Forgotten Weapons put out a video about the Colt 4x scope that Brownells is reproducing, and I wanted one on a weapon in the SFOD mod I like to experiment in.

I optimized this for the CAR-15/M203 at 2x auto and 4x semi. The reticle is a fine duplex crosshair, I arbitrarily made the thin center 20 mrads wide and high. It's not meant to be illuminated, but I might fake a laser on it later.

The elevation is adjustable from 100m to 500m, although the real one is in yards.

I think it looks pretty good.



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1716899901



Edit: I did try putting a laser/red dot looking thing behind the crosshair, like you might see in an Insurgency Sandstorm video, but I really didn't like it. Something like that would be great in a dimly lit short-range situation, but it obscures mid- and long-range targets, and I can't abide that.

I'll assume you all know how the laser sight looks on the rocket launcher in Half-Life and the Eagle in Opposing Force, like an actual laser from the center of your screen that's not visible 'til it hits something, so it changes size from a tiny speck at the other end of the map to a view-filling glare on the geometry in front of you. Far as I know, you can't do anything that in a NovaLogic game, but it'd be neat. The weapon.def has a flag called 'laserbeam' on the Mk23s and the M4s, but it does nothing obvious.

I'm all shrugs about, it, honestly.

https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1718091131



I saw this short and thought the reticle was kind of neat, googled around, found out it's sort of from the scope on an Arisaka Type 99, got this image for reference, traced the reticle, popped it on the Dragunov, confirmed it was almost perfectly scaled for 6x magnification, tweaked the windages to fit 6x, edited a new ammo.def entry for ammo_type99_77mm at 204 grains with 755 velocity and 0.325 drag, which got the drops close enough, then edited the targa to lock them in.

All the POAs are are a pixel lower than the POIs, at the most.

The reference image made it clear that the reticle is high in the scope. Most of the images I found of this reticle are like that. My testing on the reference image showed that the 500m hash is closest to the scope view center, but I feel like the rangefinder beam would be easier to use if I mounted the targa centered on the 600m hash and locked the elevation at 600m.

I did make a non-illuminated version of the Type 99 reticle, but I really like it in amber. Fine-line reticles in red contrast better on bright backgrounds, but feel too muted against dim ones. Fine green reticles seem too bright all around. Amber isn't perfect, just a decent compromise.

The real Type 99 should be 2.5x or 4x, but I like the detail at 6x, so I won't tell, if you don't.

Range testing with active weapon operating parameters (recoil 37 53 75, error 0.147 0.384 1.000 0.008 0.022 0.057) I get consistent single-shot hits on a 20cm² target out to 600m, then I need two or three rounds to hit a 20cm² target between 700m and 900m, and I might need a whole ten-round magazine to hit the 20cm² target at 1000m.

So I feel no explicable need to be unsatisfied with this one. I might still be unsatisfied with it, but I'm beginning suspect that's a me-problem, not a reticle problem.






Edit: I couldn't get used to holding the 600m POA on a target to find range. It isn't intuitive. And the hitmarker flashing so low is easier to miss than I like. I recentered the reticle at the 300m POA, locked the elevation at 300m, and I'm hoping that finding range at the cross of the vertical and horizon will feel better.

I also reverted to the plain black version of the reticle, and we'll see how well I deal with that.

Please note that the fence posts left and right of the 300m target are 50 milliradians apart, centered on the 300m target, and the images demonstrate how precisely I subtended the horizon.



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1718142881






Edit Again: Noticed discrepancies in the drops. Checked the targa against the reference image and realized that I had edited the tracing for CS:CZDS, not the SFOD. The reference image is at the perfect scale for 6x mag. in the SFOD. I reverted the drops back to the reference image positions and staked more pain into tweaking the drag. Got the drag to where the 1000m POA and POI locked (0.345 at velocity 755), then moved the other drops one to four pixels to their best positions.

This reticle is about as good as it gets, now.

Googling around for the one reticle or the other crosshair, something intriguing will come up, and I'll make an attempt. Such as:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1719767549



The scope designation is the ZFM 6x42 Z. The reticle is from Swarovski. The scope manufacturer might actually be Swarovski, but I haven't confirmed that yet.

The image is of my second version of this reticle. The first version was for 12x magnification 'cause I misread my notes. It looked great, but I wanted this reticle optimized for 6x.

I'm not aware if the ZFM is illuminated, but I illuminated it anyway. Mr. Chung states the BDC is adjustable to 800m, but I set the max to 1000m, mostly 'cause I can.

I think I made some of the lines too thick, and the form and weight of the numbers feels suboptimal to me, but it's a decent second draft.



Edit: I redrew the '2' on the rangefinder. I made the slanted bit one pixel taller, so it feels slightly less stubby. I think this one is done.

(Also tried to optimize my .jpg quality a bit more. And since I did, I redid the first screenshot, but I failed to catch the hitmarker, and restarting the mission half an hour into it is, just, no. So I got screenshot, with a hitmarker, on a different target. The new target was also further away, so that's cool.)



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1719763448

I used a method of mounting this targa that I'm not sure about for all resolutions and video settings, but at 1280×720, and normal/low choices, it seems to work.



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1719922409



In the experimental SFOD mod I've been tweaking, I have a weapon.def entry for a pick up version of the HK416, using the M4 .3di, but with HK416 stats, a specific ammo.def entry, and EOTech inspired sight targas.

I used to have more long-range stats on it, but I made those up, and all the research I've done makes it seem to me that the HK416's muzzle velocity (730 m/s) is more short-range oriented. I increased the bullet weight from 62 gr to 77 gr, just to add a lil' punch, and now I've drawn up an adaptation of the XR308 reticle.

