So, in FPS games, there are a number of things at work that determine your accuracy, as you know.

Excuse me if these terms are something you already know.

Recoil is something you have to adjust for based on the power and rate of fire for the weapon. High power weapons usually have high recoil to reduce the time between shots that they are fired. A high rate of fire weapon has high recoil because each projectile knocks the weapon in a certain direction.

Spread is used to emulate stability of your aim. If you are running, the spread is very high, if you are walking it is low, if you are crouching it is even less and if you are prone and not moving at all it is at its lowest.

This isn't an original idea at all, but wouldn't it provide a better gameplay experience if the concept of spread was replaced with the crosshair moving around? So, if you are moving or stationary, standing straight up, crouching, prone, whatever the crosshair would be the same size. However, to do the same thing that spread does, the crosshair would move around. If you are walking at high speed the crosshair would be moving up and down, left and right. Whereever it was is where the projectile would go, and there would be no randomness or misunderstandings about where you were actually aiming. Like recoil, this would be something that the user could control more directly. With recoil you can compensate somewhat for it if you know how. With spread you can only compensate for it indirectly by reducing the randomness. With a moving crosshair, you would be able to adjust your aim to compensate for your stance or movement speed if you knew how, and there would be no "what? I had the crosshair centered on the other player, what happened?" kind of reactions.

Edit: It seems like some games, e.g. Battlefield 4, have scope sway, which is similar to this, but the scope sway is present along with spread. Also, for games where there is no crosshair or it can be disabled, the rendering of the weapon would have to realistically show that is was bobbing, which it seems to do in a fair amount of games already.

Thoughts? Comments? The only thing I can think of that might make this an issue is that having a moving object that the player constantly needs to track might be annoying or headache inducing for some, similar to motion blur effects.

Spread isn't used to emulate the stability of your aim, guns have spread in real life.

I'm not a gun expert, and haven't owned one, so you'd have to do some research yourself, but from what I gather, what with variations in the air, scratchings on the barrel from each bullet fired, the bullets being propelled by miniature explosions of gunpowder with mini variations on the explosions, guns simply don't fire straight. They fire accurately "within X meters" or "within Y meters" depending on the specific gun and the type of bullets fired. The farther the target is, the more likely the bullets will vary. This is bullet spread - even with a gun clamped in place and aiming at a wall, the bullet pattern will be different.

If you want to be more realistic, you'd have:

A) Bullet spread

B) Recoil

C) Wind, humidity, elevation, etc...

D) Gravity

E) AND the crosshair moving around.

In most game, some randomness is good. In games like chess, randomness might not be good, but not everyone wants to play chess. I greatly enjoy Settlers of Catan (a board game), and part of the enjoyability (and frustration!) of the game is trying to adapt or remake your strategy on the fly as different resources come into your hand unexpectedly, and as different players' interactions also create openings or create obstacles that force you to rethink what you are doing.

A little randomness is not bad. ALOT of randomness can be bad, but a little bit adds important unforeseen variations to each match.

Yeah, alot of players complain about randomness (vocal minority), and yeah, there is some room in the game industry for 100% predictable chess-like games of pure number crunching (just as there is some room for games with an overabundance of pure random insanity). But I think the majority of games should include a little bit of randomness.

Many of the people complaining about bullets missing are probably actually more bothered by inaccurate hitboxes or inaccurate syncing between client and server. Those are reasonable complaints, I feel.

But the people who complain at the randomness are probably (I'm theorizing) the same players who'd complain about something any time they die. If not the randomness of the bullets, maybe the control scheme or the controller itself or the millisecond delay of the monitor refresh rate, or the sweat on their mouse, or x, or y, or anything except their own gameplay. My response would basically be, "It's part of the game, so adapt your strategy to take it into account."

If they aren't happy with it now, they likely wouldn't be happy with it if it was perfect, because then when they die they'd have nothing left to blame.

The thing about randomness is that, overall, every playing has to deal with it. It'd be like a military general saying, "This war isn't fair because the enemy had cloud cover on that night when they attacked, and I didn't.". Part of the challenge is overcoming unexpected obstacles and changing environments.

Spread is used to emulate stability of your aim.

Incorrect. See Servant's answer above. As a person who owns multiple firearms and trains with all of them I can attest to the fact that stability, marksmanship, and the weapon's spread are all different things. Just the differences in the rifling (grooves cut to promote projectile spin) in the barrel can cause all kinds outliers in your groups.

wouldn't it provide a better gameplay experience if the concept of spread was replaced with the crosshair moving around?

