gecko]

Yeah, it's really unfortunate that CFS3 puts the end texture at the back. If you make the tracer shaped as above (as I would have preferred), the end texture will be an entirely separate dot. I even tried not using an end texture at all, but it's really needed, especially from the shooter's perspective.

 

[Pat Pattle]

Dan, I've been trying to get the tracer to stay around for longer, so that it looks like the stuff coming from both sides in the Dambusters film. Any ideas please? It disappears too quickly in CFS3.

This may not be realistic but it looks
great

 

[gecko]

As far as I know, we don't have control over this. I have wanted to make them last longer as well.

 

[MajorMagee]

I've been working with the textures to get them to have more of a head with a tapering tail. For these I reduced the size of the end texture to match the small end of the tail.



It looks fairly decent in game.

 

[MajorMagee]

I took a look at making them last longer. I was hopeful that the Gun TimeAlive or Range parameters might be the right places to change something but they aren't. Nothing time related in the Effects.xml seems to make any difference either. Like everything else related to TracerEffect it appears that the 2 sec off switch is hard coded.

 

[Pat Pattle]

I took a look at making them last longer. I was hopeful that the Gun TimeAlive or Range parameters might be the right places to change something but they aren't. Nothing time related in the Effects.xml seems to make any difference either. Like everything else related to TracerEffect it appears that the 2 sec off switch is hard coded.

I've come to the same conclusion. Whatever you do there's about 2 seconds of tracer.
I've also tried adding an .m3d to the 'gun' but to no avail.
One last thing to try is using the rocket effects as a workaround with a tracer dds as the smoke trail lasts down to the ground.

 

[MajorMagee]

For those who may be looking for additional variety in how the tracers are represented, here is a set of alternative textures that are compatible with Geko's original mod package. These are comet shaped with a glowing head and tapering colored tail. The smoke is also a bit more transparent.

 

[MajorMagee]

If you're recording a video of combat in CFS3 using the alternative textures they look best with tracers sized as:
Tracer Length = gun velocity in m/s divided by 25 (1 frame of video at 25 fps)
Tracer Width = 10x diameter in meters (for visibility)

For example:
German 20mm MGFF at 600 m/s would be TracerLength="24" TracerWidth="0.2"
American 50 cal at M2 at 870 m/s would be TracerLength="34.8" TracerWidth="0.127"