The XR308 seems to be optimized for MGs, but first, I did a 6x version for the SR-25:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1719923619



Which I really only wanted for the noise details, honestly. A reticle with 300m drops in the BDC is not for sniping or DMR-ing, but a 6x on an MG feels a bit too spicy. I did tweak the 600m and 900m POAs for the SR-25 ammo's POIs, though. I only mathed up the 1200m drop to look rightish.

Thinking I'd prefer a 4x version of the XR308, I trial-and-errored the 600m and 900m drops, mathed up the 1200m drop, and after confirming that the lines at 4x aren't quite heavy enough for an aesthetically pleasant noise effect, just went for intensity.

And to make my life slightly easier, I mounted the 96×192px 4x targa at half the size for 2x magnification. This may not function correctly at certain video settings, but we'll see.

The HK416 auto has 2x mag., semi is 4x.

Playtesting has been light, and underwhelming, but nice to look at.

That video got me reminiscing. Worked up a thing.



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1723345617



That's the DFBHD(TS) G36 with the NovaHQ Widescreen mod, FOV set to 96 degrees, and a new version of the classic Hensoldt G36 reticle I drew that's scaled to 1.25x magnification, including an illuminated ring. I'm positioned 640m north of the closest edge of the 32m² concrete dock slab. A 32m span from 640m away is a confirmable 50 mrads, which is how wide I wanted the thin part of the horizon to be, and would you look at that! I think I got it. The baseline under the 'numbers' of the rangefinder is 17.5 mrads below the horizon. That's 1.75m at 100m. The footlines (?) under the baseline are each, from right to left, 1.75m at 200m, 400m, 600m, and 800m, or at least they're as close to 1.75m as I could math 'em up at this resolution. The inner diameter of the ring is also 1.75m at 400m, which turned out to be surprisingly close to 3 pixels, and the outer diameter is just two pixels wider.

It's tricky, y'know... drawing an 8, a 6, a 4, and a 2 that're 1×3 pixels. Not sure I manged it.

Look: large, clear, beautiful, useful targas are easy. Tiny, slightly blurry, beautiful, useful targas are difficult. I'm fxxxing trying. Mostly succeeding. I think.

This was a good way to while away a Saturday afternoon. Playtesting commences soon, reports will be edited into this reply later.

Edit: Tweaked the targas a bit. They look a bit better, now. Uploaded a new screeny.






Another Edit: How 'bout this for a play on the original Team Sabre G36 sight:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1723522411



Internally, it's kind of to scale, according to the reference image I have, but it's way too large for the magnification. The inner diameter of the ring is dude-tall at 100m (four times too large), so it sort of works like an EOTech holographic reticle.

This one's more style than substance.

I also have this one:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1723526270



Which is optimized in mrads with vanilla DFBHD(TS)'s 80° FOV.

The 32m wide concrete dock slab 640m away providing a scale for 50 mrads.

Still mostly style, but with a little more substance.

Keep up the great work! If you ever feel like updating those TGA sights again, just let me know. My Team Sabre Ops mod features the last ones you had made: https://www.moddb.com/mods/delta-for...bre-operations

Thanks, Menrva. I work slowly, but carefully.

Like this:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1724168814



I never really had strong feelings about the 1.25x magnification that DFBHD(TS) has for sighted weapons. Or is it 1.34x? Well, it tightens the default horizontal FOV from 80° to 64°, but I may have made screenshots at some point, counted pixels, and found that everything gets 1.34x bigger.

But enjoying the 2x (2.3x) mag. I put on most sighted weapons in the DFWIQ and SFOD mods I experiment in, I'm now of the opinion that 1.25x (1.34x?) is not really enough for the effort it must've taken to put it in the game.

Maybe. The default HFOV in Comanche 4 is 64°, and DFBHD is built on C4, so maybe the FOV expansion to 80° was the necessary effort. * shrugs *

Attached to and inserted above in this reply is a screenshot I made in the version of the TIOCoop92 mod I've edited for my single player enjoyment, including a rework of the optic on the AUG in the mod, and today, I added a correctly scaled and accurized adaptation of the EOTech XR308 reticle.

Okay, I've never confirmed that the cross on the reticle is 20 mrads (68.75 moa) wide with a 10 mrad (34.38 moa) gap, but that's what makes sense to me. The reticle center is zeroed at 300m, and the three dots beneath that are as close to the 600m, 900m, and 1200m POIs as I could get them at the resolutions I'm dealing with. You may notice a dot to the left and two dots to the right of the drops. Those represent the '.6', '.9', and '1.2' labels that are not legibly reproducable at 1.25x (1.34x?) zoom at any supported resolution in DFBHD(TS).

Under laboratory conditions (0 error, 0 recoil), I hit the tall practice target with consistent headshots at 300m, easy center mass hits at 600m and 900m, and I can't really see the target at 1200m at 1.25x (1.34x?), but I can through the 4x (4.77x) binoculars, and after setting the 1200m POA where I kind of think I saw the target through the peepers, I take the shot, switch back to binos, and watch it explode. Groovy.

But...

I tried something again today. The ammo.def has a drag value in every entry. That value is always 1, far as I know, but I changed it for the AUG in the TIOCoop mod. The original mod gives the AUG 7.62mm NATO, at some ridiculous velocity that's murderously fun in MP, but challengingly unfun from the AI in SP. And WikiPedia says the AUG is not chambered in 7.62mm.

WikiPedia does say the AUG is chambered in .300 Blackout, though.

Gathering further values from WikiPedia, I edited the ammo velocity to 680m per second, as one form .300BK has, and centering the AUG's boresight on the top edge of a target 440m away, I tediously trial and errored tweaks to the drag to get the POI about 100 inches (2.5m) below the POA.

Later realized the test rifle producing the WikiPedia values was likely zeroed to 100m, maybe 200m, not aimed to boresight, so I overdragged the ammo, but the point became moot.