Depends on the game. I turn crosshairs off on all FPS games, so I'm going to have to answer your question with a "No."

If you want to be more realistic, you'd have:
A) Bullet spread
B) Recoil
C) Wind, humidity, elevation, etc...
D) Gravity
E) AND the crosshair moving around.

Highlighted C for effect. Those elements change EVERYTHING. On a still day out here in the desert I can repeatedly hit targets at 100 meters with my AK47. Add wind and humidity, I can't even get on paper. Don't even get me started on drills that ramp up your heart rate. Excellent marksmen can miss a BARN at 20 meters after running for a minute or two.

I'm not sure what your are actually trying to accomplish with all of these FPS threads, but may I suggest something to you? Reality isn't all that fun. Focus on designing something fun and creative; worry less about realistic bullets. If you want to go the realism route, may I suggest learning something about ballistics, trig, and spending time on the gun range. Know what you are talking about before talking about it.

Servant of the Lord: Yeah, I understand what you're saying. People will always be upset at something and you are never going to have something feel 100% fair. However, I feel like you can reduce the number of things that feel unfair and reduce the number of people who get upset over things. For me, there are times where I am playing a game and I know where I lost because I legitimately had a weaker strategy or had poorer reflexes. But in a FPS for example, if me and another guy are looking right at each other and both using automatic fire at close range with very similar weapons, then shouldn't both of us go down instead of the game just randomly choosing a winner?

GoCatGo:

I'm not talking about realism. I don't want to have to fix jams in games or calculate the weather or whatever except in maybe one or two games where they are dedicated simulators. All I was saying is that spread/random deviation based on stance and movement is not fun, and perhaps it would be better to replace it with weapon sway.

Spread, in the way I am describing it, actually is intended to represent the stability of the firing position. If you crouch, the crosshair gets smaller. If you go prone it gets really small. Yes, I'm aware that real firearms aren't laser accurate. A good sniper rifle has sub-MOA accuracy, while an M16 might have an MOA of 4 or so. However, in games where the crosshair size changes according to movement and stance the primary reason is to change your accuracy, not the firearm's. The inherent accuracy of the rifle might be part of the base calculation but it is not the main reason. It is obvious that spread in games that implement it like I said above are not trying to emulate the inherent accuracy of the rifle. The inherent accuracy (MOA) of a rifle doesn't change because you crouch or go prone.

In a scenario where the size of the crosshair of the firearm/weapon you using in the game does not change depending on stance or movement speed then yes, it would be trying to model the inherent accuracy of the firearm. In real-life an assault rifle might be "accurate" at 100 meters, but in a game where, for gameplay or other reasons (arena shooter with small maps), the gameplay designer wants "long distance" to be 35 meters, medium to be 15 meters and close-range to be 5 meters, then the size of the crosshair size that goes with the assault rifle may be bigger.

What I was getting at was that instead of using a dynamic crosshair size/increasing the randomness of the bullet path based on stance and movement speed, that the crosshair should be a static size (the size could be calculated depending on the inherent accuracy of the weapon, or be the same for all of them but whether or not inherent accuracy is modeled is irrelevant either way here), and should move around. If you're in real life, and you sprint for a while, are tired and then stop and try to shoot, is your gun going to be completely stationary and suddenly shoot bullets out at 15 or 30 degree angles? No, your fatigue, breathing, etc. will make it so that when holding the weapon up it is going to bob up and down, left and right. But when you pull the trigger, if the firearm is lined up with the target you want to hit, then it is going to go towards that target in a path that is only determined by the inherent accuracy of the weapon (again, let's take weather, etc. out of the picture for this discussion). The point is, you can make minute adjustments, rely on timing of the weapon movement if you notice a pattern, etc. to make a more accurate shot. So, in a game, if you're upright and walking, the crosshair would similarly move up, down, left, right. If you were aiming at something, you would have to wait until your crosshair was over what you wanted to hit before firing or you would have to make minute adjustments to your aim based on how the weapon was moving around. Wherever the crosshair was when you fired is where the projectile would go. In a game that doesn't model the inherent accuracy of a weapon, this would be exactly where it would go. In a game that does, it would still go where you were aiming but would deviate according to the inherent accuracy of the weapon. Using a dynamic crosshair and changing the spread of the weapon based on your stance and movement speed in a game takes control away from you and just says "hey you're tired this projectile is going to come out at an angle anywhere between 15 and 30 degrees" instead of letting you try and correct for the movement by adjusting your aim, relying on timing, etc.

