Aim-Down-Sight is unnecessary for realism

[ElPatron]

If you're moving at any speed quicker than a slow walk with your eyes down the sights how do you see where you're going? You have to slow down or risk tripping over that rock and poking your eye out. You also limit your breadth of vision as a the gun is covering up a chunk of your sight.

Poking my eye out with what, exactly?

I see where I am going the same way a person shouldering a gun in those pics would. Whether I have the stock on my cheek or not I can see the ground the same way.

My paintball marker has sights, so do plenty of markers the people i play with use, the stock ones you rent with top mounted gravity feed hoppers are shit.

Okay, then it was those I have played with. Honestly, they don't require sights, I just kept the marker tilted to my left side and used the hopper and barrel as reference points. Since there were no sights I was actually "aiming" all the time.

The only reason i bring up paintballing at all is because it's the closest thing to real-life combat that I've ever experienced

Is airsoft big in your city? Because it's a little more expensive to start but ammunition is cheaper and the replicas are much closer to the real deal.

 

[spartan231490]

"What? He's crazy, this guy must be crazy to suggest that hipfire with a mysterious reticule in the middle of the screen is in any way realistic."

Well, not so crazy when you think about how the screen perspective is a single 2D perspective yet humans have 2 eyes meaning you'd get two shifted 2D perspectives, that means the parallax must be represented combining the two views into one frame.

"What? I don't follow, Parallax?"

Basically, both your eyes look the same direction but because your eyes are a few inches apart they get a different view. Like how if you look at a tree with your finger held up, your right eye sees what is slightly shifted from what your left eye sees:

Remember this picture. How does it look familiar? The finger in line to the tree, like the sight post on a gun, and then the off the the side view...

When we see the the world around us with two eyes we combine this together what each eyeball sees as the images are processed separately. But how would you Represent this in a First-person perspective which has only a single 2D frame?

Think about it, the right eye would be looking down the weapons sights and out around at the enviroment. The left eye would be looking around with a better view at the environment and see the left side of the gun in your hand.

Your left eye would see something like this:

While your right eye looking down the sights sees this:

Now take the important part of what the right eye sees, where the sights line up and indicate where the bullets go, and lay that superimposed over the wider less restricted view of the Left eye. Then you have the classic "unrealistic" representation of aiming a weapon with a reticule in the centre of the screen:

"These games are so unrealistic, you can't aim without using the sights. Where does the reticule on the screen come from?"

The reticule comes from using the gun. It is a game REPRESENTATION of your right eye using the sights while your left eye is open.

You can do this yourself with a ruler though preferably something more gun-like, With your right eye look down the ruler/sights then close your right eye and open your left. It's more obvious with your head canted to the right so your left view of the gun is a little lower.

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"Then why bother with Aim-down sights in games?"

Why? I think it's a con, with faux-realism and a crutch for much more unrealistic things like instantaneous zoom with iron sights and super-powerful aim-assist when activating iron-sights.

It's most valuable for on consoles where the thumbstick is just so crap for aiming, not a problem if a proper aiming device like a mouse is used.

OK, some hyper realistic games might need aim-down sights like Red Orchestra or ARMA for how you have adjustible sights and other things, but certainly the vast majority of FPS games, including war games the ADS mechanic is a crutch for gameplay, not for the level of realism they are aspiring to.

except people have a dominant eye and have primarily only one view, that's why when you hold a hand up you don't usually see 2 of them. Also, not only are you trained to use your dominant eye to shoot, but most people close the eye away from the gun when shooting anyway, and if you don't your focused on the sight picture, which you only see with one eye, so your view is more or less as if looking with only one eye. I'm sorry to say, but it's painfully obvious from you're post that if you've ever held a gun, it wasn't very recent.

ADS is very important for any game trying to be realistic because a weapon can be fired "from the hip" or when in proper firing position, the difference is massive, and both options have benefits and should be included in any game claiming to be realistic.

That said, I hate realism in games, I think it has no place, but I would never buy a shooter without ADS. It's an important and necessary mechanic, and adds loads to gameplay by diversifying options.

 

[NLS]

In most shooters you play a trained combatant.

>STALKER (amnesiac)
>Postal games
>Half Life (MIT physicist)
>Far Cry 2 (some characters had no military training)
>XIII (amnesiac - only "remembers" his training and skills if you pick up documents)
>Brink
>RAGE
>Call of Juarez
>Painkiller
>Duke Nukem
>Deus Ex (rookie UN agent)
>Freedom Fighters
>Left 4 Dead 1 and 2
>Marathon
>Prey
>Metro 2033
>Red Faction
>Mirror's Edge
>Turning Point
>Resistance 3
>Serious Sam
>System Shock
>BioShock
>Turok
>Unreal games

Sorry about the nitpicking, I like your list, but here's a few points:
(okay, some of these are really just nitpicking and not even worth mentioning, but oh well, I just had to)
In STALKER: Call of Pripyat you play as Major Alexander Degtyarev who is working undercover for the military.
In Half Life: Opposing Force you play as Adrian Shephard from the HECU military unit.
In Left 4 Dead 1 you may play as Bill, who once served in Vietnam.
In Prey you play as Tommy, a former U.S Army soldier.
And if I remember correctly, some of the playable characters in the Unreal games had military background.