After locking the drag to 0.989, I edited the POAs in the targa to match the POIs, got a shockingly low POA for 900m, and realized the bullets were slowing too much and falling to the ground at 1000m to 1100m, regardless of how high I aimed.

I thought, "That can't be right." It wasn't.

I fooled around and came up with drag 0.995, arbitrarily, edited the targa to fit that, and that's what's in the screenshot.

You may see why I chose the XR308 reticle. The targa has two empty pixels between the 300m and 600m POAs. If I attempted a correctly for 1.25x (1.34x?) scaled ACOG, I'd have to fit the 400m and 500m POAs in those two pixels. The XR308, with its 300m drops, makes 1.25x (1.34x?) fit a bit more comfortably.

I'm a Gen-X metalhead. I'm not like other guys. I'm nervous and my socks are too loose.

This reticle is tight as possible, loose as necessary, and I like it.

But messing around with drag in DFBHD(TS) is a slog. The margins are too tight to be called margins. Anyone with a little shop experience would feel 'tolerances' would be a better fit.

Literally thousandths.

This is the construction I use in my target range map:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1724726996



A 20x20cm steam grate item on the 'face' of all the tall silhoutte targets, with events connected to each that wins goals and advances the waypoint.

Hopefully, that makes this screenshot more understandable:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1724726996



You see the ammo counter. It took me six rounds with velocity 340, drag 0.993, weapon error_up of 0.017 (2 moa groups) to hit that 2.29 moa wide grate from 300m.

'Cause what I'm calling the 'dropring' targa is not really a Trijicon RTR .223 or an RTR 9mm PCC reticle, but it's heavily inspired by them, adapted pretty friggin' well for the job, and make the M4A1SD in the TIOCoop mod a joy to master.

The horseshoe and red dot are zeroed to 50m, and the hashes on the vertical are POAs for 100m, 200m, and 300m. The POIs are all within the POA pixels they need to be in, and I can work with this reticle, even at 1.25x (1.34x?). The horseshoe's inner diameter is dude-wide at 50m, and I initially had the hashes dude-wide at range, but the 300m hash got too faint to be useful, so I made them all 3px wide.

It's a knock-off, but effective.

The viewmodel of the AUG in the TIOCoop mod is obviously not mounting the classic Swarovski optic I had based the sight targa on. Yesterday, I started feeling that I should fix that. Also took the opportunity to give it a neatish new reticle.

I made a screenshot of the AUG after switching the pos and tpos in the weapon.def, and with that image of the scope up to the eye, drew something that looked like it, slapped some shading on it, and then drew a German #4 with an illuminated red dot. The reticle is mounted 3px low, and that's a fairly consistent 300m zero. The bars and post are my best attempt at making them 5 mrads thick, the thin crosshairs are similarly my best guess at half an mrad thick, and the gap is 10 mrads wide from the center on three sides. The red dot brightness is adjustable.



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1728721870



Edit: The fact that there is a maximum allowable number of valid entries in the weapon.def (54, if I haven't miscounted) annoys me to no measurable end. Imagine my joy at realizing the weapon.def in the TIOCoop mod that I've been editing for so long actually had a duplicate entry for the thermite packs (which was undoubtedly my mistake), and having deleted it, freed up a valid weapon entry slot, and I could add a semi-fire mode to the AUG.

C_DOES put up a new video on the Elcan Specter 1.5/6x42:







And I imagine by now, well... You might know me:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1730753951



This reticle is an expansion and refinement of the reticle in the Specter DR 1-4x. Many similar features, and a few extras.

I drew this to scale correctly at 9x magnification in the SFOD mod. It's optimized for the ammo.def entry for the M21 (velocity 767, drag 0.46, which, according to my notes, is optimized for the Trijicon TA648 reticle I had on it before. I'll probably change it back to more authentic M21 values later). Not coincidently, I mounted it on the M21, and edited the magnification to adjust between 2x and 9x, which is comparatively equal in scale as 1.5x to 6x. I shut off the HUD for the screenshot 'cause the distance, elevation, and magnification elements cover the caliber label. I edited the weapon.def to zero this at 100m, and left the elevation adjustable out to 1000m 'cause some players might appreciate the option.

Playtesting has been fun, and it functions well.

Edit: Edited the AMMO_M21_HPBT to velocity 853, drag 0.435, and repositioned the drops in the targa to fit. I got the velocity value from Wikipedia, and I got the drag value from some experiment or another. I'm not updating the screenshot 'cause the drops are just tighter now, it doesn't look much different.

I think the velocity 767, drag 0.46 was an experiment with the TA648 reticle. I drew it strictly according to the blueprints from the Trijicon site, and I edited the ammo velocity and drag to fit it, to a closer extent. I'm pretty sure I slowed the velocity 'til the 300m drop on the TA648 was correct, tweaked the drag 'til the 1000m drop was correct, and kept going back and forth 'til both the 300m and the 1000m were good, then repositioned the other drops. I probably got the 0.435 drag from experiments on the Trijicon ACOG 3.5x35 .308 crosshair reticle. I'm unsure.

I've edited the Barret in the SFOD mod to the point that it's not really a sniper rifle. It's an overpowered DMR. A lot of recoil, and 3.5 moa groups. I commented the 'scoped' flag out so aiming while moving can happen (that's why the 'Magnification:' HUD element is not visible). Forewent the sniper scope background for a scope body and glass graphic.

Today, I felt it needed a simpler reticle than the Signal 50 I adapted from COD Warzone videos I liked to watch a while ago.

First, I made a regular old mildot optimized for 12x magnification. The dot spacing was a bit off, so I adapted it for 13x, and I liked it better...



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1731450091



...but I wanted something even simpler.

I drew up a German #4 with an amber dot.