Even if you turn the crosshair off in the game, this would still be visible when using the weapon's targeting mechanism. If you're looking through irons or using an optic sight, the sight, and by extension the gun, would still be swaying around depending on your stance and movement speed.

"I'm not sure what you are actually trying to accomplish with all of these FPS threads, but may I suggest something to you?" My other thread was about the first person perspective and in no way mentioned firearm modeling or the like. This is about first person shooters. Are you able to understand the difference or do you need someone to explain it to you? Damn, my understanding was that this was a discussion forum, not a place where people were required to have some clearly defined purpose or goal by posting that was deemed acceptable by others. Are you familiar with the meaning of the word "forum"? Here is a link that may help you decipher what it may infer about the purpose of an Internet forum: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forum

Forgive me for posting something that YOU don't agree with or something that MAY not be ENTIRELY accurate (it is obvious above that my definition of spread is different than yours). "Know what you are talking about before talking about it." How DARE I open my mouth about something without being an expert about it. You act as if I personally attacked you and others by saying "this is the best way to model this and approach this from a gameplay perspective and if you disagree you are stupid and should just shut up", where in reality all I did was discuss how it works now in some games and ask if modeling it a different way would feel more fair and provide a better experience. So, may I ask you: What are you actually trying to accomplish by being an elitist dickwad? Why don't you go off and jerk off on a firing range somewhere about how much more knowledge you have than everyone else? Or, alternatively, you could learn how to engage in a constructive, polite discussion like Servant of the Lord apparently knows how to do.

Servant of the Lord: Yeah, I understand what you're saying. People will always be upset at something and you are never going to have something feel 100% fair. However, I feel like you can reduce the number of things that feel unfair and reduce the number of people who get upset over things. For me, there are times where I am playing a game and I know where I lost because I legitimately had a weaker strategy or had poorer reflexes. But in a FPS for example, if me and another guy are looking right at each other and both using automatic fire at close range with very similar weapons, then shouldn't both of us go down instead of the game just randomly choosing a winner?

Yeah, I definitely agree that annoyances can and should be reduced.

I don't know whether both people should go down or not. The game isn't flipping a coin over who wins - randomness isn't serving as the tie-breaker, but it's an integrated part of the overall mechanics of the game.

I think it'd be cool in games if both players died *more often*, because it's enjoyable when you get killed to see that you at least managed to take out the other player.
At the same time, it's also enjoyable to "just barely survive", after such a very close encounter.

There are three outcomes:
1) Sometimes both die. Semi-enjoyable for both players, and semi-irritating for both players.
2) Sometimes you die. Enjoyable for your opponent, irritating for you.
3) Sometimes your opponent dies. Enjoyable for you, irritating for your opponent.

Should it *always* be one option, or is the game more enjoyable because things are varied up?
If everytime two enemies meet in a hallway results in both of them always dying, then even the joy of "at least I killed my opponent also" disappears, because it always happens that way.

FPS games have alot less randomness then I think people might assume.

But let me ask you this question - since guns really do have real spread, but you dislike 'randomness' because it feels cheap, what if the exact pattern of bullet spread was pre-fixed. When you fire the gun, you know two bullets will fly left, two fly right, two fly straight, and so on, in a fixed and predictable pattern?

I'm not suggesting that as something that should be in the game, but I'm throwing it out as a question to better understand where you are coming from. Is it truly the real-world randomness you don't like, or is it truly the real-world inaccuracy of guns?

What if there are 200 such "pre-fixed" patterns of gun spread, with no randomness involved, and the gun swapped between those pre-fixed patterns in a pre-fixed order, so players wouldn't know which direction the bullets are going to go next, but it wouldn't be random.

Would that still annoy you in games? Even though it's not random?

Is the problem that, from a human standpoint, you don't have control? You can't predict where the bullets will go?
Or is the problem the randomness, that you think is unfair?

Are you fine with having pre-fixed bullet patterns that you can't predict, but that are 100% balanced and pre-computed? If you don't mind unpredictable but pre-computed bullet patterns, think your irritation is truly against the randomness and perceived unfairness.
But if you don't like the pre-fixed but unpredictable bullet patterns, I think your irritation is with the lack of control and predictabillity as a player.

