Originally posted by Murdr
Have had a dedicated toggle zoom button programed on my joystick since my first tour in the game.
Yep. Me too.
I have a 17" LCD, and my vision isnt what it used to be> (I'm 45). I also do NOT have natural instincts in this or any other real time game -- I have to work and learn to improve.
I use zoom to:
1) See the enemy's angle of flight at longer distance
2) Get the timing and placement just right for the kill shot. (I don't have any bounce problems at all, with all sliders at the absolute top of the scale and using an X52)
Downside -- Zoom also cuts your field of view, so when you're setting up a crossing shot you may need it off for the "peripheral vision" effects.
Now, while I have to work for every bit of improvement, guys like my son (15) and Biggles have both
natural instincts (don't underestimate this factor!) and a childhood that included lots of gaming -- which means that generation's brains have learned a distinct wiring advantage over us "old" guys.
Biggle's 20% mark says much, much more about his innate talent and neural 3D estimation ablities, than it does about zoom's effectiveness.
BOTTOM LINEYOU need to have the ability to estimate lead, timing and deflection from the information on your screen. If that were automatic for you, you wouldn't be posting here, and you wouldnt have a 3% hit rate.
Do what YOU need to do to develop those skills. For me, it's been a process that started with tracers on gennery against drones, then from "anything but behind" angles against drones.
Then I turned tracers off. For me, with tracers on I ended up watching the shiney streaks move onto the target, instead of actually SEEING the gunsight and judging lead. By having tracers off, my practice against drones got hardened into place with tracers off.
TRACERS OFF HAS A HUGE ADVANTAGE FOR THE GUNNERY IMPAIRED. It gives them time to get the shot right, without warning the enemy that he should break. For guys like Biggles and Batfink, it doesn't matter -- because by the time the target sees tracers, he's probably already lost important pieces! But for normal humans, tracers on ==>> lost kills and more frustration potential.
Once I hit a % plateau with them off, i turned them back on for a couple weeks to see where I was missing. (Almost always, that's from not having enough lead!) Then back off again.
Another MAJOR influence on hit percent is average firing distance. The closer you shoot, the more you hit. AND your convergence MUST be set for where you like to shoot -- that way you both concentrate bullets (meaning much more damage) and minimize stray rounds that drop your %.
My hit % started around 2%, and when I'm dsiciplined I can get over 9% now -- with the vast majority of my kills coming against the tiny little fighters, not the great big bombers.