Aim-Down-Sight is unnecessary for realism
- Thread starter Treblaine
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No, I just reposition my shoulder. I don't wear any kind of thick vest or padding on my torso, which allows me to keep the stock shouldered tightly without hitting my clavicle.Abandon4093 said:
Instead of moving my neck I just rotate my face to avoid breaking the cheeking.
The point has never been about realism.Treblaine said:
The point of aim-down-sights in an FPS is to make a tradeoff between increasing your accuracy (doing it usually reduces the spread of your weapon) and reducing your mobility.
Make yourself more vulnerable to make your shooting better, are you in a position to safely do that or are you willing to risk making yourself an easier target?
Counterstrike since 1999 and numerous other FPS games have implemented such a trade off where crosshairs dilate as you move without being in crouch, like shifting from "looking through sights" to "looking over top of barrel".GloatingSwine said:
The thing is the good old was was not to the extreme extent of COD where the shifting into ADS so clearly favours campers who got into position before and wait.
I find I am repeating myself so much, I shall have to go back an add an addendum to my original post as people aren't even doing a ctrl-f search on the current page to see if what they say has been discussed already.
I think ADS systems were added for a more realistic feel, not realism, of putting a person in the sights when you pull the trigger for dramatic affect and to make it worth using in an FPS it had to have an advantage which was increased(perfect) accuracy and in some cases aim assist and coincidentally(purposely) gave a better advantage to consoles than it did to PCs.
The problems that I have are:
1. ADS systems do not have proper negative affects to claim realism, you move slower, that's it, if anyone has tried walking at all with the iron sights of any gun trained for perfect accuracy they know that it is a struggle to keep the sights aligned at all let alone perfectly. Although all gun aiming in games has the same problem.
2. To concentrate on keeping your iron sights accurate you cut your field of view by at least a third and a quarter of whats left is a fuzzy out of focus nose.
I'm willing to accept most things as gaming magic but if any company claims ADS use for realism here is what they need to do.
Iron sights should have the accuracy of the normal reticle when moving at all and also shift with motion and movement only becoming as accurate as they are now when not moving at all.
Put a third of the FOV out of focus.
Decrease normal reticle accuracy by 100-150%, so people will have a reason to use iron sights again.
Remove the slight zoom it gives you, I know the zoom doubles as the decreased FOV but it gives an unfair advantage.
In most games these days using ADS almost turns your gun into a laser, so much for that gritty realism.
That's my 2 cents
The problems that I have are:
1. ADS systems do not have proper negative affects to claim realism, you move slower, that's it, if anyone has tried walking at all with the iron sights of any gun trained for perfect accuracy they know that it is a struggle to keep the sights aligned at all let alone perfectly. Although all gun aiming in games has the same problem.
2. To concentrate on keeping your iron sights accurate you cut your field of view by at least a third and a quarter of whats left is a fuzzy out of focus nose.
I'm willing to accept most things as gaming magic but if any company claims ADS use for realism here is what they need to do.
Iron sights should have the accuracy of the normal reticle when moving at all and also shift with motion and movement only becoming as accurate as they are now when not moving at all.
Put a third of the FOV out of focus.
Decrease normal reticle accuracy by 100-150%, so people will have a reason to use iron sights again.
Remove the slight zoom it gives you, I know the zoom doubles as the decreased FOV but it gives an unfair advantage.
In most games these days using ADS almost turns your gun into a laser, so much for that gritty realism.
That's my 2 cents
Iron sights are for more accurate aiming.Treblaine said:"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.