"I'm not sure what you are actually trying to accomplish with all of these FPS threads, but may I suggest something to you?" My other thread was about the first person perspective and in no way mentioned firearm modeling or the like. This is about first person shooters. Are you able to understand the difference or do you need someone to explain it to you? Damn, my understanding was that this was a discussion forum, not a place where people were required to have some clearly defined purpose or goal by posting that was deemed acceptable by others. Are you familiar with the meaning of the word "forum"?

Woh there, an internet post is not worth getting riled up about. He wasn't that snarky.

When he said, "I'm not sure what you are actually trying to accomplish with all of these FPS threads,"
he could've just meant, "I'm not sure whether you are actually designing a specific game, or just discussing game design in general."

And when he said, "but may I suggest something to you?", he gave game design advice (the same advice I also gave). He didn't say 'stop posting', and he didn't say that your ideas are stupid. He gave his view, and then gave design advice.

It might've been a little snarky (not any worse than some of my posts in other threads ), but not snarky enough to warrant personal attacks. I felt it added alot of good info to the conversation.

On the internet, where people speak different languages from different countries and were english might not be their native language, you gotta assume people aren't intending to rude.

wouldn't it provide a better gameplay experience if the concept of spread was replaced with the crosshair moving around?

Depends on the game. I turn crosshairs off on all FPS games, so I'm going to have to answer your question with a "No."

I really enjoyed the Half Life 2 mod called 'Insurgency' from 2007 or so (they recently re-released it as a full game, but I haven't tried the new one). It was semi-realistic, but without sacrificing gameplay enjoyability.

Anyway, in Insurgency they had no crosshairs, and used only the ironsights of the weapons held in your hand, and when moving the ironsight would bounce around quite a bit. I don't think what he's talking about requires crosshairs, per se.

Now I want to go play Insurgency again.

Personally I like the moving crosshair, especially when sniping. It gives me some feeling of authenticity, e.g. having to be patient and accurate or give the game away. The other posters have covered my other points.

Moving crosshair would be quite fitting in an environment where vision, aim and movement are decoupled along three axis (such as would be made possible by oculus rift and similar techs).

If you move with WASD in the direction you are looking (replacing mouse with the input of an oculus rift-like input) and use the mouse for aiming (anywhere in your FOV), you could technically have the crosshair already not fixed in the middle of the screen.

As a result, having the 'stability' vary based on shots being fired would not feel unnatural if it affected the crosshair further.

Orymus3: Oh I get what you are saying, the current target is the same as the center of the view. So I guess with a traditional view then this would basically be a minor form of "HUD bobbing". If you were firing from a very unstable position your view would be wobbly as whole.

Servant, no what I am talking about is the distinction between inherent [in]accuracy due to the firearm itself and inaccuracy as a result of dynamic crosshair (spread) based on player stance and movement.

So here are all the terms I am discussing and my definition of them:

Inherent accuracy: This is the accuracy of the firearm in the game. If the designer chooses to implement this characteristic, it will be implemented by introducing somewhat minor deviations to the bullet path. If you are using weapon X and it has an accuracy rating of Y then there will be a specific probability based on the distance that a bullet/projectile launched from it will hit its target. The player cannot compensate for this, because the inherent inaccuracy of the weapon is what differentiates it from the other ones.

Recoil: When a shot is fired, the aim of the character is shifted. The recoil pattern is different for each weapon, so for example weapon X will shift the aim up 2 units and left 3 units per every unit of time. The player, by noticing that firing the weapon is moving their aim up and to the left, can then pull down and to the right to compensate for this. The player is able to compensate for this in some way.

Spread: This is an additional factor that determines the accuracy of a fired shot and is dependent on the firing stance and movement speed of the character. When the character is prone and not moving, then this will be equal to the inherent accuracy. If the player is crouched or standing, stationary, walking or running, then this will increase the randomness of the projectile path. For games where a visible crosshair is enabled, the crosshair will get larger to show a less stable firing position, and smaller to show a more stable firing position. The player is unable to compensate for this additional randomness.