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1731450091



Optimized for 13x magnification. 3 px (0.31 mrad) thin lines that are 10 mrads long from center to post and bars, which I made 2 mrads thick. The dot has brightness control. I love it, honestly.

I also tried a version in imperial units, but I couldn't convince myself that it makes sense for a German #4 to be in imperial units, and it turned into a heavy duplex...



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1731450091



...with 1 moa thin lines from center out to a distance equivalent to 18" (45.72cm) at 100 yards (91.44m). They then flair out at 45° angles, thickening 'til they become the post and bars, equivalent to 18" at 300 yards (274.32m) in width. The frisson I was suffering with the dimensions in inches and yards, but elevation in meters was too much for me, and I went back to the German #4.

Because when you're a chubby, older american man with stupid blonde hair named Donald, the waves of anxiety these days call for distraction, and I don't know about the rest of you chubby, older american men with stupid blonde hair named Donald, but drawing reticles does that for me.

"Keep Calm and Draw Reticles" posters and T-shirts? Nah, nobody's buying that.



Also:

https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1731461082



Edit: Okay, then there's this:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1731488110



That reticle is my adaptation of a Schmidt & Bender Police 3-20x50 PMII Ultra-Short, mounted on the SR-25 at 11x magnification. I like odd numbers.

In accordance with my new unsustainable mental health strategy (Keep Calm and Draw Reticles), I've reconsidered a few of the ideas I've gone with concerning some sight targas. Most of the select fire weapons I've edited in the SFOD mod have 2x magnification on auto, 4x on semi, and appropriately scaled targas for sights.

But the AK47/GP25 has a viewmodel with decently detailed irons, and I worked the pos and tpos excruciatingly carefully to not only line the sights up correctly and center them horizontally, I angled the weapon down on the vertical so that the ballistic arc and the line of sight meet at a 400m battle zero.

The Team Sabre G3 Menrva brought into the mod also has good irons on the viemodel, and I worked similar edits onto it.

Now, both those weapons have 1x mag. in auto, 2x on semi, and being taught about the RenderFOV flag by OscarMike247 (that guy is a community treasure), I got the irons correctly scaled for both modes, even if semi has janky lowered pos values that I'm optimistically calling 'high ready,' but are necessary, however weird they look.

Thing is, the CQB experience with these weapons is neat at 1x mag. And I started wondering if other weapons could benefit from being at 1x mag. in auto mode.

My first edit was the CAR15s. I resized the sights for 1x mag. in auto, 1x on the M203, and 2x mag. on semi for longer range accuracy. I redid the M4/Masterkey the same way (with a new LP1 reticle, too).

Then, because fruitful effort and efficient time management mean little to me, I played around with viewmodel iron edits on the MP5s. The problem is, the MP5 viewmodels have a usable V-notch on the drum, and a nifty ring shroud on the front, but no actual front post in that shroud.

So I worked up some targas. I don't hate 'em.



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1736608351



My usual approach would be a front sight targa, a rear sight targa, and careful mounting positions for both on each fire mode. I tried a different trick with this. I made a seperate new targa for auto and semi, and they are as close to correctly scaled as I could get them.

I'm really happy with how the alpha blending turned out, and I'm having fun with them.

Yeah, so at some point, I realized I could put a reticle on the satchel detonator:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1737360522



That's the M22 binocular reticle, optimized for 6x magnification, with a rangefinder calibrated for objects two meters tall from 400m to 2000m.

Above you can see the sergeant is 400m away. Below you can see how he reads on the rangefinder:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1737360522



I mathed up the dimensions for the reticle as best I could, and I think it's accurately scaled. The sergeant is indeed two meters tall, and he fits in that spot in the wedge tightly enough. I've also confirmed the 500m and 600m marks on the other guys you see in the background.

How often have you found yourself trying to confirm a target's range some-odd hundred meters away only to have the HUD tell you the distance to the trees with the oversized collision boxes you're hiding directly behind, or the window pane you're observing the target through? This reticle isn't laser-rangefinder accurate, but it'll give you something to work with.


Edit: Also, the M3 binocular reticle with an Eames scale, optimized for 6x mag., mounted on the pick-up satchel detonator:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1737423825


Edit, random: A few hours ago, I learned that the rear sight system on the M16A2 has adjustable elevation between 300m and 800m. I had no experience with M16A2s in my enlistment, and was under the impression that the 0-200m and 300m flip apertures of the M16A1 was all there was to AR irons. I'm a little angry about this. Would've thought somebody might've mentioned it to me by now.

Well, in the experimental edit personal version of the SFOD mod I have on my crate at the moment, the elevation on the M16s is adjustable from 300m to 800m, now.

scope_max_zero 8 100 300 3

That'll do it.


Edit, expected: Below is my adaptation of the Zrak ON-M79 reticle. I'm not 100% sure that the head lines on the rangefinder are supposed to be 48.26cm at range, but that seemed correct to me, and that's how I did them:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1737956423



Again, this was an exercise in counting pixels on some googled up images (okay, one googled up image), math, and educated guesses. Optimized for 7x magnification, pale green illumination chosen in accordance with a .jpg on WikiCommons.

I like that this is a version of the PSO-1 reticle that's both simplified and expanded in effective ways. They're all german #1s when you get down to it, and that fascinates me for some reason.

I've posted about the reticle from the Arisaka Type 99 that I've adapted for the SFOD mod before. Yesterday, I found out about the Arisaka Type 97, the 99's predecessor. A Forgotten Weapons video, or maybe one from 9-Hole Reviews, or something.

Got me looking for images of the reticle. I found a few, and one especially good one, and you guys might know by now that I'm a sucker for a BDC.

I had to try it out.

So I got a .jpg of the reticle into Irfanview, counted pixels, plugged those values into a google docs spreadsheet, converting the pixel counts to milliradians, then converting those mrads into pixel counts for a .tga.

The first draft of the reticle was for 3x magnification, 'cause the scope on the Type 97 is 2.5x, and, okay, 3x mag. in Novalogic games makes things 355% larger, but 2x makes things 230% larger, and NL magnification functions exclusively with whole numbers. I made my choice.

It turned out pretty good, but I couldn't enjoy the smallness of the 3x reticle, so I made a 6x version:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1739506452



Now we're talking.

I usually do such experiments on the Dragunov, but the M40 is a bolt-action with a five round magazine, and that seemed a better fit. Part of the experiment is a new ammo.def entry for 6.5x50mm with a 139gr round at a 730m velocity. Then grueling trial and error with drag values 'til all the drops lined up. The reticle is centered on the 300m hash, I locked the elevation to 300m, and with the prone/sighted error at 0.013, producing 1.5 moa groups, this rifle is headshot precise out to 500m, and easy torso hits out to 1000m.

Now 0.445 drag may seem a bit much, but understand: I adapted the reticle from a through-scope photo with math, I found the velocity on Wikipedia, and that amount of drag at that velocity under laboratory conditions (0 error, 0 recoil) puts the fired round, the 20x20cm target, and the bullet drop pixel on the reticle targa in exciting alignment every 100m out to 1000m. Usually, a new BDC targa I've made requires some level of elevation hash tweaking, but not this time.

It's got me in a good mood. Happy Valentine's.


Note also that, much like the TA648 reticle, the vertical on the Type 97 reticle is canted right a few degrees to compensate for the left-of-bore scope mount, if what that one guy on the internet said was correct, and honestly, when has it ever happened that that one guy on the internet was less than completely factual?

OscarMike247 has told me about the 'camera-off-bore' mechanic in JO, and it's used on the tanks for sure, maybe other emplacements, and it could be possible to work it into this situation for an authentic TA648 and Type 97 canted vertical experience, but those are experiments for another day.

'Cause I suspect the line of sight and the boresight remain parallel in this mechanic, but offset, and what this trick might possibly actually require to successfully simulate scope offset or spin drift is locking LOS and boresight at a specific zero distance and twisting one a few MOA to the one side or the other.

I'm intrigued, yet hesitant, 'cause the possibilities are infinite, yet a lifetime is not only limited, it's infamously short, and if nothing else, this entire thread is testament to my underdeveloped time management skills.

* sigh *

I shall Keep Calm and Draw Reticles.


I just finished a few missions with the M40A1 in its Arisaka 97 cosplay. The reticle is unintuitive, the bullet is a bit slow and a bit light, and it's only a bit fun.

A five round magazine goes, like... if the reticle doesn't confuse you, the first hit is not always a kill beyond 300m, then there's a little panic when the target turns on you, so the second shot might go wild, but if the second hit doesn't kill — and a second hit does seem too often to appear survivable beyond 500m — then [DEITY OF YOUR PREFERENCE] save you if you forgot to reload before engaging, or the target has backup, 'cause things are gonna get exciting.

But, y'know, something about using a suboptimal sniper rifle makes that 700m headshot so much more satisfying.


Mostly 'cause I can:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1739717325

https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1742355273



So here's my problem. I started out with a simple german #4 on the M21 optimized for 9x mag. Two 2 mrad bars, a 2 mrad post, 20 mrad base, nothing fancy.

But on this map, with a few enemy duos and trios moving perpendicular to my line of sight at a walk, then at a run, sometimes a hobble, I was being frustrated by the lack of lead hashes on the horizon. So I put some in. Having leads on the horizon, I figured a naked vertical would look weird, so I added some mil hashes down the vertical, but I hate trying to remember my dope, and I went with a BDC of dude-wide hashes. After setting the elevation to start at 200m and adjust up to 1000m, I edited some space into the center of the crosshair to make aiming less cluttered, added a green dot, decided to comment the 'Scoped' flag out in the weapon.def to allow movement while ADSsed, making a red dot viable, and now I have this experimental reticle with elements from an ACOG, a Spitfire, a PSO-1, and all squeezed into a german #4.

That means I don't have a name for this, so I'm calling it the Undesignated for now.

And all this happened kinda 'cause Ravic has a video about his co-op adventures in the new Black Hawk Down, he's maining the M21, and it has a reticle like this, only slightly dumber:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1742356890



I edited some of the dumb away, and it turned out okay, but I wanted to simplify it to a german #4, and it all got out of my complete control, y'know?


Edit: I had this idea:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1742489193



Now with the illuminated and non-illuminated bits of lines in contact with each other, we can add the TMR to the list of reticles this has attributes of.


Edit: This Operator Drewski video got this into my head:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1742674366



So now I finally have that german #4 at 9x I wanted on the M21. 1 mrad bars, a 1 mrad post, a 10 mrad base, and this special triad of dots at 1 mrad left, right, and low. You wouldn't think just three dots would help much, but they kind of do.

I have to look up if this is an actual reticle, or something made up for ARMA Reforger.

...

My google-fu implies this is a modified ART II reticle. The actual ART II has the dots left and right, but not the dot low.

Now my dilemma: Keep the low mildot 'cause I like it, or delete it for authenticity?


Edit: Not only am I keeping the low dot, I've strengthened all three of them, and made a new screenshot.

Edit: The left dot was a pixel too close to center. New screenshot.


Edit: I swear, I'm not trying to be annoying, but:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1742781841



I did this for the AT-4 in an attempt to give it a chance in a contest with the RPG. The RPG and the reticle I adapted for it are still 10%, maybe 15% more effective, but this is kind of fun.

Yes, we're all agreed that 30 AT-4s is a ridiculous loadout, but a) I'm testing reticle accuracy and damage profiles, so running back to the armory or seeking a pick-up every two rockets is a stress factor and time-sink I must avoid, especially in maps with no armories or pick-ups, and b) I miss a lot.