Sure firing from the hip might make you hit a target, but if you're like me and you want to hit a guy in the head every time making quick kills using the iron sight is awesome for picking them off.
also in real life you would always aim down the sight because real life doesn't have reticules
You just basically said "it's not realistic because it's realistic"
Take a game like dayZ for example, on a lot of servers you DON'T have a reticule you only have the iron sights you can fire blindly without using the iron sights but you will be wasting ammo and lose most fights
edit: also the ironsight allows you more focus (the reticule is not a specific guarded area it fluctuates, you can't accurately see within a circle for example if your target is in or out of view (you can train yourself at it and try but it won't always work)
I'd ask the obvious question of "Who cares?" but apparently you do much more than you should. Shifting and dilating crosshairs is just means to the same end: forcing the play to tactically choose between the ability to be mobile or the ability to be accurate. It's a mechanic meant to balance gameplay. The same way that I can run around with my Browning in Day of Defeat and hope that firing from my hip could work or I could make the choice to go prone, drop by bipod, and have accuracy but lose my ability to move quickly if spotted and attacked. It is meant to facilitate a choice between two incomparables for the player, both of which affect their ongoing survival.Treblaine said:
Iron Sights are the exact same principle with a different mechanic to bring about the choice.
I wouldn't say "unnecessary" as in cut it out, however, I don't think games are "worst" if they don't have it. I would say L4D2's narrative is reinforced by they not aiming down. They aren't soldiers now are they?
I honestly could not give the tiniest amount of a fuck as to whether or not a game is realistic, but I do like being able to use iron sights if only because they can help me pick off a bad guy every now and again.
Bioshock comes to mind, it had an iron sights mode but I never used it for actual combat, only when I spotted a baddie a few feet away and they hadn't noticed me yet, I used the iron sights to get a beat on them and cap em in the face.
Bioshock comes to mind, it had an iron sights mode but I never used it for actual combat, only when I spotted a baddie a few feet away and they hadn't noticed me yet, I used the iron sights to get a beat on them and cap em in the face.
Read again. He specifically said "unsighted", i.e. not using irons sights or any kind of optics to aid the shooting.Viking67 said:
easternflame said:
Because civilian shooters are freaked out by the idea of using sights, right?
Pretty much almost every firearm available for civilian purchase has some kind of sights or sighting aid.
Even shotguns that don't have sights usually have a aiming bead or even a sight groove in the barrel/grooves in the receiver that allows the shooter to line up his shots.
To be fair, I think soldiers would be more trained in point shooting than civilians. Note, I am not saying that L4D should have ADS, just that sights are a basic need in firearms.
On PC FPS at least I find ADS to be absolutely necessary in almost every event except when you need to fire instinctively, yes you could fire off your whole clip hoping to get a few hits but hip-fire just doesn't compare to almost all the shots going where you want them to when you ADS.. such is the curse of no aim-assist..
On a realism note, have you ever gone paintballing or fired an air rifle atleast? I wouldn't even dream of firing from the shoulder without also aiming down the sites because my eyes don't know where the gun is going to fire (hint: no crosshairs in real life)
TL
R ADS is needed for realism because it should be the only way to hit anything beyond point blank range, hip-fire (or shoulder fire) should be far less accurate than it already is and aim-assist should be thrown out the window in favour of players actually having to stop, aim and then fire at things.. in the name of realism
I'm really shit at TLRs
On a realism note, have you ever gone paintballing or fired an air rifle atleast? I wouldn't even dream of firing from the shoulder without also aiming down the sites because my eyes don't know where the gun is going to fire (hint: no crosshairs in real life)
TL
R ADS is needed for realism because it should be the only way to hit anything beyond point blank range, hip-fire (or shoulder fire) should be far less accurate than it already is and aim-assist should be thrown out the window in favour of players actually having to stop, aim and then fire at things.. in the name of realismI'm really shit at TL
Rs
WARNING: WALL OF TEXT INCOMINGTreblaine said:
OK, I'm going to try to defy internet tradition and actually just give you my counter-viewpoint and attempt to not come across as a condescending dick. I still might, but if I do, it's not intentional, and I'm not trying to belittle you. For most of this I'm just going to refer to your first post because I don't want to look up all your posts in the last 8 pages. So here goes:
First off, you're saying that the shooter's non-aiming eye would see something like the side view of the weapon shown in traditional FPS games. As many have pointed out much more sarcastically, the width between your eyes is not great enough to show that much of a perspective change. The distance between the inside tips of your eyes is probably little over an inch. If you take a ruler and put the end of it over the center of your right eye, and see what part of it is over the center of your left eye, you will probably get something around 2.5"-3.5". That is nowhere near enough to justify that perspective difference. Hell, on some of those games' weapon models, you can see part of the stock on the "shouldered but not ADS" view. If you were really using the weapon sights, your cheek would be there, so you would not be able to see that part of the weapon.