If any of you have played Battlefield 4 then you will probably understand this more. In BF4 each weapon has a defined recoil pattern and inherent accuracy. When you are crouched your crosshair is smaller than it is standing, meaning you are more accurate from that position. However, crouching does not make your view any more or less stable. However, if you are being suppressed, your view, and therefore your aim, will start to sway randomly up, down, left, right. When using the ironsights or one of the optical sights, that sight basically becomes the center of your view, and as such your view as a whole begins to wobble.

So, inherent accuracy I'm ok with because that is what differentiates the weapons. Also, the amount of randomness added to model the inherent accuracy is expected and somewhat minor in its effects. A projectile will not do a perfect hit one time at 5 meters and miss by a meter the next time, but might be 10cm off or so.

What I am saying is that with spread as defined above, a character who is standing still and is stationary will have a larger crosshair than he would stationary and prone, to model that this is a less stable firing position. Even if the firearm looks like it is stable and unmoving when he fires, the projectile path will be subject to this random deviation that is in addition the the inherent accuracy.

The alternative is that when in a less stable firing position, the actual firearm itself sways up, down, left, right randomly. The difference here is that the player can see the direction that the firearm is moving in and react to this by slightly adjusting his aim to counteract this. The player can follow the sway pattern and use it to predict the best time to take a shot. If I the crosshair is moving up and down, up and down, then he can see "oh the crosshair is moving down right now" and choose to fire the weapon at the exact time that it passes over the target. This would be the same for a game where there is no crosshair/it is disabled and only irons or some other kind of targeting mechanism is used. The targeting mechanism would be swaying back and forth, up and down, but you could alter the immediate position of target via an input event. This is analogous to if you were holding a firearm in real-life and looking down the irons. Depending on your movement speed and stance, the firearm would be wobbly due to the instability (minor muscle shaking, etc.) but you could specifically tense certain muscles, hold your breath, etc. to try and compensate for it.

Does that make any sense? Basically instead of the game showing you that the gun is pointing directly at a target, but the bullet path being random in a way that cannot be altered at all, the game would show the gun swaying, having it be physically pointing at wherever the bullet will go. This point will change due to the gun swaying, but you can quickly move the target in a slightly different direction to try and compensate for the current direction.

"I'm not sure whether you are actually designing a specific game, or just discussing game design in general."

That's what I meant. I blame my keyboard for not typing it correctly.

Also, if I seem snarky, I am. It's mainly because you, DarkKnight, seem to have very little understanding of the thing you are trying to model. It's why I don't make games about playing the Stock Market -- I don't understand it. Certainly you can make games with guns that play and feel like games with guns, but this inundation of real-world ballistic terms with your own meanings is just confusing. And not needed.

For instance, you have recoil completely wrong. It's simple physics, really -- it involves the weapon twisting, climbing, jerking, and all sorts of fun stuff. There is an explosion inside the damn thing. The force that pushes the projectile out acts the other direction, too. Proper technique can greatly reduce the effects of recoil, as can weapon modifications.

But really, the crux of your posts are "Sometimes you miss." There are way easier ways to add some "missing" to your game. Hell, I LOVE to go target shooting, and I wouldn't want to figure all of this out.

If any of you have played Battlefield 4 then you will probably understand this more.

And here is where our opinions will diverge more. I've played Battlefield 4 and found it to be completely unrealistic (in a bad way) and frankly not at all fun.

So, back to where our love affair went all wrong. Weapon accuracy. Are you bringing all of this up in the "Wouldn't it be cool if..." sense like your FPS glasses post, or are you working on designing something? Because, if you are actually designing something, you need to determine if you are using some sort of object (bullet) that is governed by physics forces (a method that can falter when smashed against framerate) or drawing a line from the muzzle of a gun to an impact point (commonly called hitcast and other names).

I'd really love to help you here, but you seemed bogged down these second-tier crosshair and weapon stat issues and you aren't really coming out with a goal or design. If you'd like more information on either method (physics or raycast), I'd be glad to show you how I've worked through them. I share any and all code and design notes. I have a fun little method of tweaking procedural noise based on some weapon and character stats.

Take me, back DarkKnight! We can work it out! Seriously though, I'd like to hear more about a game you want to design.

Also, look at the aiming/crosshair/marksmanship/weapon accuracy model of the original Deus Ex. I think you'll dig it (but hate the graphics).

GoCatGo: I'm not actively designing a game. I'm making an observation about how I see things implemented in games that I've played and how they are commonly implemented in others and what changes to these implementations would provide for a generally better experience. I'm coming off of/still playing Battlefield 4 currently so when discussing these terms I've been referring to them related to how they are implemented in that. This is not a discussion on how to implement ballistics modeling in games in general.

