Graphic effect for firing gun

[Imur6]

When I see documentary regarding WW2,  The bullet (maybe it was tracer) from planes are not going straight line but it looks like a bit staggered (something like lightning). I'm sorry but can't express well  

 

But every games in the market including BOS, the bullet goes straight line. What do you think about this?

 

 

[ShamrockOneFive]

It's a matter of camera versus reality.

 

The reason that the tracers wobble (or shake) ... at least because they appear to is because the camera on the firing aircraft is also shaking quite a bit. Both from vibrations from the engine and airframe as well as from act of the aircraft firing.

 

In actual fact they travel more or less in a straight line and appear as a line or... as commonly described by World War II pilots, a bright ball shaped glow when viewed from the front or back.

[FuriousMeow]

Slow capture rate for the film, mounted to a vibrating mount without any dampening equipment, etc.

 

Gun cam is not anything what tracers look like. Gun cam came about when video recording was fairly new and it didnt' capture sound - so any sound you hear in gun cam footage never existed.

 

Tracers haven't changed since WWII in the way they travel through the air - they didn't squiggle back then and they don't squiggle now. If you fired a tracer round today, it would fly a very "straight" path - it would arc, just like a bullet, in its flight path due to the nature of how rounds travel from the point of being fired to the point of them hitting their target, another target, or the ground.

 

A bullet, or round or tracer, starts dropping the second it leaves the muzzle of the weapon. In order for it to hit its target at its targeted zero, where the bullet should meet dead center of the sight, the round, or tracer, has to "go up a bit" which is actually the barrel being adjusted to aim up towards where the sighting meets. For a bullet to meet the cross hairs at 500 yards, the barrel will be angled x amount up so that it meets where the sight picture is 500meters through the sighting aperture.

 

So yeah - gun cam footage is neat but tracers do not do that.

Edited August 25, 2014 by FuriousMeow

[Imur6]

Thanks for detailed explanation!

 

That's why one of the WW2 pilot says " When 30mm machine gun passing by my canopy, It looked like flame as big as basket ball!"