Part of your claim is that the weapon placement in traditional FPS layouts could be viewed at the view seen from the non-aiming eye while the actual aiming is done with the other eye. The issue with this is that the eye with which you are aiming is almost always your dominant eye, meaning that the image from it is going to be a bit more prominent. That's the reason why you are using it to aim. You would not just aim through the sights, get a good sight picture and then focus entirely on your left eye. Aiming through the sights, especially offhand with no rest, and moving around, can be quite difficult. You have to constantly readjust as your body movements and breathing shift the weapon around.
The point I'm getting at is this: what you actually see when using two-eyes-open shooting while aiming down the sight (I'm talking about real-life, now) is the weapon's iron sights, much like you would see in a video game, except a bit faded. Now, one of you main gripes with ADS perspectives is that you can't see the areas where the weapon's sights are. I can understand this, and it's true if you did shoot with both eyes open in real life you would have a bit of peripheral vision there, but your focus would still be on the sights (am I stressing that too much? If I am it's because it's important). Personally, in my experience in airsoft and target shooting when I was a kid, and in the Army when I got older, I use two-eyes-open for shorter ranges (especially in close quarters when speed is more important than pin-point precision accuracy), while using only one eye at longer ranges; say, anything 200m or over with an M4. I just feel like I get a clearer view of the front sight post with one eye.
SIDE NOTE: This is why I *LOVE*LOVE*LOVE* reflex sights like an Aimpoint M68 or EOtech. With these it is extremely easy to keep both eyes open, since the aiming reticle only really shows up for your aiming eye, AND you have an unobstructed view for a decent-sized area around your point of aim anyway. And on top of all that, you don't need to worry about lining up sight posts. Too easy.
Now I realize I may have sounded a bit pedantic earlier, but stick with me here. Back in the day, when I was playing Counter-Strike and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on my PC (two games without iron sight aiming, except for scoped weapons) I eventually found myself simply fixating on the crosshairs, and feeling like the weapon was just this immovable *thing* in the lower right. With Counter-Strike I always preferred weapons with a slight zoom (like the AUG and the SIG) because I felt like I was actually aiming and being more tactical. When the original Call of Duty came along (first game I played with iron sights on all weapons), I immediately preferred it over MoH:AA because the weapons felt more "real". You could place the front sight post of your weapon exactly over the point you wanted your shot to go, rather than putting your enemy in the middle of the space your crosshairs are surrounding. I'm getting into aesthetics here, but to me looking through a sight is almost as important a part of firing a weapon as pulling the trigger. It also fit my play style better. I still remember stalking through the hallways in Stalingrad, peering through the sights of my MP44, relying on my ability to quickly engage and eliminate targets before they can shoot me, rather than trying to shoot them and simultaneously dodge out of the way as you see in more run-and-gun-style games.
Which kind of brings me to my last point. Really, your problem with ADS shooting is that you just don't like it, and that is why you came up with this justification why you think the traditional FPS view is just as/more realistic. For me, ADS just feels more realistic and the traditional FPS view feels less so, in my case because I've handled a weapon enough that my brain has a preconceived notion of what to expect when I'm using one. That's really what it comes down to, is personal preference (which is why we're seeing so many argumentative posts in this thread). And if an aspect of a game like ADS makes the experience more immersive for some players, then why can't we have games that include it?
Finally, let me just add that I'm not saying all FPS games should have ADS. Hell, as much as I like being all TactiCool in a Call of Duty-type game (for absolute realism, my favorite game is still the original Operation Flashpoint), I can have just as much fun in Unreal Tournament or another run-and-gunner. Instagib rifle FTW
OK, if you read that entire thing, you are awesome.
TL;DR: For many people, myself included, the ADS adds an aesthetic of realism (because it IS more realistic than the traditional FPS view), and that is as important a part of making a realistic-feeling game as any other.
I like you, you actually conveyed more or less my exact thoughts on the matter at handViking67 said: