Tried out the new tracer editor.

Works great so I thought I'd document what I found.

You can set the colors for all four default guns, Light MG, Heavy MG, 20mm Cannon and 30mm Cannon.(The three new guns, Heavy Cannon, Very Heavy Cannon and Revolver cannon all use the 30MM settings, which is fine.)

Most of the colors aren't realistic but they are at least available for any player that wants some variety. I think you can mix the colors to gain more variety but I didn't try that feature. If you want lime green tracers, now's you chance.

To me the two colors that matter most are yellow and orange.

I set the light MG and the 30MM cannon to yellow and the heavy MG and 20mm cannon to orange with the idea that usually planes with mixed calibers have the Light MGs with 20mm cannons, Heavy MGs with Heavy Cannons or as in, late war German aircraft, 20mm with 30mm cannons. I know, not always true but close enough.





The fun part is you have the ability to change the tracer frequency, range and velocity.

The defaults seem to be:

Frequency - 5

I found that if you set the frequency higher than 5 you don't get tracers and more importantly, the number has to be odd, not even. If you use an even number the tracers will only show from the guns on one side of the plane.

I set the frequency to 3 and it looks good to me.

BTW, having the ability to change the tracer count is reminiscent of the choice that WWII pilots had so between this new function and the ability to set convergence you get closer to reality.


Range - 1

This one works opposite to intuition. The higher the number the shorter the range. What's particularly interesting is that if you set the range to Zero you can see the tracers drop. I haven't tried it in battle yet but it might help with leading an EA or sighting on a ground target.


Velocity - 1

I assume, the higher the number the faster the tracers fly. I didn't see a lot of difference in their movement but I did see that the higher the number the SHORTER the tracers appear. I set them to 3 and they look pretty good.

FWIW, I always though the tracers were too long in EAW so this is a nice improvement.

What I haven't tested in how this looks coming from ground AA. Hopefully the settings while flying will look OK when observing ground AA.

Overall, a very nice utility and improvement to the game.

I am not sure of the order, but it looks as though the four low-res bullet colours are 179,181,183 and 185.
They are taken from a palette, but I do not know which one. If I did it would be possible to make them selectable.
The high-res colours are editable. In theory 255 255 0 is yellow. 255 128 0 is orange, but what you see depends of the video display of your PC.

I found that if I didn't enter values for the low-res bullet colours, I got an immediate screen-freeze in-game when I pulled the trigger. Once I entered values for these and saved them, along with the high-res and other values, everything worked fine. According to my TracerSet.mpf, the lo-res values are 4, 7, 7, 4 respectively, having chosen yellow for the light MG and the 30MM cannon to yellow and gold for the heavy MG and 20mm cannons.

Yes, Sky, those are the same numbers I used.

If someone were to take the time they could fiddle around the the hi-res numbers and report back on the different effects but as it stands, I used lo-res yellow/gold and hi-res yellow/orange and I think they look fine.

I have just made a new version which displays the four RGB colours when you click "View"



It means that you can make tests. These values give a range from red to yellow

BTW I checked all of the EAW palettes that I have, but none of the colours match the values of the original low res bullet colours.
They were 179, 181, 183 and 185 and in later versions they were 179, 180, 181 and 182.

These number sets work if you manually enter them, but it would be nice to have a full set which can be displayed in the utility.

Jel

Surprisingly, it isn't easy to find concrete information on tracer-colour in wwii combat aircraft. I did find old footage of a machine-gun attack on a Japanese freighter which clearly showed the tracers as being a yellowy-white, so Ray seems to be on the right track. The Russians used Barium-based tracer, and this is supposed to have shown as blue or green. Apparently, colours such as red, green and blue were not uncommon during the Battle of Britain, but the most common information was discussions on the merit of the usage of tracer, in the first place. For example, it could give the game away when sneaking up from behind, or in night-time conditions. Nevertheless, they look good in a game.

I think a yellow-type colour is probably most realistic as a default; otherwise, it is more a matter of personal taste.

Update: Mr Jelly's new editor clarifies things considerably.

Ok, Jel, that's a nice addition which removes the need for trial and error.

Question 1.

Am I correct that the three new guns use whatever the 30MM cannon uses?

Question 2.

Can you add a comment next to "duration" that specifies to use an odd number?

Question 3.

In fact, can you add a comment for the range of numbers available for each of the three variables?

The reason I'm asking is that I can see this utility being used by average players who might not be interested in many of the other editable functions in the game but they would be interested in this one.