Each dash and each space in the four horizontal lines is 5 mrads. The center of each number is aligned 25 mrads from center, the funnel is a fairly accurate representation of 3m at each distance, and the upper tip of each dash in the vertical is a 25m interval.

I mean, I can mostly hit stuff aiming with this reticle, even with a 1m cone of error at 100m, firing from the kneeling position.

Explaining the AN/PVS-4 rangefinder at the top: from the center horizontal to the tip of each vertical is 2m at the distance indicated. Each vertical is 6m from the left end of the horizontal at the distance indicated.

I wasn't really aware 'til today that Trijicon has a model of the ACOG for the Barrett:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1744053076



I mean, I vaguely remember reading a thing where a former british sniper was talking about how a bean-counter in Acquisitions ordered an inordinate number of ACOGs optimized for the Barrett 'cause they were cheaper than the ACOGs for the Accuracy International rifles, and you can imagine how that worked out...

But me conciously acknowledging that the TA648-50 exists, well, that took a while.

Annoyingly, the Trijicon site doesn't offer infographics with reticle dimensions for the TA648-50 like they do for most of the rest of their products, so all I had to go on was the example illustration on the TA648-50 page. Googling around, all I found was that image, and occasional screenshots from other games tangentally related to Barretts or ACOGs, never really Barretts and ACOGs, so it seems Barrett operators don't stick cameras in their ACOGs for some reason.

This reticle threw a mystery or two at me. As stated, nobody owning a TA648-50 seems to want to show it off much. Not having a through-scope photo of the reticle, I was stuck with counting pixels in the example image, and that is not a blueprint, so the accuracy of its design is questionable. But I counted those pixels and translated them into a targa. And I can't believe it's correct.

'Cause you see how high and tight the drops are? That can only happen if the bullet is moving extremely fast. All the info I've gathered 'til now states the muzzle velocity of a Barrett is 853m/s, and at that speed, I had to hold the 500m hash on the 300m target to hit it.

Skipping details of the hours of tweaking, I ended up increasing the velocity from 853 to 1190m/s, increased the drag from 0.45 to 0.368. Under lab conditions (0 error, 0 recoil), these values put rounds on the 900m and 1000m targets (20x20cm steam grates) perfectly, and called for minimal shifts in the other POAs.

1190m/s is, just, so, way too fast, but it fits the reticle, as I've adapted it, with NL ballistic physics, and it's a silly belief to pull from the experience, but I feel like all googleable information on the Barrett's muzzle velocity are lies. Possibly, nothing you can find on the internet about the Barrett's performance is reliable.

I also got mad about how a .50 cal. emplacement can destroy a BTR in about 20 hits, but you can pump the Barrett's entire loadout into a BTR for nothing. Experimenting has led me to believe the different ammo types have no effect in the JO version of the SFOD mod, and if you want to wreck personnel carriers with a Barrett, you have to increase the ammo's penetration values from 40 to 60, and adding 1000 killzone damage (limited to a 5mm radius) will reduce the necessary hits from 21 to 17, within 100m. Destroy an SUV in 5 hits instead of 9.

I'm unsure it's balanced well, but we'll see.

Wait. Is Barrett spelled with 2 't's, or just one?

...

Aw, ffs. I have some editing to do.


Unrelated Edit: I established that a .50 cal. emplacement will destroy a BTR 100m away in 21 hits. The Barrett ammo edits were doing it in 9 hits. SUVs in 5 hits. While adjusting kz_damage, I confirmed that any less than 442 has no effect on BTRs, and 442 kz_damage kills a BTR in 12 hits. I was hoping for 14, like the Barrett was being 33.33% more effective.

However...

I was standing at an old wooden table near one of the armories on the Logica Bahru village map, leaned over and shot it, and was killed by the edited Barrett's ammo exploding, even though I edited the kz radii to 0.00635m, which is 12.7mm, or half an inch in diameter. Further tests shooting walls I was pushing against were also lethal. I tried adding the 'OwnerImmune' flag, still died, but the 'NoOItems' flag did the trick.

Then I fixed the AI Barrett ammo hoping ^SGT Taylor would finally blow up that NB0-105, but he just refuses to ignore the enemy mortars, and keeps getting us killed. Idiot.

Five hits with my Barrett scrapped that heli, though.

Closing thoughts: decent modding today. I need a snack.

Just imagine an M-16 chambered in .280 British with the EM-2 optic mounted in the handle.

Got it?

Do you think it would look something like this:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746140436



Yeah. Me too.


I'm not sure about this:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746328167



Firstly, I'm unsure I scaled the 1PN51-2 reticle correctly. It's basically a grid of 2.5 mrad subtensions, and I can confirm the 200m zero on the main chevron, so the '2' label is accurate, but I'm dubious of the '4', it is not 400m on the SVD-63. Subsonic ammo might be a fix, but I'm not messing with that today.

The glass targas have a neatish CRT effect, and they do boost brightness perceivably, but in a washed-out kind of way. The left side of the image shows the view of a window in a building on a dark map through the binoculars, with and without NVGs (adjust to level 3). The right side shows views of the same window through the SVD scope, with and without NVGs. Center shows a day map with the reticle aligned on a metal barrel positioned to show an acceptable ten mrad square from 100m away, and demonstrates the scaling, whether it's correct or not.

I have deactivated pixel shading support because it misaligns viewmodel iron sights with the NVGs on. I like aiming my sidearms, you know?

This feels like good experimentation, but I think it's not going to work.


Edit: There is a point in my sleep — and I use this word loosely, under protest — schedule when I really should just stop and go lie down. Sometimes, things like this happen when I don't:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746394994



The reference image I adapted this reticle from is on the Wikimedia commons, and element sizes are described on that page. I just had to read up a bit. According to the author of the photo there, the chevrons, from the main one down, are each 11.9 mils, 5 mils, and 4.8 mils tall. They also said these correspond with the height of an M1 Abrams (2.4m) at 200m, 400m, and 500m.

