Ereyesterday ('cause I like fun words), I felt like a mission or two in the SFOD mod using the AK74 with the 1P78 reticle. I make on-the-fly tweaks like that in the mod all the time, but imagine my surprise when I could not find the 1P78 reticle targas 'cause I had not yet made any for the SFOD mod.
Hm.
Many posts ago, I attached an english translation I made of an image I found explaining in cyrillic text the dimensions of a 1P78 reticle. I made a 2x and 4x targa based on that, which required a lot of drag tweaking and general 'round-f***ery, and I was not best pleased with the result. The reticle was more indistinct than I like at 4x, and blobby at 2x.
Thing is, most assault rifles in this mod, I set up auto mode for 2x magnification, and 4x mag. on semi. There are exceptions. The FNC also has 3x on burst mode, and the G36V and M4A1 (without the grenade launcher) are 3x for auto, 5x for semi. Decided to do the same on the GL-free AK74, too.
I was not confident in the authenticity of the form I drew the reticles in, and more extensive searching for Kashtan scopes and 1P78 reticles turned up a really nice .jpg with a through-scope photo of a Kashtan reticle, and I decided that'd be my new source image. I counted some pixels, made some guesses and got what you see here:
The reticle is meant for a 400m zero. That's how I drew and mounted the 5x version. Leaving the ammo velocity at 900m/s, I adjusted the drag 'til the 700m drop was as close as I could get it (0.325, actually). This made the 600m chevron a pixel high, but the tip of the vertical line under the 700m chevron was a perfect 800m POA. That felt justifying.
I was unhappy without POAs for 100m, 200m, and 300m, but googling around for a possible 100m-400m version of the Kashtan reticle I've seen in some games, someone mentioned a 200m dot in the one forum or the other, and I went with that idea. I did not find any actual, real-world examples of a 100m-400m Kashtan reticle, either.
After I had the 5x version of the reticle locked down, I mathed up dimensions for a 3x version, and few rounds of tweaks later, I made the screeny attached.
The dimensions I extracted from counting pixels in the .jpg are
not reliable, but they are:
From the tip of the main chevron to the bottom tip of the vertical is a bit more than 14 mrads. The source image did not actually have a 200m dot, so from the top of the dot to the bottom tip of the vertical is about 17 mrads (which is average human height at 100m, coincidentally). The horizontal is 48 mrads wide (could be it's supposed to be 50 mrads, but a 19" target is 48.26 mrads wide at 10m, and a 10mZ is a thing, y'know? *shrugs*). The space between the horizon lines is 30 mrads. The windage hashes are 2.5 mrads apart and are 1.3m (52 freedumbs) high at 400m, 500m, 600m, and 700m. 1.3m is about how tall a human on one knee is. All eight of them are 20 mrads wide.
Pending the discovery of a better source image or actual blueprints, these values are unlikely to change much, but are not guaranteed to remain. (Edit: Like, why is the main vertical 14 mrads [1.4m at 100m], but the ranging hashes are 1.3m at distance? 'Cause counting pixels in a .jpg is bad engineering. Factoring the construction quality of the scope, the reticle, the camera, the lens of the camera, the settings of the camera, my general competence and insecurity about said competence... I predict targa edits in the future. It sucks being only
almost smart.)
Playtesting has proven the reticle is
slightly confusing under pressure (I constantly default to 'dot-on-head' when I need to do '
top-of-dot-on-head' under 200m), but I'm having fun with it, and can only benefit from more experience.