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[WxTech]

Thread necromancy, I know. 

I decided to check this out, principally to get some potential inspiration.

I find the much shortened tracers, in conjunction with their thinness and the 'tapered' brightness along their length, profoundly impacts their visibility at any kind of distance.

I disagree with the altitude-based scheme for tracer smoke, which is based on the notion that it's water vapour content in the air which controls or largely contributes to their formation. In this modeling, as altitude drops below thresholds of 1000m and 300m, tracer smoke density and duration decreases. The shortest duration smokes are very strange looking indeed.

Based on observation, tracer smoke is entirely or mostly just that; smoke. And so there is essentially no altitude dependence of note. Tracer smokes should be similar at all altitudes.

But what I've derived from this is the notion to add variety to the usual treatment of tracer smoke, where any tracer smoke effect has a counterpart of differing (either larger or lesser) prominence, and the two are selected from at random, with a greater probability assigned to one. For example, most tracer smoke from a gun is of some appearance, but occasionally (say, 25%) one is more 'sputtery.'

More thoughts to follow... off to work!

[PO_MAK_249RIP]

Another one of your effect gems to look forward to WxTech

[WxTech]

I re-jigged the code that substitutes tracer smoke effects.

The altitude thresholds are gone, making the effects the same at all altitudes.

The randomization has been altered to supply 3 effects chosen at random. At the moment, 1 chance in 10 supplies a heavier smoke, 2.5 chances in 10 supply a lighter smoke, and the rest of the time a middle intensity smoke is used. At the moment this applies equally to the player's plane and all other planes. But these two actors are handled separately, and so completely a completely different treatment could be applied for your plane versus all others. The guns firing from the ground have their own treatment, too, being directed to greatly diminishing their tracer smoke.

For a given gun, the difference between the 3 smokes is not *greatly* different, but enough to provide a subtle variety.

More finessing to do...