thw6kds

Guys, I flew A-10A for fifteen years! Tracers are not in the inventory!!! Whatever ground observers see, it is not a tracer round. The most commonly used round is actually not a combat load. The TP round is designed for live fire practice and is the round most commonly observed by ground personnel at gunnery ranges and non-combat live fire exercises. The TP produces spectacular eruptions of debris on contact with earth or water and its enormous kinetic energy yields highly visible sparkles upon contact with hard targets. Although undeniably deadly, it is an inert projectile. I have killed a lot of dirt with TP! Never saw anything like the effects in FC2 from the real cockpit but it is a great sim and enjoy it no matter what the graphic effect chosen by the developers. If a little tweaking results in something more representative of the real view from the cockpit, that's icing on the cake! I have enjoyed trying out the various config mods and appreciate the efforts, observations, and input from everyone I have read on this forum.

HAVOC131 Thanks for the interest in getting this GAU8 thing right. I saved all the original config settings and use the quick config changes to get something that looks a little more realistic. The bright ricochets just won't do. I am doing the same with two other computers on our LAN and hope local multiplayer will let us get by as long as the config is the same for all. We shall see!

drhow, Thanks for digging into the config and coming up with an alternative to the effect for the GAU8 30mm in FC2. I flew the A-10A from 1980 until 1995 and my sons and I have enjoyed LOMAC for years. It is hands down, our favorite sim. The A-10 gun effects were not perfect in FC1 but they are awful in FC2! Don't get me wrong. This is a superb and very fun modern air combat sim and my complaint in no way diminishes our repect for the developers and the fun we have with it. I just find it surprising that the gun around which the A-10 was designed and built got such relatively short shrift in an otherwise extremely immersive sim. Your simple mod of the config file for the GAU8 30mm actually results in something that more closely resembles a real world 30mm strafe pass from the cockpit than the FC2 original. I find the little black dots much easier to ignore than the cartoonish tracers which appear to bounce off anything they hit without even so much as a puff of dust! I have never seen any flavor of 30mm behave in the way that is depicted in FC2. In my relatively long experience, I don't think I have ever seen the GAU8 30mm bounce off anything! The effect in FC2 might be appropriate for 7.62 hitting armor plate at night, but not for the A-10. Because of its enormous kinetic energy, the impact of any kind of GAU8 30mm round, even the inert, frangible TP, on land or water looks VERY impressive from the cockpit. Your modification of the file works for me by eliminating the very unrealistic tracer effect and very nicely depicting the time of flight of a round from trigger pull to impact on target. The addition of an appropriately modest explosive effect enhances realism. This gives a good feel of what it is like doing long-range and multiple target strafing. You can watch the sparkles on the first target as you put the pipper on the next one. There is probably a good reason that A-10 strafe effects are depicted the way they are in FC2. This is only a minor quibble I have based upon my real world experience. In the meanwhile, my boys and I intend to fly it with the config you posted. We shall follow posts on this closely. Thanks!