Testing on RO2 accuracy rates: Findings and conclusions on sway, fatigue, and zoom

[gentrinity]

I ran some tests yesterday to see just how good aiming in RO2 was. The purpose was to compare how fast I could get accurate shots on targets at different distances while standing. I watched a few youtube videos and noticed that people in those videos were taking 5 seconds and more to align their sights.

Mauser K98k ( SS marked) - YouTube

I currently can't find anymore videos, but if you guys can post some more, I would appreciate it.

For the man in the previous video, it takes him a good 7-9 seconds to get the shots off and he still misses.

I jotted down some findings and I will address them each. All of these tests used breathing zoom.

Average 2 seconds for shots at 230 meters while standing and full stamina.

I wanted to test out the range the gentleman in the video was shooting at. What I found is that even if the enemy was crouched, I was having no trouble at all getting hits in 2 seconds. Accuracy rate was amazing, we didn't get all killing shots but they came often. I would say we had about a 90% accuracy rate. The gentleman in the video has a rate of about 20%.

Average 3-5 seconds for shots at 300 meters while standing, full stamina.

The funny thing about RO2 is that holding your breathe steadies your aim where it's laser like for those first 1-2 seconds. That is why 230 meters was easy, because you could usually hold your rifle steady long enough to hit that big of a target. At 300 meters, bullet drop came into play so we adjusted accordingly, with no range adjustments on the rifle, just aimed higher. We got just as high an accuracy rate as 230 meters, albeit, taking a bit longer to load while the first breath sway calmed down.

The important thing to note about the sway when not fatigued is that you can very easily control your weapon to readjust the sights. This is important because it shows that increasing sway will of course adversely effect a player's accuracy, but if he learns how to control it, he can become accurate with training.

One hit at 300 meters while bleeding out, standing.

Same thing as above, except this time, I was bleeding out, I wish I would've screen capped this one, but I forgot to. As it is right now, the damage model in RO2 is not realistic at all. I don't mind a last stand, but being perfectly accurate while standing at 300 meters?

Hit while fully fatigued, and standing, at 116 meters, enemy was doing a full sprint perpendicular to my position.

I am trained in shot leading in the Darkest Hour unit that I ran. We practiced it once every 2 weeks or so. So that I pulled this shot off is more about my previous training, but still, I don't think this should of been an easy shot. Now of course, if I tried this shot several times, I would probably miss a bit more. I didn't test the accuracy rate as this is just a fun little shot I tried taking in the middle of the testing, however, I pulled it off on the first try and I'm sure I can get at least a 40% accuracy rate.

Bleeding out at 130 meters while standing, fully fatigued.

Same as the one previously mentioned, except this time with a bit less range and bleeding out. Easily got the hit.

And finally, for the whopper;

Notice 3 things in this screenshot. The range, the stance, and the stamina bar. I was able to shoot Revelat0r at that range, while standing, and my stamina bar depleted, all in around 4-5 seconds of aiming. You can tell it's 4-5 seconds because if you go in game right now, and run your fatigue meter down, then aim, the HUD display will disappear around that time, so you have evidence there that the shot is indeed taking around that time.

My buddy and I were getting around a 25% accuracy rate, fully fatigued, at 300 meters, while standing. And this was our first attempt, I'm sure that if we trained in this type of shooting for 2 weeks, we would get better at it. If someone can find documentation showing people getting these shots off, by all means, please post your evidence.


Conclusion:

If someone can provide evidence that these shots are indeed possible by trained marksmen, while standing, and within the same time frame that we were able to pull the shots off, then I will reconsider sway in my mod. So far, from the few youtube videos that I have seen, most of these people take 2-3 times as long to get their sights adjusted.

Important to note is the difference in the sway mechanics between fatigued and not fatigued. When not fatigued, you can control your sway, however, when fatigued, you have to kind of let the weapon sway into the person, because if you try to control it yourself, it becomes unwieldy. I spoke to someone who served and they said this is actually a realistic representation of how aiming behaves when fatigued/out of breath.

Based on my findings, I will increase sway in such a way that aiming your weapon at these ranges will take skill by the player to maneuver and control into the target. I will also try and make bleeding out have more adverse effects on your aiming capabilities. Weapon sway will be more pronounced at the standing position, and gradually lower depending on posture and whether your weapon is rested. My goal is to make shots at 300 meters possible when you have your weapon fully rested, albeit at a slower rate than what it currently is. This is going to make shooting at 100 meters and less more realistic. Finally, fatigue will naturally takes its course; if I increase regular sway, fatigued sway will automatically scale accordingly and will make controlling the sway harder, which will make fatigue an important factor when aiming.