 

[BENZOOKA]

Counter-Strike for teh win, as always.

The realism in aim down sights -games actually comes from the fact that you can't keep your weapon at the perfect firing position[footnote]If you've ever held a weapon, this should be obvious[/footnote] and watch through your aim all the time. You certainly can't view and focus your surroundings at the same time you are aiming.

And there's one other major point: We see what we see. Watching the monitor, we'll end up focusing on an enemy in the distance, a grenade in mid-air, a reticule, a tiny gap to notice if an enemy passes, and so on... It's another thing what the game shows us. So there's kind of two gates you see your aim and other things when playing FPS's: What is on the screen and what we are looking (and focusing) at.

There's nothing wrong with ADS in FPS's (but it still is a step towards realism). That suits Battlefield 3 great. Adjustable crosshair suits, Counter-Strike games.

 

[ElPatron]

In Left 4 Dead 1 you may play as Bill, who once served in Vietnam.
In Prey you play as Tommy, a former U.S Army soldier.
And if I remember correctly, some of the playable characters in the Unreal games had military background.

I mentioned L4D1 because it was one character out of four. I don't remember Prey too well so I forgot the military background.

I knew some characters in Unreal games had military background but the Tournament games lack plot.

You're much higher than a shroom chomping balloon salesman if you think that aiming down a sight doesn't inhibit movement.

There's a ton of difference between shouldering a weapon and aiming down the sights.

There's a reason militaries teach their soldiers to shoulder their weapons and only aim when they're well... aiming at something.

I am going to repeat what I have been saying for several posts.

I can only stop looking down the sights if I physically push the rifle away from my shoulder. So I keep having the sights superimposed on my view.

So no, it does not inhibit movement. Why would it magically stop me from walking faster?

 

[TheFinish]

Been reading this thread, got a couple of points:

STALKER has had ADS since the beginning, in all weapons. In fact, they're necessary to hit anything further away than a stone throw. Except shotguns firing shot, those can't hit anything worth a damn unless you're hugging someone, ADS or not.

With the Parallaz argument, the shift isn't THAT big, at all. I second whoever said you have to be Sid to be able to see like that, because anyone aiming down something will realise it immediately.

And finally, why do you care if a game has ADS or not? You just don't use it. The only problem I can see is if you want to hipfire accurately, but if you want that just play a game with no ADS, and be done with it.

And finally, in XIII you may be an amnesiac, but you remember almost everything from your time in the armed forces. The special abilities you remember are on top of that training.

 

[Davey Woo]

Guns in games will never be realistic until they can properly simulate recoil. I don't want bullets coming out of the barrel at jaunty angles, I want the gun to kick the aimer to somewhere else so you have to work to keep the gun shooting straight.

 

[TotalerKrieger]

snip

I tried using a couple of my rifles to test your theory, but it doesn't really work. Obviously, there is a parallax effect when switching from right eye closed to left eye closed. However, if I line up the iron sights with my right eye, the rifle appears far larger in my left field of vision than what you propose it to be. With my left eye, the visual field is still largely obscured by the rifle and the sights appear at far less of an angle than what is typically represented as the non-ADS view of the player's firearm. Any videogame which stayed true to your proposal (right FOV represented by the reticle while weapon model represents the left FOV) would be extremely irritating/impractical as the majority of the screen would constantly be obscured by the weapon model.

By forcing the player to take a moment to switch to ADS view, it realistically simulates that a combatant cannot constantly keep his/her weapon sights perfectly aligned at all times. Soldiers are trained to keep their weapon shouldered (ie sights are not aligned in either left or right fov, no cheek weld) while scanning for targets. When a target is found, the soldier repositions his/her weapon and head to form a cheek weld and align the sights. If stationary or moving very slowly, you can scan for targets by peering slightly above the sights without breaking your cheekweld, but if a videogame is attempting to simulate movement through a battlefield or a zombie apocalypse (rather than hunting from a deerstand or shooting paper from a bench), a toggleable shouldered position to cheekweld would be the most sensible choice. The current ADS systems is not perfect, the shouldered position often shows too much of the firearm, the ironsight view often does not obsure enough of the screen, and the standard FOV simulated on a computer screen or TV is not the same as that of the human eye (hence the rather awkward zoom feature found in the ADS view of Red Orchestra 2, the weapon sights are shifted to the FOV created by the human eye). Anyways, these ADS systems are FAR more realistic than the hipfiring-only nonesense found in games like L4D2 or Half-Life 2. Your proposal would not be particularily realistic, as it would imply that the shooter can maintain constant alignment of the sights regardless of movement or circumstance. In reality this just isn't possible, nor prefferable (impractical when scanning for targets in vast majority of situations).

