Reported spread angle for almost every hero is wrong

General Discussion
1

I was messing around in training room with bastion, seeing how spread affected TTK and I noticed

“hey, why does my supposed 3 degree spread appear far larger than that hero is tall”

3 degrees wide spread at 25m should make a spread 1.31m wide and of course also 1.31m tall. Yet the circle was way WAY taller than Soldier 76 who has to be around 1.8m tall.

I was absolutely sure I was at exactly 25m as recon mode does 40 damage headshots out to 25m then the damage drop off begins, a slight shuffle forward would be a 5 headshot kill, slight shuffle back would mean 5 headshots to the soldier bot left them alive with a sliver of HP. I was definitely at 25m.

Now, Bastion’s stated maximum spread for sentry mode is “3 degrees” I always assumed that was 3 degrees as the total width of the spread. The only rational explanation I can think of is all the listed spread amount is not degrees of total width but 3 degrees off from the centre

That would make sense, 6 degrees spread at 25m is a 2.6m wide/tall spread.

When Bastion’s spread shrinks to “2 degrees” then the circle representing spread is only slightly smaller than Soldier 76’s height.

2

How to u measure something that’s not distance that accurately? I’m not sure where the 1.31m come from…

Edit: Welp, clearly I replied the wrong number. I meant the 1.8m he got from the observation.

3

I used one of those right angle triangle calculators I found online.

I said the angle was 1.5 degrees (half of 3 degrees) and said the length of the triangle was 25m then the calculator said the base of the triangle should be 0.655m but that’s half of the spread, so 1.31m total.

So I didn’t measure the 1.31m figure.

I calculated that the spread should be 1.31m at 25m from what the wiki and the devs have said, the devs have states in official patch notes that Bastion’s maximum spread in sentry is simply “3 degrees” without saying how that spread is measured/determined.

You’d assume if someone said the spread was 3 degrees wide then the total spread would be… 3 degrees.

No that the spread is going in a 3 degrees radius all around the centre-line.

4

Basic math / geometry.

The bloom is a gun should make a cone shape, with the point of the cone originating at the guns barrel.

Viewed as a 2d shape, that bloom would look like a triangle-

And isosceles triangle to be specific (a triangle with 2 equal angles, and one unique angle).

If we know the angle of either the point, or the end of the triangle, and the distance- we can calculate the remaining sides of the triangle.

If we assume the point angle (barrel side) is 3 degrees, the other 2 angles must be 88.5 degrees (all 3 angles of a triangle must add up to 180. 180 - 3 is 177, and since we know the other 2 angles are the same divide 177 by 2 and we get 88.5)

Now we have the angles, and we know the “height” of the triangle (in this case, the distance- 25 meters), we can calculate the end-width of the triangle (as well as the sides)

In this case the base width (Max bullet spread at 25 meters) would be 1.3 meters.

However- and as he began to mention in the original post-

Im under the impression the “3 degrees” of spread isn’t the measure of the angle at the point of this triangle.

But how far off center the spread goes-

Meaning we’d have to double that number to get the points total angle, giving us 6 degrees of bloom total, and having us at the 2.6 meters of spread at 25 meters.

2.6 meters is about 8 and a half feet- and that seems about right for the spread we have with bastion at those distances.

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5

Ugh, the 1.31 is the “measured number” he get from the spread pattern observation, not the theoretical.

I know exactly how to calculate how much degrees translate to how much spread radius, I’m asian ffs.

Edit: Nvm, I replied the wrong number in the measurement. I meant I donno where his measured number comes from, not the theoretical ones.

6

Which measured number are you referring to then?

7

1.8m, that’s the one.

Do pardon me again, my brain wasn’t working well in both of the replies.

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8

No I’m unable to exactly measure 1.31m of anything, there’s nothing 25m away that’s 1.31m away.

But I know that Soldier is neither 1.31m tall nor 2.6m tall, he has to be around 1.8m to 1.9m tall.