On Zooming:

While conducting these tests, I noticed just how hard it was to spot an enemy at 200 meters, this is completely unrealistic. Once should be able to spot a standing enemy at even 400-500 meters. Even with the breathing zoom, it was difficult to find Revelat0r at 300 meters, he was literaly just a few pixels high. Zooming in this game allows you to see at realistic ranges, and could actually stand to get a bit more zooming. I will not do that but I do plan on keeping the zoom as is right now.

 

[Omar The Insurgent]

It all depends on the training. I remember a technique used on Lee Enfield in WWII called mad minute:

EDIT: Deleted all Lee Enfield videos and added KAR98 first person camera, 100 yards, cam on target also:

(Start at 1:20)
Rifle Channel : German Mauser Kar 98k 100 Yards First Person No Music - YouTube

Also, there are more similar videos on that guys channel, kar on 300yards and 500 yards and more.

EDIT 2: Sadly, this is again from prone position, but you can still see the shaking.

 

[gentrinity]

@Omar The Insurgent

These videos are nice and I appreciate you wanting to contribute, but they don't really apply to what I'm trying to do. First, they don't report the ranges. Second, they are prone, I don't have plans on adding sway to the prone stance. Third, they don't really report their success rate, so it's hard to tell what's going on.

I am more than aware of the abilities and training of Lee Enfield marksmen, however, we must also remember that both the Germans and Russians fielded poorly trained soldiers, so I am looking for a balance between what properly trained veteran soldiers (which were few) could do and what the vast majority of the armies could do. Accounts show that marksmanship kept declining as the war progressed for all sides as they kept fielding soldiers with less and less training.

 

[FBX]

In real life you have to line up the front of the gun with rear. Angular sway. To my knowledge angular sway has never been implemented in a game but it would bee awesome if it was in this game.

Im skeptical this is creatable with a mutator

 

[Omar The Insurgent]

Here is an average joe with a mauser rifle. Standing, and you can judge the distance(at 0:34 camera sways towards target):

Firing The Mauser K98 Caliber 7,62 - YouTube

 

[gentrinity]

@FBX

What do you mean by angular sway? There is something in the code that is called Weapon Lag, which is basically if you move your sights in any direction, it takes a while for them to realign, currently it is very fast but go into a game and rotate in place with your sights up, you will notice that the sights take less than a second to realign, but they do in fact get off center. I will increase this so that it takes a bit longer to readjust.

@ Omar The Insurgent

Thanks for the video. I would say that the target is around 50 meters away, max, however, there is a lot of wind, I don't know if he was compensating for that. And it still takes this average joe (which was the majority of both armies) around 3-4 seconds to get the shots off. In RO2 as it is right now, I could probably get that shot off in 1-2 seconds. I start counting seconds form the time I hit the RMB, or when the kid starts the motion to bring his sights up. With the additional sway I plan on adding, it will require an extra second or two, which seems to be realistic from what I see in this video.

 

[Josef Nader]

Awesome, dude. Kudos to you for going out and doing the experiments yourself rather than spamming the same hyperbolic arguments that are all too common on the forums these days.

One thing I will bring up as a regular shooter is that you can actually make an initial snap shot pretty easily with the right timing from weapon down or muzzle down stance. It's how you trap shoot. Basically, as soon as your sights obscure your target you pull the trigger and you're highly likely to hit.

Now, I've only done this with shotguns at 50m or so, and it's probably different for rifles, but it's just a matter of timing and practice.

Still, as it stands I wouldn't mind more time aligning the sights. Making snap shots at 50m needs to stay the same, but these long range shots are pretty superhuman. Admittedly, he wasn't shooting back and there weren't any other factors, but still.

 

[MrGoat]

Keep up the good work getrinity. I seriously can't wait for the Fire and Maneuver mod, its going to be what ro2 SHOULD have been.

 

[MissionMaximus]

Man that was awesome dude, keep it up.

 

[gentrinity]

Awesome, dude. Kudos to you for going out and doing the experiments yourself rather than spamming the same hyperbolic arguments that are all too common on the forums these days.

One thing I will bring up as a regular shooter is that you can actually make an initial snap shot pretty easily with the right timing from weapon down or muzzle down stance. It's how you trap shoot. Basically, as soon as your sights obscure your target you pull the trigger and you're highly likely to hit.

Now, I've only done this with shotguns at 50m or so, and it's probably different for rifles, but it's just a matter of timing and practice.

