[Vehicle] Real Lightning Projectiles Have Curves!

Legit haxx!

Or remove third view problem solve.

With the 2/2/2017 patch that adjusts the 3d person view on vehicles, people who are using this overlay (from over 500 days ago) should be on notice that the overlay may not be as accurate as before. I'm going to need to test it to see if it still allows for hits.

Initial tests suggest that the windage (left-right) accuracy is still pretty much the same, but there have been significant elevation (up-down) changes. In some cases when aiming centre-of-mass can result in a shell hitting significantly lower than the point of aim.

A thing to note is the projectile you see is not the projectile the game uses for hit detection. The true projectile comes out of the camera (this is how you can shoot someone even though they are behind the end of the barrel).

With a Magrider this can be easily seen by arching the shot just over a hill, you will see the projectile go through the ground.

Although I haven't tested that, it does make sense. But with how I design and test the reticles, it shouldn't make a big difference.

Basically, my method is to go to the VR and find a poor infantryman. Then I fire up a default 3d person reticle and fire at infantry targets at different ranges. The first round is firing at the infantryman centred in the reticle at 50m, 100m, 150m, 200m, and 250m and to take screenshots of where the shots land. I then go and add in dots for where the rounds landed at each range. The second round is firing at the infantryman centred in the new dot (not the reticle) at 50m, 100m, 150m, 200m, and 250m, again taking screenshots of where the shots land. Using this data, I adjust each dot to more accurately reflect where the round is going at each range.

So ideally after the design, I know that with a 50m target, the shell ought to land right on the 50m dot, because it OHK'd the infantryman standing at 50m. That should be the "true" projectile, as it resulted in a kill.

This is a picture that I used for testing and building off of the old reticle, starting by firing at the 50m infantryman:



Using data on where the shot landed, I can come up with a rough new reticle (DO NOT USE THIS IT IS A WIP):



And then I use the new draft reticle to test it again:



As you can see, my first 50m dot was too low and to the left... which will be noted and adjusted for the final reticle by dragging the dot onto the hit area. Probably because it hit the ground in front of the infantryman instead of travelling the full 50m to the target.

Oh and here is a video of a Mag's shots going through the ground

Oh the things people will do to make the lightning less ******

I've always been disappointed by the lightning except as it's AI role against foot zergs. Even then it's less than stellar. Not sure even 3rd person crosshairs and optics could make me want to drive it. It's just bad.

In before the few exceptional players that make it kind of work for them...You'd probably do better in just about anything else...Just saying.

Hey, I try my best to keep the Lightning relevant to the game, despite the darndest attempts by the Devs to render it weak.

Anyhow... the new overlay is complete. But first...

1) The crosshair overlay no longer requires an x offset of 50.1. Just the default 50 is fine. It still requires a 0.15 image scale setting (which should be default as well).

2) Accuracy is significantly degraded if you are firing from a slope. I think this is just because how the camera works. If you fire from a slope, your shots will not land where you would think they would land. The same may be true if you and your target are on drastically different elevations. This overlay works best on level ground against targets that are more or less level with you.

3) Accuracy is significantly degraded if you fire while rotating, especially if you are rotating away from your target. This is because the turret rotation rate does not overcome your hull rotation rate, so during that time your gun will not point to the centre of the screen (and the overlay).

Those are all the important notes that I've found out so far. Otherwise...



Much of the new overlay remains the same. The built-in range finder still allows you to use the heights of infantry @ 250m, 200m, 150m, 100m, and 50m to guess their range. The crosshair still points at the true centre of the screen.

The dots now form a parabola, which makes some sense. The lowest red dot in the bottom-left side is used for targets @50m. Going right, the next red dot is for 100m targets. The grey dot to the right is for 150m targets, which overlaps with the next red dot on the right for 200m targets. Below that is another grey dot for 250m targets, and the last red dot further below is for 300m targets.

Up to 150m, the dots may be used to score headshots on infantry (I did calibrate them that way), but it is recommended to aim centre of mass against infantry targets.

Since the dots from 100-300m are fairly clumped up, it shouldn't be difficult to engage larger vehicles within that range. Just place all 5 dots over the target, and you're likely to hit. Naturally knowing the range of your target makes for more accurate shots, but there's not much difference between a 150m or 200m target, especially a vehicle-sized one.

For targets in-between the marked distances, just aim between the dots. For targets closer than 50m, aim higher to the right to compensate. For targets further than 300m, just aim higher (there's not so much left-right drift at that point).