The crux of the misunderstanding here is that I am not talking about firearm mechanics from a general, realistic perspective, but rather a "this is what they mean in most FPS games" You sound like you are already familiar with these concepts but writing them out is more to help me gather my thoughts.

In real life, I'm aware that firearms have

Inherent accuracy based on the rifling of the barrel, barrel length, manufacturing deviations, gas impingement vs. piston design, and many other things I don't claim to know about. Either way, this is usually measured in MOA. A sniper rifle is generally expected to have a sub-MOA, meaning a less than 1 inch deviation at a range of 100 yards (or meters?). Something like an M16 is commonly expected to have an MOA of 4-6. This can change based on the temperature of the firearm, how worn out the barrel is, if there is a suppressor, muzzle brake but a firearm has a base accuracy rating as it comes of the manufacturing line. But the basic gist of it is that no matter how skilled of a shooter you are you're not going to make the M16 into a sub-MOA firearm. This cannot be reasonably compensated for, regardless of skill or experience.

Recoil, like you said is the result of explosions that happen inside the firearm and they way the firearm handles them. When the gunpowder is ignited by the firing pin, there is a forceful expansion of gas (explosion) that propels the projectile. The force from this gas expansion, the way the gases are vented, etc. and the way they affect recoil is dependent on the design of the firearm. Some firearms, like I think the Honey Badger PDW(?) purposefully are designed to redirect the gas in a way to push the firearm down to counteract recoil. However, a skilled, knowledgeable shooter will know the behavior of the firearm and will know how to best control the recoil. You can tense your muscles, consciously pull the firearm down and to the left (if the recoil is commonly up to the right) as firing, etc. This can be compensated for by a skilled shooter.

Other real-life factors include:
Weather: There are devices, like the ballistics computer that is often paired with the Cheytac Intervention, that can help shooters compensate for this. Shooters can compensate for this on their own, but it takes a lot of experience to be able to do it in any significant way if you're talking about anything outside of close range.

Stability of the firing position, fatigue, etc.: If you're standing and trying to shoot, your breathing, small muscle twitches, etc. are going to make the firearm move around a little as a result of your shakiness. If you're using the irons or some type of optic sight, this shakiness is going to affect your ability to aim the firearm at what you want to hit. However, you can compensate for this by tensing your muscles, holding your breath, etc. It won't reduce all of the shakiness but it will help. You can also compensate for this by just accepting that there is some shakiness and only firing when the weapon happens to be aimed at what you want to hit. If you are aiming at something, it does not matter if your aim if shaky or not, if you fire at the specific time when the firearm is lined up with a target it is going to go in the direction of the target.

As far as how these things are modeled in video games:

Halo 4: Hitscan physics. Not affected by gravity or bullet speed. Bullets are laser fast and go exactly where the firearm was aiming. There is a crosshair that is of a fixed size determined by the weapon type. The assault rifle is intended to be a close range weapon by the game designers, so the accuracy is low (large crosshair/lots of "free space" in-between the tick marks). This weapon-dependent crosshair size in this situation models the inherent accuracy of the weapon, and does not account for weapon degradation, etc. (unchanging). There is not visible recoil in this game. For a weapon like the assault rifle, the recoil is actually bundled up into the crosshair size. The longer you hold down the trigger (full auto) the bigger the crosshair gets (starting at its base size determined by inherent accuracy). The recoil is not visible to the player because the area to which the crosshair is pointing does not change. In a game that models visible recoil, the crosshair size would stay the same size and instead, the center of the screen (player view, where the crosshair is) would move around. This game does not take into account the stability of the firing position. If you are standing or crouching (no prone option in this game) it has no effect on accuracy and thus doesn't affect the crosshair size at all.