Still, as it stands I wouldn't mind more time aligning the sights. Making snap shots at 50m needs to stay the same, but these long range shots are pretty superhuman. Admittedly, he wasn't shooting back and there weren't any other factors, but still.

Thanks for the comment. The thing is, extra sway will not deter this at all. The way that sway currently works in RO2 is that if you are not fatigued, then you can easily control the sway and bring it back onto the target, try it and you will see, even will standing. It's just the way TWI programmed it, which I think is pretty amazing and I love what they did. However, if you try the same thing when fatigued, you will notice that your sights fight against you. This current implementation is amazing and I think it is amazingly realistic despite the low amount of sway.

My goal was never to make drunk sway, it was to make the player have to learn to adjust his sway in the same way a real human has to learn to adjust it himself. That way, rather than the game leveling you up (I also plan on removing level up bonuses), you have to level yourself up by training and mastering your weapon. There is a reason why trap shooting is a sport, if you could get it with 90%-99% accuracy, then it wouldn't be much fun would it? It's a sport because you have to constantly train to get good at it. This is how RO2 aiming when standing should be. But hey, you can definitely do what you do, but it would take practice.

Also, it was never my intention to make shots at 300 meters impossible. Quite the contrary, I would like a system where if you are standing and you practice continuously at it, you can hit targets at 300 meters. But it should never take 3 seconds with 80% accuracy, and that is what I plan on changing. Instead, I will increase sway to the point where trained players, who understand how to maneuver their mouses to compensate for sway, will maybe get 20% accuracy while standing and not fatigued at 300 meters.

 

[Unus Offa Unus Nex]

Great post gentrinity, there's no reason making things any harder than they are in real life

 

[gentrinity]

Great post gentrinity, there's no reason making things any harder than they are in real life

Of course not, that was never my plan, it's just obvious that RO2 is not realistic and way easier than real life

 

[gentrinity]

It all depends on the training. I remember a technique used on Lee Enfield in WWII called mad minute:

EDIT: Deleted all Lee Enfield videos and added KAR98 first person camera, 100 yards, cam on target also:

(Start at 1:20)
Rifle Channel : German Mauser Kar 98k 100 Yards First Person No Music - YouTube

Also, there are more similar videos on that guys channel, kar on 300yards and 500 yards and more.

EDIT 2: Sadly, this is again from prone position, but you can still see the shaking.

That's amazing! Look at how much sway is present form that view and he is in a prone position. All that goes to show you is that even when resting, some sway should be present. Look how long it takes for him to get these shots off at 100 meters. Around 7-8 seconds prone.

 

[gentrinity]

@Unus Offa, Unus Nex - MissionMaximus - MrGoat

Thanks for the kind words you guys. I hope the community likes my mod when it's done.

 

[nuNce]

You have my full support! Keep working on it and if you need I can beta test with you.

 

[ramBOB]

Interesting, But I feel that the game would get very frustrating if most of your shots were effectively down to "luck" because of some sway mechanic....

I would possibly agree with more sway after running.... but most of the time I think this is one of the areas where game-play has to take some precedence over realism.... and I think RO2 has it not far off perfect as it is.

 

[melipone]

It wouldn't be luck if you learned to account for the sway. The idea is that you control the weapon yourself rather than have the game do it for you. Like irl you would have to train to be better at shooting, you would learn to shoot well in game too. I wouldn't want a pure RNG mechanic, but something that the player can control if he plays well

 

[LugNut]

Nice post gentrinity and really looking forward to your mod!

There is something in the code that is called Weapon Lag, which is basically if you move your sights in any direction, it takes a while for them to realign, currently it is very fast but go into a game and rotate in place with your sights up, you will notice that the sights take less than a second to realign, but they do in fact get off center. I will increase this so that it takes a bit longer to readjust.

I very much would like to see it take more time to realign your sights, it makes for a much more immersive experience and makes the weapon feel like it has mass. I found that in ARMA, this movement, especially as it wants to continue a bit past your target, offputting at first since I was used to laser quick sight movement from other FPS, but I've grown to love it. Once you are used to it, it feels totally natural.

 

[OnTheGun]

I ran some tests yesterday to see just how good aiming in RO2 was. The purpose was to compare how fast I could get accurate shots on targets at different distances while standing. I watched a few youtube videos and noticed that people in those videos were taking 5 seconds and more to align their sights.

When I was in the army qualifying on the range, we had to shoot at targets up to 300m away. They could be running or motionless, they could be full man size or head and shoulders but they always only appeared for 2 seconds.

