Title says it all. Here is a video of what it looks like.
So I am aware that the reason for the curve is because of my linetrace. Whenever it fires, it calculates were to send the projectile by where the camera is facing. This works perfectly fine whenever I aim up, down, or I'm idling; strafing is a different matter, however, because it tells the projectile to go at point A while I am moving to, say, point B. In order to reach point A, the bullet leaves my muzzle, which is moving along with me to point B, and has to curve to reach point A.
Therefore, my question is: how can I use my line trace to calculate the different between point A and B and use that as my direction, that way my bullet always goes straight.
My experiences using tracer rounds in real life have all been from stationary mounts with the m249 SAW and m240. I’ve never fired a tracer round while moving, much less strafing, so that’s why the curve seems off to me. If my player is idling, the tracer round hits right in the middle of the crosshair (if we disregard spread).
So I guess that this “arc” is actually natural then? If so, then I’m fine with it. I just wanted opinions from others.
I would recommend that, once the bullet “leaves the barrel”, it acts independent of your [Linetrace] and use the bullet’s cache to store the data, once it has been computed.
Judging from the video, I would say that it appears to “curve” simply because of the speed of the bullets, creating a sort of “arc” with the bullet instances as you are strafing. If you’ve never used tracer rounds before, it can seem a little odd from a third-person perspective. Your video doesn’t seem that odd, to me, from that range. Perhaps if you upload a stationary third-person overhead perspective view (while the character moves, independent of the overhead view)?
I don't have any first-person helmet-mounted display videos while firing tracer rounds that I can upload, but this third-person view might give you a feel for it. I can say from experience, though, that tracer rounds tend to look like an arc while strafing.
Something like that-- but, more specifically, if the [Linetrace] for the bullet is being parsed each time its position is updated, then that would be an instance in which the bullet might curve into the new [Linetrace] as the player’s position changes. But if you’re properly utilizing the projectile system then I don’t think that it’s actually causing that to happen.
Also, how would I have my bullet behave independently of the linetrace? I believe I’m following you logically…have the linetrace calculate the initial bullet velocity, then store that info into an independent cache so the bullet can manipulate that info as it flies through the air, thus not following the linetrace exactly if it doesn’t need to.
It’s going to look much different with low velocity tracers, yeah. If you ever find a video with a first-person perspective in which they are utilizing low velocity tracers while strafing, it looks pretty similar. The tracers tend to light foliage on fire and cause worse ricochet, so there probably aren’t many videos out there due to the range safety hazards. I would have saved my recording but the NVGs basically bled too much light.
[Edit]: Also, if you slow your video down and look at where the crosshair is, you can visually trace that each round appears to hit its mark each time.