1. I think so, but it needs to be tested.
2-3. That's why I made the editor, because I was not sure how these values affected the outcome.
Feedback from people trying the utility will be most welcome.

This is V2: TracerEditorV2

I would think from your expertise with the exec, you must know what the available ranges are even if you don't know all of the effects.


Edit - I checked the light AA and it does indeed have the same color tracers as the planes as well as the other functions. With my settings I see shorter, more numerous tracers and possibly even the bullet drop but that's hard to tell from the cockpit.

Some questions, observations and suggestions.

1 - What is the difference between the lo-res settings and the hi-res settings? I'm not sure which I'm seeing in the game.

2 - I experimented with the hi-res colors and ended up with some decent colors according to the utility chart but unfortunately the editor doesn't KEEP the information, which I didn't realize, so that each time you open it you start with a blank sheet of paper for the colors and the default "denominator" settings. This really should be fixed.

3 - The color adjustment is rather tedious because you change the numbers and then hit "view" and it's a guess as to what color will appear. It would be great if there was a slider next to each color view window where you could set the color for that gun. I just don't know how hard that would be to do.

4 - The heavy cannon and very heavy cannon seem to use the 30MM color while the revolver cannon uses the 20MM cannon color. I did not check the medium AA but the light AA looks like it uses the 20MM color.

5 - Please consider my earlier suggestion that there be text next to the three "denominator" variable that explains the range of numbers to use. I accidentally set the velocity to Zero and the game CTD's as soon as I fired the guns. No problem for me, I CTD the game about 10 times a day but the average user might freak out.

They are denominators and you cannot divide by zero. A value in the exe is divided by the number. With the old bitwise shift it was divided by the power of two, so it was divided by 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, ..... etc

Not sure how that answers any of my questions or comments.

One thing at a time as I am flat out doing all sorts of things



I was explaining your CTD.

In the original source code if the speed denominator = 0 then after the speed was calculated it was divided by 2° so it was divided by 1 and remained the same.
In the new code it is divided by the speed denominator, and if the speed denominator = 0 then you get a CTD because you cannot divide by zero.
I prefer the new code because you can divide by numbers which are not powers of 2.
I will change the code in the utility so that the number in the last three boxes must be a minimum of 1 and that will fix the problem.

Ok, that takes care of the CTD problem.

How about my other suggestions?

I have a Version 3 which makes the minimum values 1, and also loads the existing values if there is a "TracerSet.mpf" in the root folder.
During tests I got a bit suspicious. When I checked the exe I found that the routine using the duration value was still in the old "bitwise shift" format and the value was not a divisor.
So I recompiled the exe.
I ran these tests in low res with the frequency set to 1 so I could see more tracers:

Duration 1 and velocity 1

Th tracers are clear in the distance and you cab see their paths

Duration 15 and velocity 1

You can just see a red cannon flare, but you cannot see the paths of the tracers

Velocity 1 and duration 1

A long flare

Velocity 30 and duration 1

A much shorter flare


So now we know the effects of these values

The length of the flare is divided by the velocity.
Duration really affects what you can see when you fire the guns. I can see no advantage in reducing it and I will keep mine at "1".
I found that if the duration is more that 16 you do not see any machine gun tracers at all. The bullets still work.

I will make a patch with the new exes and the new TracerSet editor


February 10th update
Run the "Patch10Feb2019.exe" in your 160 folder

What is the difference between the lo-res and hi-res tracers?

Low-res tracers are just a line and the colour is the low-res bullet colour set in the first part.
High-res tracers are a bullet whose colour is the low-res bullet colour, followed by a flare whose colour is the RGB triplet in the second part.

I just did an experiment where the frequency was 1, but the velocity was 20. I saw lots of short tracers.



The orange and red are cannon and the green is machine gun fire mainly from the B17s

BTW I have just found the cause of the intermittent B17 CTD with large numbers of planes and detail level high so that contrails are on.
It was one value in a routine I had modified to try to get the best effect for the Me163 smoke trail.
I just tried it with the Me163 and the smoke trail is fine


I have replaced today's patch with one which has the B17CTD fixed exes. It has the same name

February 10th update


BTW have you tried my standalone SPAW folder yet?

Check the GEN. That problem is fixed. Weird solution is all I'll say here.

I'll ask the tracer question in a different way.

When are the lo-res tracers used and when are the hi-res tracers used?

In config/graphics it is the special effects setting.
If it is high then hi-res is used, otherwise low-res.

So lo-res for low and medium settings and hi-res for high settings, is that correct?