Today, a screenshot and a dilemma.
The screeny shows my take on the Aurora ACSS reticle. I used a screenshot I took from a Garand Thumb video on YouTube
https://youtu.be/5XleEtjl5DA?t=1208 to make measurements and draw this reticle as close to what I assume is original proportions as possible. I'm satisfied with the results and will likely remain so 'til I find other images and make comparisons.
That's for later. Now's for this:
Usually, when I work up a BDC, I'll test it on the rifle I'll put it on and adjust the graphic to fit the trajectory of the ammo.def entry's velocity and drag. Not this time. I mounted this reticle and edited the velocity and drag 'til it fit the reticle.
And I did a hell of a job, rounds impact the targets at the top edge of all hashes, including the 50m lines, and the bottom of the illuminated neck on the chevron is 350m. It's got me chuffed, don't doubt it.
But...
Wikipedia say the muzzle velocity on the M24 is 790m/s. Other sources I chased down give a bullet drop on 7.62mm NATO of 172cm over 500m at an MV of 860m/s.
So with weapon and ammo adapted for testing, (0 recoil, 0 error, 0 stabilty, velocity 860) no zeroing on the rifle, aimed boresight at the top of the Training Target #1 500m away, confirmed that, at drag 1, the round impacted about 180cm below where I aimed. I have confirmed in previous tests that at drag 3, I can replicate the 172cm drop, but I don't know how drag values above 1 affect ballistics, otherwise.
All for nothing, 'cause 790m/s was giving me ridiculous amount of drop that would require
significant redesigning of the reticle, and I'm not havin' it. Not this time.
I mounted the reticle so that the pixel above the tip of the chevron is the pixel at the center of the screen, then edited the elevation adjustments to start at 100m and go in 100m steps up to 1000m, should a player not want to use the BDC. With the rifle zeroed at 100m like this, I edited velocity and drag values until the ballistic curve fit the reticle's proportions.
Tests were hitting the top of a 20cm² steam grate at all ranges, at the correct aimpoint, out to 800m on this reticle. The method is 3 shots at each target, first with the aimpoint 2 pixels too high, then 1 pixel too high, then exactly on the pixel. I call it my "Definite miss, possible hit, definite hit" method.
Here's the problem: to get the arc to fit the BDC, I had to increase the velocity to 1000 from the default 853, and reduce the drag to 0.27 from 0.435 (I forget if 0.435 is the NL default or one of the changes in this mod). 17% more velocity to clear the "Miss! Hit? Hit!" test at 300m, and 29% more drag to hit the target at 800m. Play testing shows 800m headshots are still one hit kills, but torso hits just seem to annoy the targets. 900m kills need lots of hits, and 1000m hits are just unreliable.
Also, the game's elevation adjustments do not calculate for drag. With elevation set to 1000m, I still had to use the 300m aimpoint to hit the 1000m target.
I'm asking: was it worth warping the M24's effectiveness and reliablilty so much to fit the reticle? Or should I have just redrawn the reticle?
Edit: I reverted the velocity to 790, more or less arbitrarily set the drag to 0.625, then redrew the chevron and respaced the aimpoints. I tried a new trick where the center column of pixels in the chevron is not included in the slopes and it really clears up the 100m and 200m aimpoints. Added a hash at 350m. The chevron is taller now, but the overall reticle is shorter. And it's still accurate to within half a pixel. I like it.