šŸ”« Why I turned off my crosshairs + Aim secrets

General Discussion
1

The target crosshair is something designed to help a player line up shots and land them accurately. However, because of the science of human reaction time, the subconscious training and muscle memory (because at a high level of play, thatā€™s what most of it is) is actually being constructed in a harmful way to your aim.

What the heck am I talking about? Well, think about it. When you practice with an aim marker in the middle of your screen, your brain makes the following association:

Gun -> Crosshair -> Target under crosshair

The logic is ā€œIf I line up the crosshair with the target, and then shoot the gun, the damage will followā€. This split-second logic isnā€™t wrong, but it is slow. It takes more processing internally (did some testing on self and friendsā€¦ rough estimate is that it adds .1sec to your reaction time, but this isnā€™t a precise figure) to line up the gun, crosshair, and target as opposed to what I am about to suggest.

So what if you changed your entire frame of reference?

That is to say, what would happen if you practiced with the crosshairā€¦ off? You would have absolutely no indicator of where to shoot other than where the enemy hero is relative to your gun and the center of your screen.

So the brain makes this association, taking the size of your monitor and spatial awareness that already exists into account:

Gun -> Whatever is in the center of the screen (enemy)

By erasing the lag and changing the frame of reference, an unobtrusive, non-transitive reference allows you to subconsciously train your muscle memory and aim centers in your brain by subconsciously using something a lot more consistent than a reticle for aim reference: the screen itself.

For obvious reasons, this will initially trip up your internal processing because youā€™re accustomed to the reticle, but after enough games and letting yourself organically improve, you will definitely see improvement, particularly with tap-firing and tracing/tracking aim skill.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Technical edit/Update: Itā€™s worth noting that this method is applicable more-so to hitscan heroes than to projectile heroes, but ultimately should improve both, because the actual internal complexity of factoring in the hit delay with the estimated position of your target on-hit remains unchanged, but the frame of reference is still changed as mentioned. Youā€™ll simply notice the improvement more in hitscan heroes because the playerā€™s skill at hit-delay and enemy movement estimation is completely factored out, meaning the frame of reference is so much more important.

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3

I turned off my crosshairs for Widow and Mccree.

It changed the entire way i play the game.

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4

Okay. But no. Thanks for coming to my Ted response.

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5

Edit: Comment redacted, Issue resolved

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6

No I just poke fun at whatever tiny detail I can find in posts

That Ted talk thing statement is used a lot

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Okay, maybe the outro was a little cheesy, but you could have gone about it differently because Iā€™m actually trying to distribute helpful information to the community. And now probably 1/3 of my viewers are going to be turned away thanks to the misleading nature of your first-reply.

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8

Im not discouraged, dont worry. Im gonna try this as soon as I get hone

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9

I believe most can form thoughts for themselves based on what you stated but if you truly think my post will sway others I will get rid of it

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10

Plot twist: he was playing mercy or rein.

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11

Yeaā€¦ maybe if some pro players actually played without a crosshair id take this more seriously. To me it sounds like a waste of time to be more inaccurate.

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Iā€™ll give it a shot! heh.

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13

I think that, because of the length of my post, people who skim the large amount of content on these forums may look at peopleā€™s initial responses to the post instead of the post itself, and the ā€œI want my money backā€ line could be interpreted as a callout to my methodology as opposed to simply my outro.

I would appreciate it if you would change it, but you are under no obligation to.

And Iā€™ll take it under advisement in the future to avoid the TED talk line, I guess it is kinda overused.

14

Youā€™re probably onto something here. I used to play GoldenEye Source and that game has no crosshair unless you scope in. I was a headshot machine with that Cougar Magnumā€¦

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15

Nah itā€™s fine

I just wanted to get a first post to assert my dominance over all the other slow posters :muscle:

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16

This is all very well and good until your target is more than a couple meters away, then it gets extremely difficult to line up shots.

17

I did that long before aswell and worked great for hitscans.

But playing Hanzo i had trouble aiming at middle and long range, respecting the curve flight of the projectile.

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18

Actually no. It works for me at any range except Hanzo due to his curvy arrow flight.

19

This is why some players use a black crosshair. The trick is to improve target reading by focusing simulataneously on both target and reference point. This can be done with either a less obtrusive crosshair or none at all to varying degrees.

Another way to improve reading is to lower or remove enemy outline opacity. The bright lines around enemies can actually distract you from their movements.

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20

This sounds very theoretical (like you just decided to think about it when you went to bed and came up with an arbitrary reasoning). I spend my time looking at the enemy, not my crosshair. So perhaps this is more of a personal problem that youā€™ve generalized to others?

I strongly suspect if this actually improved aiming that it would be a common technique used by higher tier players and pro players.

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21

Dafran used a black crosshair in the past and many pro use reduced crosshair outline opacity. However, none use no crosshair to my knowledge! :rofl: