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[WxTech]

Chocks,
Your questions aren't new to me.

I'd LOVE to be able to have wiggles only while the player's head shake is in effect and/or his guns are being fired while inside the cockpit. Otherwise make 'em straight. It I was at a more advanced Java level than poo-flinging chimp I'd probably be able to make it happen.

[WxTech]

I had a brief discussion with Mike about the possibility of having the 'gun cam' type tracer be drawn only while the player is firing guns, but the current handling of tracers would require really major work to accomplish this.

In the meantime, here's a first try at differentiating between small and larger calibre tracers using the Ki-43-Ib's 7.7mm and 12.5mm yellow tracers. For the smaller round I made the opacity for both the 3D mesh and the 2D line half that as for the larger rounds. Here are two views, the left being from a farther viewpoint. On the left we see both tracer forms (mesh and line). The difference in opacity should be easily enough apparent. On the right we've pulled in closer to a pair of tracers to better appreciate the effect of simply reducing the opacity of the texture. This keeps the tracer width at a desired value so as to ensure no untoward under-sampling as would occur for a skinnier line at a distance.

(Click the image for a larger, full resolution view.)

[WxTech]

From 6km away...

[WxTech]

I'm fiddling with the actual animated guncam tracers, applying what I feel are better textures. The original textures very strongly burn out white in their central part, and tend to have a more washed out hue as a result. I toned down the brightness so that the mesh textures are reasonably similar to the line tracer color, which makes for a better transition.

But this screenie is shown here because it illustrates why I introduced an alpha channel for my other 'static' textures. When strongly zoomed in (as here!) and when the tracer is seen against a light background, the full rectangle can be seen, even where pure black and normally invisible, like a ghostly box. (Actually, this reminds me of the matte cut-outs sometimes faintly visible around spacecraft miniatures in sci-fi movies.    ) I'll likely get to incorporating an alpha channel here too...

[choctaw111]

Awesome work!  Please let me know when your next version is ready for download!