You never had more than two seconds to see, aim at and shoot a target. You had to be able to do that from all stances at all ranges with the majority of your rounds.

I could see, aim at and hit a running man at 300m in under 2 seconds and I wasn't even close to being the best shot.

Do not compare civilian shooters to trained military shooters. They do EVERYTHING different. From how they move the weapon to what they aim at and when they fire. Civilian target shooters are looking for accuracy, military shooters are looking for effectiveness.

There is a difference. The civilian takes his time to get the perfect shot, trying to concentrate on getting good groupings and so on. The military shooter is concentrating on getting his bullet to hit the enemy before he disappears or shoots back. He doesn't care if he hits the target in the face or the thigh, as long as he hits it. He doesn't stop shooting until ordered to, or the target is obviously out of the battle.

When I was being trained to use the rifle, we were told never to try and get the "aimed shot" the way a civilian would. We would be too tired and shaky to be able to do it quickly enough. So they taught us to sort of "throw the bullet". The idea is when you see a target you immediately move to bring the sights to a position where a bullet would hit the target if it was fired - that is, centre mass plus lead and drop offset - and then fire the instant the sight aligns with the intended aim point. The weapon only just stops moving as you fire.

This means being tired can't make you any less accurate. You are not trying to use muscular strength to steady the weapon, you are using inertia to make the weapon steadily move on one axis only, then guiding that movement across the aim point and firing the instant they intersect. We call it a "snap shot" but most people just think of it as being a quicker way to shoot, rather than a more effective way to shoot at fleeting targets rapidly with the most chance of success.

The important thing to note about the sway when not fatigued is that you can very easily control your weapon to readjust the sights. This is important because it shows that increasing sway will of course adversely effect a player's accuracy, but if he learns how to control it, he can become accurate with training.

No it won't, not if he's doing the right things that is.

I hip shot snipers at 100m with the MG's, and you are not going to get any more "sway" than that. If you know what to do and why, then being accurate my way is a lot more easy than being accurate your way.

The key is to learn how to shoot so that ANY amount of sway can not stop you from hitting the target. Think of it like this. If you are motionless and the target moving, you can offset your aim point so the bullet and the target meet at the same place. You can do the same thing if the target is motionless but the rfle is moving. You just have to learn how to lead your own movements and you'll be just as accurate in 1/10th of a second as you would be in 10 seconds.

The longer you try to aim, the less accurate you will be because your muscles will fatigue. The faster you fire, the less muscle power you have to use to steady the weapon, and the quicker you can relax and recover ready for the next shot.

This way of shooting is less accurate than the civilian target way. You'll get much larger groupings and have a greater chance of missing the intended aim point, BUT, you will also be firing more often putting more bullets down range and increasing the chances one will get an effective hit. You cancel out the lower accuracy by firing more, and being more effective against more targets sooner.

Me and every soldier that ever served in the New Zealand army HAD to hit running man targets at 300m in under two seconds with 50% accuracy. That was the bare minimum to qualify as a rifleman. I did it easily and I wasn't that great a shot, was pretty unfit at the time, and don't have the greatest eyes.

The civilian way of being accurate is like a sniper timing his breathing and heart rate. He waits for his body to become the most stable it can before he fires. The military way of being accurate is like holding your breath. Rather than wait for the shot to be perfect, you brute force it to be good enough right now, and get the round down range as soon as possible. Then do it again. If I'm only 25% as accurate as the civilian, it doesn't matter because I will be firing significantly more bullets, meaning my odds of getting a hit are higher.

If it takes you more than two seconds to see, aim at and shoot a target at any range up to 300m, then you are not combat effective and would not be allowed to serve in the NZ infantry. The fact you took as long as you did in game makes me laugh. It also lets me know you are a camp and sniper, because no run and gunner could survive if he took that long to shoot a target.

-

The problem you and all the other "low sway" complainers have is that you don;t really understand what you're talking about. There is no such thing as "sway". What there is, is muscle fatigue. You can hold the weapon completely still, with no movement at all. BUT, you can't do it for long. Your muscles quickly tire and become oxygen depleted and saturated with lactic acid, and they start to slacken and shake. That is what you call "sway". So how do you get less sway? Fire sooner.

If you learn to bring the sight on target and fire in under two seconds you REDUCE the "sway". You're not controlling or compensating for it, you are preventing it from even happening. So no matter WHO you are talking about, civilian or military, if the shooter fires sooner, he will have less sway. It's a biological fact.

 

[Rumo]

Kudos to you gentrinity for the work and thoughts you are putting into making your modification.

I