Are those russian mils (1/6000 of a circle)? Or milliradians (1/6283.1853 of a circle)?

* shrugs *

I went with milliradians. The math supports this. A circle with a 200m radius has a circumference of 1256.6371m. 2.4m ÷ 1256.6371 = 0.0019098. So an Abrams is about 0.19% of a 200m circle tall. 0.0019098 × 6000 = 11.4588 rumils. 0.0019098 × 6283.1853 = 11.999608 mrads. And for clarity: 11.9 mrads is 2.379945m at 200m.

This is probably not optimally a rifle reticle, it's for anti-tank weapons. The elements are not bullet drops, they are ranging guides.

Hm.

The new screenshot shows the reticle optimized for the 9x magnification I have on the SVD-63. I did this just to see how it would turn out.

The first version of the 1PN51-2 reticle I made is not scaled correctly for any available magnification level in this mod, but it's closest to 3x mag. Needs to be smaller for that, though.

Maybe I'll try a 5x version at some point. Or a 4x version for the RPG?

So anyway, I've stuck to my personal general method of operation on this one: Make one mistake, make it early, and make it huge.


Edit again: Worked up a 4x 1PN51-2 reticle for the AT-4. No, I don't care how stupid you think that is.



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746426016



I can accommodate none of your derision, I must Keep Calm And Draw Reticles.

Thank you.

Well, I saw this:







And then I did this:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746531664



The first version of the 1P86-1 reticle that I adapted was for 3x magnification. It turned out a lot better than I expected it to, but not as good as wanted it to be. Resolution too low for practicality, but not as vaguely detailed for such a low res targa.

I'm kinda crushing on 9x mag. these days, which is 6.6 pixels per milliradian, so I tried that scale, and worked up an example for the SVD-63.

I tested the drops thoroughly, and added drops for 900m and 1000m, 'cause of course I did.

I like how it turned out.


Edit: See, this is what I meant about the 3x version, with bonus 1x deficiencies:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746599856



There's room for improvement, unquestionably, but my ideas for that are vague, requiring iterative testing, so experiments will have to wait for a little more motivation. I ordered some in, like, 2012, and it could show up any moment now. Right?

* sigh *


I believe this is an improvement:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746791879



Because an etched reticle means lines milled into the glass, not raised up from it. Maybe. I imagine there's an etching method when a pattern is drawn with an acid-protective material and the glass around it is processed, making a bas-relief, but would that work for reticles? I don't know.

I redrew the numbers a bit taller, and overhauled the shading method I use. I'm not sure about what it does for the reticle's accuracy, 'cause it makes the pixels above the centered horizontal stand out, possibly confusingly, but it looks really good, and more like shade and shine on the edges of lines cut into glass, lit from beneath. I like the effect, but I worry it won't survive playtesting.

Also, the PSO-1 at 7x mag. with the new shading:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746793505



The 6 on the rangefinder doesn't like it, but otherwise...


Edit: First this:







Then this:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1746917528



With expected minor improvements, of course.

I like the heavy lines in the unilluminated reticle, but the subtensions don't really make sense. No logical explanation for the dots that I can come up with at this pre-crash phase of my sleep cycle. But the 10 mrad hashes align on the edges of 2m target at 100m at 15x mag.

The illuminated reticle is okay. I strenuously doubt any of it is functional beyond the center cross and the horizon's windage mrads. If you watch that short, you'll see that this reticle in that film is so wonky. I had to fix it. At least the left half of the horizon got its missing half mrad back in my targa.

Edit: Did some testing with the illuminated reticle. I had drawn it from a screenshot of the video, mathing up pixel counts, and adapting things here and there, mostly trying to keep the form correct. I've found that at 30x mag., the mrads are a pixel tight 10 mrads from center, and with the elevation set to 200m, the BDC is almost correct.

I mounted this on the L115A1, with the ammo tweaked the way I have it (velocity 936, drag 0.414), on the range I made with 20x20cm targets every 100m out to 1000m. Tests done with 0.004 error, 30 recoil.

The hash above center hits at 100m. The points of impact and points of aim for 300m and 400m are good. 500m to 900m, the POIs are all the dot above the POAs. Surprisingly, the 1000m POI and POA align.

So, I call limited bullshit on this one.

Now I'm wondering if wind is a factor in this game. I hate coming up with simple questions requiring complicated testing to answer. 'Cause there are windholds on the BDC hashes and I can't just let it go at the moment.

The Nightforce Velocity 1000 in green optimized for 11x magnification on the L115A1:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1747156732



Why 11x? Caprice. Why green? Looks better in the NVGs.

Also, despite my best efforts to test the wind holds, wind has no perceivable effect on ballistics in this mod of this game.

Note for posterity: The heading you give the wind in the General Information dialog denotes the direction to its source, not the way it's moving. I mean, that is the way winds have classically been named, I don't know why I thought it'd be different in a mission editor. I'm hoping that writing it down here will cement the synapses in my brain responsible for holding this fact a little more strongly.

While I'm sharing things, how 'bout this series of values:

18, 9, 6, 4.5, 3.6, and 3.

A person 1.8m tall 100m away is 18 mrads toe to crown in a correctly scaled mildot reticle. If you scope in on a dude and he's about four and a half milliradians tall? It's safe to set elevation for 400m.

Sure, I think every person in Novalogic games is two meters tall, I need to confirm that, but let's assume it's true, then ranging for someone 1.8m tall will make your aim a little low, and the AIs aren't always standing up straight, y'know?

Basically, the formula is height of the target in meters divided by the number of milliradians in the reticle is the range in kilometers.