I need to add that the devs said that “Bastion’s sentry gun spread will shrink to 2 degrees”. It the total spread was 2 degrees wide at 25m that would have all the shots landing within a circle 0.82m wide/tall. YEt when I hold fire down in sentry until the spread shrinks to mimimun and hold the circle-crosshair (with “show accuracy on” of course) next to soldier at 25m the circle is as wide as Soldir 76 is tall.

When the developers said “Bastion’s sentry gun spread will shrink to 2 degrees” they meant:

“Bastion’s sentry gun spread will shrink to the point where all bullets land within a 2 degrees radius off the center line of his line of fire”

Then that’s WAY more spread than we would have otherwise assumed.

That’s a minimum spread of 1.75m at 25m, considering Soldier 76’s roughly oval hitbox, this means only 1/3rd of bullets will hit. That 450DPS… ain’t.

I can see why the developers would think of it this way, when they’d be coding the engine to add inaccuracy the obvious way to do it would be to tell the engine to cause each hitscan to be deflected a random amount in the range of 0-2 degrees and in a random direction.

9

Ugh, I did mention my brain not working out right? The 1.8m is the number I meant, but clearly that being only mentioned once made my brain not working.

And, I know how 1.31 comes, 25*tan(3)

10

Not necessarily. Characters and environments in a game are scaled in a way that won’t always be true-to-life. For gameplay reasons. I vaguely remember reading that characters in D3 are something like 10m tall, based on ability ranges.

Soldier may be 1.8m-ish lore-wise, but if your calculations are to be believed, he’s WAY shorter than 1.31m in the Overwatch engine.

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11

Hmm, I suppose we can’t make that assumption.

What’s D3?

Okay, I can prove that Soldier is 1.8m tall as relevant to Bastion’s maximum spread being 2.6m wide at 25m

Consider this post:

That uses in game data to get the 1m units so we can use symmetra’s orb as a mesuring stick.

In practice range:

  1. I select Symmetra and set her circular crosshair to maximum
  2. I bring up a Soldier 76 bot
  3. point my crosshair at soldier 76 perfectly level
  4. I sidestep to the left without moving my mouse until my crosshair is pointing off the soldier 76’s side
  5. I charge up alt fire orbs and then slowly shuffle right until my orbs are just hitting Soldier 76 (I mount Mouse wheel up to A and Mousewheel down to D)
  6. I then walk backwards until the circular crosshair just touches Soldier’s hitbox
  7. without moving forward or back, I then sidestep until my crosshairs are looking at Soldier 76

This should result in my crosshair being wide enough so that the range I am from Soldier the crosshair will be 1m wide.

This is because I know symm’s orb is 1m wide, if I an JUST clipping the edge of Soldier’s hitbox then the centre of my crosshair must be drawing a line that gets almost exactly within 0.5

Using that circular crosshair as a measuring stick I can confirm Soldier 76 IS 1.8m tall if not slightly taller.

12

There is the workshop with minimal coding efforts allowing to both messure Distance and Hero sizes (from the floor to the eyes/camera) the result are normal can give more accurate numbers when Im home.

13

This btw. Is absolutely the case the degrees are taken from the center line so the total angle is 6 degree.

Same goes for all Projectile Hitboxes there always twice as big as the devs tell us cuz the use the Radius.

Here are 2 pics I made back when Sombra’s spread was changed

https://imgur.com/a/TPKiYK5

The second one should make it clear.

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14

That’s a great one.

How many do you think have the wrong idea as all over every wiki they list the spread in a way that I think would have most people conclude it was the total spread.

15

Most people probably which is why I talk about it whenever I see it. Tried to get the devs attention with a post that died immediately xD
Might be worth to just get all spread angles and make a post about it like I did for the projectiles but that would require effort again.

I mean look at the first few comments in my projectile Hitbox table alot of them though it was wrong cuz it didn’t match up with The devs numbers.

And cuz I had outdated dev numbers in my head at the time I didn’t figure it out immediately that it was a radius problem.

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