Really? A crosshair for a "realistic" sim?

[whisper 0]

Are we still ignoring all the posts in this thread which explains why the "you can always turn the crosshair off" argument is BS?

Well, considering you are ignoring arguments made here multiple times about why the original request is not going FOR the game, but AGAINST it, permit me to return you the favor.

Again, and again, and again, stop trying to remove options and force your style of play on others, when the whole point of the game is being open to any play-style (and not only about realism)

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Might as well remove the sights then too, since they have no meaning anymore... The guy who uses sights have no advantage over the player who shoots from the hip, dead accurate.

No, in fact I prefer respawn missions over hardcore missions. But this is mission design related and not something a server controls.

I honestly don't think many people would quit playing if small arms had their crosshairs removed by force. There are other such enforcements in play as well, such as not being able to carry a machinegun and a SMAW, although technically you would be able to (not efficiently though). Done for balancing and gameplay reasons which I also agree with. Removed in ACE, sure, but then you got weight and stamina to worry about, so that kind of balances things out.

Btw whisper, I'm trying to remove a highly unbalancing "feature" by introducing a new setting, since the two extremes fail badly. I'm sure most servers would disallow small arms crosshairs (and those only), if they only had the chance.

[dayglow 2]

Personally I feel that removing the cursor is highly unrealistic. I have done stance directed fire and it is accurate on a human size target out towards 30 yards or so. To remove them actually makes shooting from unsighted unrealistically difficult. As I stated near the start of the thread that the truemod crosshairs from A1 were perfect in this regard.

But that is my opinion and don't feel it should be forced on anyone who wants to play in a more unrealistic fashion if that's what they choose.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

With new setting, they can still choose in singleplayer, but it allows server admins to increase level of realism if they want to, instead of going all the way where no crosshairs doesn't work well.

I do actually get the point of "stance directed fire" (don't think we called it that though). Personally I couldn't get targets at more than about 10 meters, maybe I was just a bad shot. And, I could do it on the move. I still achieve that in Arma even with crosshairs removed (high float zone players will suffer though), but I'm no longer able to do 200m sniper shots without aiming.

If old system, widen the bars greatly and remove the center pole.

[ScareCroweb 10]

I personally feel that by having crosshair forces me to use the damn crosshair even though I am highly trained on shooting without the crosshair.

why you say? well because its a strain to not using the crosshair and I KNOW that the enemy might use the crosshair too.

being a veteran Ic-Arma player I am used to getting frequent players asking why cross hair is turned off, and every time its been explained that its highly unrealistic to see som markers on your HUD since in real life you dont have a HUD. people who are true to realism thinks this discussion is silly. And i agree this discussion is silly crosshair is an option in the game, and I play on servers where the crosshair is turned off, its not a problem for me..

[now on the other hand the grass is more sever in my opinion the grass extends to a 100 meter radious around the player and thats unrealistic.. thats why I choose to play without grass.. lol I know its not the topic of this thread but i just wanted to compare these to subjects...]

[dmarkwick 261]

Might as well remove the sights then too, since they have no meaning anymore... The guy who uses sights have no advantage over the player who shoots from the hip, dead accurate.

The ingame unit who is unsighted is still shouldered, and as such is expected to be still quite accurate. Speaking personally, I see the crosshair as the bridge between my lack of depth perception & natural body sense that tells me where my gun is aiming, and ingame satisfaction.

---------- Post added at 03:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:19 AM ----------

being a veteran Ic-Arma player I am used to getting frequent players asking why cross hair is turned off, and every time its been explained that its highly unrealistic to see som markers on your HUD since in real life you dont have a HUD.

There are many things ingame that you don't have IRL. There must by necessity exist some way of emulating what CANNOT be purely simulated. IRL, I don't walk about with a cardboard box on my head with a monitor-shaped hole cut into the front. I also don't walk about with one eye closed and have no depth perception. I also have MUCH better "resolution" IRL, and I also have a body sense that tells me which way I'm pointing my gun. Ingame, especially with TrackIR, I have no such sense. I need the "simulation" of a crosshair to tell me that in a quick succinct way. Hell, sometimes I cannot even be sure about what stance I'm in, and how can THAT be realistic?

I'd be happy for other HUD-like info to be available, like how injured various parts of my body are. Simple colour coding would suffice. Why? Well because ingame I have the rather unrealistic effect that I don't even know IF I've been hit, much less where or how bad. HUD bullet-count info? Meh, lose it it won't bother me, as that actually DOES represent unnecessarily gamelike info. :)

However, always make it the option. For one very good reason: the new player. There is no value in making it too difficult for new players to really be able to join in. OFP/ArmA is difficult enough as it is without making it seemingly impossible for new players to have any sort of learning curve. Remember that this is first and foremost a game, and it should be accessible. It would be foolish arrogance to remove all option of ingame aid because of some elitist notion of "realism" (which is subjective in any case) when what you're doing is sitting in your living room armed with a mouse.