So, 1.8m ÷ 3 mrads = 0.6 km, or 600m.

'Cause I did some math and a target 5' 10" tall is 66.85 moa at 300'. 70 inches is 66.85 moa at 100 yards. Or, if you prefer, a target of about a fathom tall is a bit more than a degree in scope at a half short-furlong.

When you have seconds on a battlefield to locate, identify, range, and engage a target, why make it easy with math of two interchangeable systems, when complicating it by trying to figure out measurements in how many of the centuries-dead king's feet and thumbs will really separate the wheat from the chaff?

Edit: I felt the need to add that, in these games, with these resolutions, reading the height in mrads of a human figure on a mildot reticle beyond 600m is difficult. That's why I don't really try to memorize those values, but a dude 2 mrads tall is about 900m away.

...

Yeah, I'm grumpy. But it is dinner time now, and I made something neat.

Guten Appetit!


Edit: Adapted the NFV1k for the M24:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1747340357



Illuminated in red, 11x magnification, drops meticulously edited to fit the ballistics, and as the one panel shows with the two wooden fence posts positioned so that their outer facing sides are two meters apart, correctly scaled.

I made a few minor edits that I carried over to the reticle on the L115A1, but nothing obvious.

I like how it turned out, aesthetically, but I still need to get used to its function.


Jonathan Ferguson put up a video with the G11, he showed a page from the manual to illustrate the reticle, I took a screenshot, counted pixels, made some guesses and:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1747590601



I started by counting the pixels at the 300m point in the curve, assumed it was 1m at range (3.3 mrads), which made the reticle as depicted about 50 mrads wide (70 mrads, more carefully mathed), the rangefinder baseline 10 mrads below center (I'm still convinced), and 20 mrads wide (actually more like 16, I'm keeping it 20, though). I eyeballed the gap in the vertical, and testing showed that if the cross is zeroed at 300m, the gap starts above the center at about the 100m zero, and when I aimed the 100m POA center mass at a man 100m away, the top of the gap was just touching his head.

Playtesting'll have to wait 'til tomorrow.


Edit: The playtesting was fine. Explanation below. New screenshot of the G11 reticle above. I'd added details and improved it generally. Then I finished watching Jonathan Ferguson's video.

Oh, boy.

See, the G11 is in the Final Conflict mod for DFBHD(TS), and if you ever find a mod on my computer that I haven't also modified, overwhelm the imposter on the keyboard and find out what they did with me. Save me, if you can. Avenge me, if you must.

Where was I...?

Oh, yeah. The edits I made to the FC mod included making the G11, like, totally wrong. I got hung up on the reciprocating mechanics putting all three rounds of the burst out of the barrel before the recoil impulse could hit your shoulder, and I thought that meant the recoil would be tiny, and edited accuracy, recoil, and fire rate to that thought.

The video makes it clear that the G11 is not the kissy-bump laser I edited it to be. Single shots are nice. Full auto is easily controllable at 600 rpm. The 2000 rpm three-round burst kicks like a mule in a burning barn.

So that's some DFBHD(TS) mod editing for me to do later.

But I had tweaked the M16 to be like my dream G11, and then edited that to be more like the video clarifies. Foregoing the absolute gorilla-fight hassle of attempting to wedge a third fire mode into this, I set the default fire mode to burst at 1800(?) rpm, and made the former semi-mode to auto at 600 rpm. The recoil I had at 1, 3, 4, I changed to 3, 5, 7. 51 grains at 925 m/s and drag set too arbitrarily to explain to 0.21.

It was all okay. The kicky burst so fast, it sounds like one longish shot. Auto slow enough to make tap fire viable. But it just felt like a more complicated M16 with a 45 round magazine. Not awful, but not actually better.

I was coping well enough 'til I noticed for no explicable reason at this late of a point into this project that the dirt and scratch effect I put in the scope glass targa was missing an element. Muddyingly explained, I use a lowest-effort method for this effect with a layer of black dots, a layer of white dots, a layer of white lines, and the layer of black lines was gone for some reason. Then there was the badly executed layout I've needed to correct but kept putting off 'cause every instance of the car15ld.tga I put into the weapon.def would need its mounting tweaked, and buddy, I put a whole lot of instances of the car15ld.tga in the weapon.def.

Somehow, I caught a fact recently about how the glass in russian optics has a yellowish-green tint, not the greenish-blue tint I have in the car15ld.tga.

Well...

If it was just the dirt to fix, or the format, or the tint, I might've been able to keep procrastinating, but with all three undeniable deficiencies right there and not even a small mental blanket my brain could throw over them, the evening last and this morning were all about editing targas, .def files, and screenshots like this:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1747594169



The OKP-7 on the RPK-74 that I might ought've shared by now, and a black lines, red dot variant of the 1P88 on the SVD-63 with their new amber-tint glass, along with the SR-25 mounting an Elcan Specter CX5456 reticle I optimized for 7x magnification on the bluish scope glass for contrast and comparison.

And that was my weekend, it seems.

There was a time when I had my emotional baggage, if not under control, then it was at least contained. I could see a video like this:







And make something like this:



https://novahq.net/forum/attachment....1&d=1748452788



And I could feel good about it.

The FAL irons I made a while ago were less about accurate scaling and more about functional aesthetic. The FN optic I've adapted as a possible upgrade is all about accurate scaling and functional aesthetic. Details, like, how in the video, you see the bit (5:13) when Ian shows us the reticle through the scope that it's about 95 milliradians wide, and I adapted the reticle to reflect that. It worked out. I found it satisfying.

Then Lolli Wren put out her cover of System Of A Down's Lonely Day, and I'm wrung. Pressed through the feels and drained. 'Cause, sure, Keep Calm and Draw Reticles, but if the world could just get off my heart for a moment...