Muzzle Flare and games these days

[Telperion]

Having been through yet another couple of hours of Far Cry 2, I feel a need to vent on an issue that seems to be plaguing some games of the current era - namely shooters that attempt to reach some level of realism. I'm fine with gun jams, old weapons not shooting straight and such, but where my Personal Aggravation Meter (or PAM, for short) goes off the scale is how ridiculously bright the muzzle effect of the majority of guns is these days. Pistols (regardless of caliber), sub-machine guns and rifle don't seem to have a noticeable muzzle flare, but when it comes to assault rifles and LMGs, there just doesn't seem to be a limit to the frustration that the game developers are willing to subject me to.

Having fired a lot of clips of ammunition with an assault rifle, and some with a LMG, I feel that there's something wrong with the muzzle flare being so bright that it completely obscures the target I'm aiming at, and in worst case scenario even partially obscures the iron cross I'm using to aim. Come on! If I can't see what I'm shooting at, how am I expected to hit anything with these weapons?!

IRL muzzle flare is not an issue, unless you are firing in pitch black darkness. I have emptied entire clips with an LMG into practice targets witout suffering from any kind of visual impairment due to muzzle flare. Sure, you can't hit anything, if you just spray bullets at whatever you are shooting at, but that's not the point here!

I still remember games where the muzzle flare was this consistent X-shaped thingie in front of the gun, but these days it's a bright glaring ball that seems to want to eat up the entire front of the gun.

Okay, fair enough, FPS's are not realistic and they never will be. However, instead of making the target invisible with muzzle flare, how about adding in some recoil?

 

[Nutcase]

On the topic of "realistic things that could be fun", what if console FPSs actually made use of the fact that the consoles have *analog* triggers, and the accuracy in game was affected by the cleanness (and/or speed) of the trigger pull? The console FPSs could use at least one thing where they offer something more/different than a PC FPS, instead of being strictly worse.

(Or do they already do that? I don't play FPS on consoles.)

 

[MSORPG pl4y3r]

I noticed a similar flare thing on Cod4, at least I think it was it might have been another "realistic" FPSs but I noticed the flare was bright enough to realy hurt my eyes, I sloved that by only using weapons with supressors. I havent played FarCry 2 yet tho, I'm not sure wether I should get it or not.

 

[xitel]

What about the main assault rifle in Killzone? There wasn't muzzle flare but the exhaust looked like a cartoon sun.

 

[Anarchemitis]

In real weapons, muzzle flare rarely occurs unless they're using tracer rounds.
Also, most mini-guns or gatlin guns use tracer rounds offset every 10, 12 or 20 rounds.

 

[DesertHawk]

Well, seeing as how there is quite a bit of difference between firing a real weapon and pressing a button on a controller to make a pretend gun fire on your tv; there is are very few options designers have to make players feel immersed in what they are doing. Making the player FEEL like he is shooting a gun. It's just that a ton of muzzle flash and gobs of tracer rounds can go a long way in creating this feeling.

I would also like to add that the majority of players are probably unfamiliar with fire arms (in hands on situations anyway). Despite their inexperience, many still have strong pre-conceived notions of what a gun should/can do, including the muzzle flash/tracer bit. So designers throw in a bit of unrealistic aspects to create, well, what many players think IS realistic.

 

[shadow skill]

Couldn't they just lower the muzzle flare to solve the problem? I don't play shooters that much but I think I have been blinded by muzzle flare before.

 

[Nutcase]

In real weapons, muzzle flare rarely occurs unless they're using tracer rounds.

Incorrect. In real weapons, you rarely *see* the flare due to how fast it is, but it's always there. This article says the flare is 0.01-0.03s, and your normal involuntary blink can take in excess of 0.1s.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BTT/is_190_31/ai_n27380935/pg_4

Ergo, when you find it limiting your visibility in a game, it's not that the flash is too large, but that the game is showing it to you far too long. If the game runs at 60fps, a pistol flash should be displayed in one frame only. Rifle, two frames. At 30fps and below, the game should not show the pistol flash at all while rifle flash would be one frame.

While the flash itself cannot obscure anything in your vision, it can still crap on your night vision. So if the game uses HDR, it would be correct for the game to give a good nudge to it when you fire in the dark.

Here's a 9mm, still generating a nice muzzle flash despite having only a fraction of the power of a rifle round:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Glock_17_(9mm)_Muzzle_Flash.jpg