Hopefully 3d person view isn't changed again... that was a good amount of work!

ColonelChingles, thank you for posting all your updated information and crosshair. In light of the changes to the 3rd person view of MBTs, I also tested it with MBT main weapons and top turret. It shouldn't take much to modify it for the other vehicles.

I was working with a MBT version that one seems to work well with the Prowler and Magrider, however I found it to have some issues with the Vanguard due to certain top gun options.

Here is the first draft Recursion version of ColonelChingles Overwolf Lightning crosshair overlay. All you have to do is save these into your Recursion crosshair directory.



http://imgur.com/kr48rdh








This is a rough draft Recursion version made for MBTs. It seems to work well with Prowlers and Magriders. I decided to test this out in light of the recent MBT 3rd person view.



http://i.imgur.com/5ZIW1LQ.png

I'm looking at creating and testing a few other versions. i was thinking of trying to make one for Skyguard.

Here is another draft for the MBT that I was kicking around to help hit targets while you're on a hill side. I also made the rangefinder a little transparent.

Awesome. I think Recursion is by far the more popular overlay program. Only reason I started with Overwolf is because I just needed something to tell me who was talking on TeamSpeak (my outfit has pretty much abandoned in-game VOIP because it is unreliable).

Was this field-tested? It's so much neater than the Lightning one (which I originally thought was just going to be a straight drop reticle). It seems a bit unfair that Lightning projectiles travel in really strange arcs when the offset Prowler projectiles do just fine flying true.

I like the improvement! If it works, I might add that feature to my Lightning reticle.

It's all yours. Just let me know and I'll post the original sized image for you. I've been trying to test this out for the past few days. w

Well I'm finding the curve crosshairs to be more helpful while in 1st camera view while parked on the side of a slope.

So I did play with the Prowler in 3d person... and for whatever reason it doesn't have the strange twisting shell that the Lightning has. In a Prowler if you aim at a target less than 30m in front, you'll still hit in 3d person if you just centre the target. The Lightning shell curves significantly to the left @ <50m.

That's just strange... since both tanks have offset turrets so in theory both need the same "corrections". But for some reason the Prowler shoots straight while the Lightning throws curve balls.

This gave me an idea for extending the utility of the Lightning reticle:



This version includes blue lines when using the 2x magnified optics in 1st person view. The blue lines are for 50m, 100m, 150m, 200m, and 250m, starting from the top-most line. I couldn't get to 300m since that would exceed the boundaries of the overlay. I might later though, because engaging armour at range is a common use of tanks.

1) Being level when shooting is as important as usual. Shooting from slopes will throw the sights. It is, however, much easier to correct in 1st person than in 3d person.

2) The rangefinder can be used in 1x 1st person mode, but will not give accurate readings in 2x. I thought about adding a second rangefinder calibrated for 2x, but that might get too busy. Either use 1x or 3d person mode or run the Rangefinder implant for range estimation.

3) Obviously the blue lines will not work for 1x sights.

4) Both the 3d person dots and the 1st person lines have been tested to be accurate with Lightning AP, HEAT, and HE, with the caveats already mentioned.

I'm looking forward with trying it out on the Lightning tonight. BTW while testing between the Lightning and MBT, do you use the same mouse driver sensitivity? I found that while driving and aiming with the Lightning and Flash, I need to drop the sensitivity a lot.

While I was testing the curved crosshairs while in 3rd camera view for the MBT, I was observing a few oddities like the cannon sometimes resetting to default position after firing. However it works perfectly well while firing in 1st camera view. So it's still a work in progress.

Here is your latest Lightning crosshair converted to Recursion. The game is down so I couldn't test it yet.

For designing the cross-hair, I set the in-game sensitivity down to zero. This allows for extremely precise shooting, because you can make the minute changes necessary to headshot an infantryman at 250m. You have to really, really move your mouse for only a slight adjustment, which while not effective for real combat, allows for effective testing of sights.

Haha, yes indeed. I'm finding that the slopes are really throwing off my use of the sights, because it's not yet instinctual to make sure the Lightning is flat before firing. Firing from fixed positions at other vehicles though is significantly better than the standard 2x sights.

I'm not quite sure if I like the 2x markings yet... I almost exclusively try to use it in 3d person, and in sighted shooting it's more muscle memory at this point.

When the "no power required" implants show up, I think the Range Finding implant will be much more prevalent. That would probably increase the effectiveness of the overlay.