As an aside, shooting with both eyes open would be extremely difficult to simulate in videogame, in my case I find both fields of view overlap (with the visual field of my dominant eye appearing opaque, while the visual field of my other eye appearing transparent).

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

None of this crap ever came up when I played Doom.

 

[Smagmuck_]

Aiming is unnecessary for a realistic FPS?

What's next? Is walking unnecessary too?

 

[General Twinkletoes]

Think about it, the right eye would be looking down the weapons sights and out around at the enviroment. The left eye would be looking around with a better view at the environment and see the left side of the gun in your hand.

Your left eye would see something like this:

While your right eye looking down the sights sees this:

That's how that makes me feel. I'm already self concious man..

Yep, that's pretty much how I felt too. Our eyes are no where near far apart enough to make that big of a difference. Human eyes don't stick out at the sides.

 

[WanderingFool]

The only nitpick I have for aim-down-sights is how unrealistically it does it. You want to look dead centre down a rifle? Don't come crying to me when your front teeth are missing and your sternum is shattered.

Do you know how aim a gun?

Yes, I've grown up hunting and shooting.

If they could put some proper alignment on the guns, I wouldn't mind, but in all games with iron sights, it looks like the protagonist is sticking the stock under his chinny chin chin.

Huh... thats weird, cause when I look down sights on a gun, it looks pretty similar to what I see in most FPSs with ADS. I tried to visualize what having a gun under my chin would look like, and thought that there was no way that was even sensible, I couldnt even see how it was similar to how you describe it.

I just cant visualize this...

Spoiler: This is slightly off topic, but I just had a thought:

Everyone calls firing without ADS in most games as "hip-fire". But that would imply the gun was at your characters hip, which would mean that they have no chest or stomach to speak of, if you are firing from the hip, you wouldnt be seeing most of your gun unless you were looking down. So I would argue that the gun is most likely pressed against you characters shoulder, but when they fire without the sights, they are actually eyeballing it. This actually makes sense from a position of how the "squinting" aim function seen in some games works (think Bodycount for the latest example, I know there are more, but I cant think of them right now.) You are actually still aiming the gun, just without using the Iron sights.

Just something that came to me...

 

[Stryc9]

Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe this has already been mentioned but doesn't using the iron sight aiming in games that have it actually increase the mathematical likelihood that you'll hit your target and do increased damage because of a more "accurate" shot than not using iron sight aiming?

 

[BodomBeachChild]

I'll give you five bucks to shoot any rifle or pistol from the hip very accurately. Go set up 5 pop cans at different distances and try and nail them all.

Same works for games. I turn my recticle off any time I canbecause it's annoying and unrealistic so I kinda need ADS unless I want to spray n' pray all day.

 

[Deathmageddon]

ADS is necessary for realism because for a shooter to be realistic, it has to accurately portray how guns work. Go shoot one IRL (safely and legally and not AT anyone). You'll have to look down sights if you want to hit anything.

 

[Pyro Paul]

So then what is with the cross hairs?

Well, Any shooter with a bit of experience can tell you where they 'feel' the bullets will go simply by how they are holding a weapon. we, ourselves, create mental projection on the general location bullets would fall based on how a gun is being held and our own knowledge on how the gun works.

They call it 'Aiming down the Barrel'

And this is what is represented in FPS games.
You mentally visualize where the bullets will go. (cross hairs)
It is harder to visuallize this when moving (Accuracy loss while moving)
Holding in a more comfortable or stable position makes it easier to visuallize (accuracy gain while crouching)

It's called "point shooting" and it's only truly effective for a few feet. Longer than that and you're just as accurate as if you were shooting a Nerf gun - you know where you're aiming at but you won't be able to control where the projectile actually lands.

Crouching has fuck-all to do with your accuracy from point-shooting.

Any shooter with a bit of experience will tell you that there are no "real world" crosshairs. You just learn how to have consistency and use reference points to be able to use a longer rifle inside compact spaces.

In video games crosshairs actually allow you to control where a projectile is going.


But you're right in the part about the eyes and the image shown.

well it techincally is called 'Unsighted shooting' but i've heard it called many things... shooting over the barrel, shooting down the barrel, shoot by feel...

and yes, distance does come into play.
But the thing is the distance you usually use unsighted shooting in is the distance we see portrayed in video games.

of course i know there is this huge disconnect of distance, even with in the shooting community... but i came from a school of thought where 'If it is closer then 25 meters, don't bother shooting, throw your gun at it.'

 

[snekadid]

Dieing... if you repeatedly use a shotgun to snipe you are doing it wrong... If you are repeatedly using sprint in a way that is getting you killed you are doing it wrong.

Killing floor would like to disagree with you, shotgun sniping is awesome.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Why do some many people have a problem with ADS, but not guns having a zoom function? (Not zoom as in with a scope, zoom as in the camera just moves forward a bit, giving you a bit more accuracy).

They are the same goddamn thing, its just one of them actually has a separate animation. If my recollection is correct a lot of PC games have a zoom feature with their guns