instagoat 133 Posted September 15, 2009 (edited) Hello, BIS Boards. First Time Poster here, have been around since OFP 1 and am not usually active on forums, but I´ve been struck with a little Idea which I thought I´d share. I´m putting this out here because I thought it may be worth looking into, be it by the community, or BIS themselves. The problem is that red dot sights and holographic sights do not work right now as they should. I´ve put this together to illustrate the problems, and then tell of the Idea I had. So, here goes. Aimpoints in the real world vs. Arma 2: I could talk a lot about how these sights work now, but I guess that´s not what this thread is about. If you want to find it out, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dot_sight At any rate, summa summarum: a red dot always points to where the gun is aimed, no matter how awkward the angle at which one is looking trough the sight. The Problem in Arma 2 is that the dots are not "projected", but instead are textures inside the gunsight itself, on the lens or slightly behind it. Because of this, they are static instead of flexible, and do not represent the actual point at which the rifle is aimed. This means that while walking, turning or even when kneeling, where the sight bobs around a lot in Arma 2, the gun is never really pointed at where the red dot is. This causes several problems: the greatest of these that I noticed is a great imprecision whilst kneeling. Try it for yourself: kneel, aim trough the ironsights, and just watch the pipper move around. When firing you will notice that in aimpoint sights, especially after firing a few shots, the bullets land a fair distance to the left, right, above or below the aimpoint, which should at least represent direction in which the bullets are flying: the dispersion above and below is heavily dependant on the distance at which the weapon is zeroed. This „tracking“ around the actual point of aim is very pronounced at medium distances already, from about 100 meters onwards it becomes difficult to hit anything using the aimpoint. I have gone as far as remembering the sequence in which the aimpoint tracks around the actual point of aim, and pointing it OFF the target accordingly. http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/1981/retposvsimpact.jpg This shot was taken with time slowed down, and after recoil motion was over. The red dot is in the same place as it was when I fired the shot. Distance to target is 100 m. This is about the biggest divergence from the center I was able to discern, however it is enough to reliably miss instead of hitting the target at distances larger than 100 – 120 meters. Here are a few Illustrations of the default Arma 2 reticule in the Eotech holographic sight, and examples of where the reticule should actually be inside the projection lens. http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/2083/correctretpos01.jpg Picture taken while turning left. http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7812/correctretpos02.jpg Picture taken while walking forwards. Reticule size is exagerrated in correct example. Idea for a solution: Instead of using a texture, a "pipper", much the same as the crosshair that is available in rookie mode, could be used. This would remove awkward alpha channel fiddling, and would at the same time give a common tool that everybody could use for any red dot sight that could be conceived. The way this would work is that, when the player is not looking trough the gunsight, the targeting reticule would be invisible. It would only be "activated" when he is switching to looking trough the gunsight. Naturally, this pipper would automatically point to the actual location of the gun by default, however when zooming in or out, the pipper would not change size, which may be unrealistic. I have no tried pointing a camera at an actual reflector sight and zooming in, so I´m not sure how this would look. The size, colour, bloom, the distinct parameters for where the sight appears and disappears when looking trough the reticule would be defined in the config of the particular gun, while the actual "template" for the red dot/reticule could be stored in a common .pbo for all weapons to access. This way a large library of correctly sized reticules could be compiled without much trouble, for everybody to access. With a setup like this, the brightness and opacity of the dot could also be more easily controlled, since it would be a part of the GUI, and not a hard texture on the weapon itself. The only problem may be getting it to work with the NV display, ie giving it the proper bloom when it is still adjusted to daytime brightness. The config could also include various other parameters which depend on the type of sight, such as range of brightness, the area inside the optics within which the red dot is displayed, the distance to which the dot is actually zeroed (since in many red dot sights you have to be at a certain distance from the target for the dot to be actually pointing at the target) and possibly some others that I can´t think of right now. Because it would be a part of the GUI, though, I am not sure if this kind of alteration could be done by the modding community, and would have to be taken up by the Devteam themselves. I have not been on the ball regarding mods for Arma, since I didn´t play it a lot, and neither am I knowledgeable in any kind of programming and coding, so if this has already been proposed in some form or the other and rejected or found to be impossible to implement, I apologize for bringing it forward again. Otherwise, I hope this is of some value as an Idea. Cheers Teh Fish Edit: Somebody apparently has had the same Idea already over in this thread: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=82013&page=2 http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1438793&postcount=18 Possibly, this is a workeable solution? Edited September 15, 2009 by Spiritfish Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