Make realism a tweaked state only I say. It must start life as an accessible game first though.

[JSj 12]

I agree, remove the ammo counter, and put in stance and injury indicators to compensate for the fact that you can feel these things instantly IRL, but not in the game.

But I don't agree about the learning curve, how do you learn the game faster by having more options? It's just more things that you need to learn about. And ArmA isn't that hard to get into. It isn't a flight simulator with a 500 page manual. I think that any gamer that is interrested in a realistic game instead of just picking up an arcade shooter like Call of Duty can learn the basics quickly. The controls are not much more advanced than in a regular shooter. The more advanced things like the editor you can get into later if you want to.

To keep this on topic, I really agree with CarlGustaffa, unaimed fire without the crosshair is accurate enough to simulate unaimed RL shooting. You don't need a crosshair for that, and we especially don't need a crosshair like the present one that you can use for long range sniping.

[paul1290 10]

Like I mentioned earlier my main objection to removing crosshairs in this game is that the game doesn't seem like it was set up for it, at least not very well.

Right now the weapon pretty much behaves as if you were using the sights all the time with or without crosshairs. Unless you have a scope or other such device, bringing up the sights only changes how it looks on your screen.

In other words, for most intents and purposes all fire is aimed fire in ArmA 2. As far as I can tell, there isn't any "un-aimed fire" in the game.

Another way to say it would be that removing crosshairs right now doesn't turn firing without crosshairs into "un-aimed fire", it turns it into "aimed fire without crosshairs". This just makes it frustrating for some and irrelevant for the rest.

For the most part this is the fault of a whole mess of things that would be a near-insurmountable pain-in-the-ass to fix including the flatness of our screens, our lack of tactile feedback, the fact we can't feel the mass of our weapons, the fact we only have a mouse moving on a flat plane, and so on and so forth.

Now most other games get over the above problems by just intentionally making the weapon inaccurate in-game whenever you aren't looking through the sights, though I know a lot of people here would hate that solution even more.

Edited December 28, 2009 by paul1290

[CarlGustaffa 4]

I could live with more inaccurate weapons when "not in the sights". I just want those that uses sights to have an advantage for using them, instead of just the disadvantage of not seeing to well due to sights covering up some of the view.

Also, removing crosshairs does not make it into "aimed fire without crosshairs". I'm not able to hit targets as far away as I am when I'm using the sights if I have no crosshairs, but I am when they are off. Some might "paint" a dot on the screen as a cheat attempt, but that can be fixed by enforcing a 5% minimum dead zone. I'm using that now just to test, and I'm still able to hit relatively close targets with my SAW "during a panic" :) but I have to resort to using the sights for longer distances.

Hell, even not so serious games disallow crosshairs for sniper weapons.

[Bulldogs 10]

I'm painting a crosshair on my tacglasses, just to make it real :)

From seeing all the arguments here I think we should be aiming more for getting an accuracy change from sight vs non-sight.

Crosshairs are an evil, bit I find they outway the alternative. I don't want my HUD flooded with information telling me when I'm injured, tired, what stance I'm in. Eventually I start feeling like I'm playing a flight sim.

[galzohar 31]

Any kind of HUD info can be made optional, especially info that does not reduce realism such as a general idea of your health status and your stance. The thing with crosshairs is that they give unrealistic information and thus should be a server option (like they are now), the only problem is that the default mode is crosshairs on and thus most servers have them on, as well as the slight issue no crosshairs causes when using certain weapons (ex: you have to hit spacebar to see what your javelin is locked to. ex2: BMP-3 side gunners are quite useless), but those are really issues with those weapons and not with crosshairs per-se.

[Bulldogs 10]

That's my point with crosshairs. Effectively you can't have a real sense due to the lack of sensory input with a computer, so the crosshair simulates some real life aspects. If you remove the crosshair then you need to place in other "unrealistic" things to compensate for the lack of crosshair.

In the end you'll never get to a full level of realism, but to disable features such as crosshairs is to force people to have less advantages than real life. Personally I never use the crosshair for aiming, only for information, but I would like it if you were far less accurate when non-scoped, but I don't think removing the crosshair altogether is the best option.

And at the end of all of it my initial thought remains. If you don't like the crosshair, then don't use it. While ArmA 2 is a mil-sim, it isn't designed to be only realistic (as I mentioned, that's impossible, compromises must be made), it's designed to be a mil-sim that's enjoyable and customisable. If you don't like something about it, then change it for yourself, but don't force everyone else to play the way you want to play.