Battlefield 4: This used projectile-based physics. Each weapon has a bullet speed and bullet gravity (not sure why they have gravity changing between firearms, should be constant unless some projectiles somehow have anti-gravity thrusters :-P). You have to aim above a target that is farther away to hit what you want to hit. For a moving target you have to lead the target. Each weapon in the game has inherent accuracy, so the base crosshair size is determined by what firearm you are using. This game has visible recoil. If you are using burst-fire or full auto, the crosshair will move around based on the defined recoil pattern of the specific firearm. So if I have the crosshair centered right in the middle of an enemy's chest (let's assume he is stationary throughout this exercise), after I shoot a burst of projectiles, the crosshair will no longer be centered in the middle of his chest, it will be centered on an area two feet to the left of his head (if that is how the recoil pattern of the chosen firearm is defined). If I want any hope of hitting the middle of his chest after shooting this burst I will have to adjust my aim, re-centering the crosshair on the area I intend [want to] hit. I can compensate for this some if I know the pre-defined recoil pattern of a specific firearm. For example, the M16 may jump up 1 unit and left 2 units after each burst. Knowing this I can pull my mouse down and to right slightly while firing to reduce the effect of the recoil implementation.

This game does take into account the stability of the firing position. If you are prone and using a bipod this has no effect on accuracy. If you are prone and stationary there is a very small accuracy hit . If you are walking while standing upright then there is a moderate accuracy hit. The amount of instability/shakiness that there is as a result of movement and your stance is made apparent to you by further modifying the size of the crosshair beyond its base size, which is something that is defined according the the specific firearm. If the on-screen crosshair is on, you know this is occurring. If you opt to turn this off either via the options of by playing the "hardcore" mode like I do, there is no crosshair, and as such there is no visual indication that your aim is shaky/unstable. But, the key thing to point out here is that changing your stance or movement speed does not change what the on-screen crosshair the iron sights/optic sights are lined up. So like above, let's say I have a stationary enemy. I am crouched and looking through my irons, I have the firearm lined up/centered on the middle of the enemy's chest. If i stand up straight, look through my irons and the firearm is still lined up/centered on the middle of the enemy's chest, then I would expect that I can reasonably expect a fired shot to go in that general direction. However, this is not the case. If the deviation of a fired shot (the inherent accuracy) is 10 MOA, then the effective accuracy (MOA) when crouched is 12 MOA. When standing, it becomes 15 MOA. So basically, just by changing stance and movement speed the firearm itself becomes less accurate and more random. The problem I see with this is that by standing up, crouching, etc. the player is not changing the inherent characteristics of the firearm. Instead, they are changing the stability of the firing position. Like I mentioned at the very top of this: "However, you can compensate for this by tensing your muscles, holding your breath, etc. It won't reduce all of the shakiness but it will help. You can also compensate for this by just accepting that there is some shakiness and only firing when the weapon happens to be aimed at what you want to hit. If you are aiming at something, it does not matter if your aim if shaky or not, if you fire at the specific time when the firearm is lined up with a target it is going to go in the direction of the target."

this is something you should be able to compensate for. If I change from crouching to standing, my firearm shouldn't be/appear to be lined up with my target but start shooting bullets out at a 15 degree angle to reflect that standing up in unstable/shaky. All I was saying was that in games that model the instability/shakiness in this way, wouldn't it be better if your actual, visible aim was shaky. This would be clearly visible whether or not you used the on-screen crosshair, and a player would know at any given time the true location that the firearm was centered on/lined up with. For an example of what this looks like see here starting at around 4:40:

See how he is trying to hit targets but his aim is kind of wobbly? He compensates for it my making micro-adjustments and by holding his breath/tensing his muscles (holding the shift key be default in that game). Also, even in Battlefield 4 itself:

Battlefield 4 only introduces this visible shakiness when the player is put in a "suppressed" state or scoped in with a high-power optic, but see how if the sight is lined up on target when he fires it actually goes where he is pointing at? Wouldn't it be infuriating for the player in the second BF4 video if the crosshair was completely stationary, but every time he fired, the bullet might hit as far as 20 feet away from the center of the crosshair? Well, in every other case this is pretty much exactly what happens. You're pointing somewhere but when you shoot the bullet hits somewhere that far beyond what would occur based on the inherent accuracy of the firearm (what the player is likely to perceive as "reasonable" since it's effect since it isn't extremely significant)

That's all I'm saying. In games that choose to model the shakiness/instability of a firing position, do you think it would be more fair/less frustrating if the induced instability was visible? Even if the aim was shaky, the player would *always* know exactly where they were *truly* aiming. There wouldn't be any of this "well I had by firearm lined up with X but the bullet didn't go anywhere close to there! What the heck?" In my opinion, you should either:

a) not model the instability/shakiness of a firing position at all OR

b) make it something that the player is clearly aware of and is able to compensate for in some way.