[DFBHD] Baldo's New M60 Sight

[Baldo_the_Don]

You're probably not surprised to learn I've been sticking to my dysfunctional mental health strategy of 'Keep Calm and Draw Reticles,' and I have some new and newish stuff.

The weapon.def flag 'Scoped' does some good things for sniper rifles, like a focussed reticle in NVG view, and an active magnification label in the HUD, but it also disallows movement while ADSsed, and superimposes a blue-grey scope housing in the NVGs that underlays a scope body targa that I find ugly and immersion-breaking. For all the aiming solutions below, I have the 'Scoped' flag commented out, and I kind of miss the magnification display, but honestly, it's less than entirely useful compared to ADS strafing.

Just know all the reticles and most of their scope's fields of view (how wide the inside of the scope is, I mean) are to my best efforts correctly scaled at maximum magnification.





I made a viewmodel scope body targa for the L115A. I tried mounting it correctly scaled, but it covered the rangefinder enough to make oversizing it a bit a better plan. I do love a Schmidt & Bender P4FL reticle, y'know?

The magnification ranges from 3x to 15x.





This is the ADS view of the M14 semi-auto mode. It has the viewmodel scope body targa I made for the M21, and my adaptation of the Trijicon TA11H reticle, as faintly labeled at the top. At the bottom, I faintly labeled that this targa is for the M14, 'cause I made a version optimized for for the M21's ballistics as well, so it has slightly different drops.

Yes, the points of impact are well within an IPSC C-zone of the points of aim. It's zeroed at 200m, but elevation is adjustable between 200m and 1000m, if you'd rather.

Magnification is locked at 9x to facilitate mouse-wheeling to full auto mode.





I've featured this reticle I screen-grabbed from a YouTube short about the 2014 film Sniper: Legacy in a previous post, but this has the M24 viewmodel scope body targa instead of the simple black background frame. It's mounted on the MCRT Tactical, and magnification ranges from 3x to 15x. Still not sure what the dots are for. The FOV is questionable, but pleasing.





I've shown this ZF6-24 reticle for the PSG-1 before, but I made a low-effort draft of a viewmodel scope body targa here, and I tweaked the FOV to the reticle size, but I might have drawn the reticle wrong. It's 32 mrads wide, and it may supposed to be 35 mrads. *shrugs* The rangefinder denotes the height of 1m at the labeled range at 12x. It's very useful in complicated ways.

Magnification ranges from 6x to 24x, but defaults to 12x, which the reticle is optimized for. This makes the lack of a magnification label in the HUD annoying, but zooming out all the way to 6x, then zooming back in three steps gets you there. I say again, at the moment, I prefer ADS strafing to mag. label. Mileage may vary.





This is another C_DOES inspiration. The Vector Continental 2-12x44 69 reticle here (left side) is correctly scaled in both subtension and field of view. Magnification ranges from 2x to 12x. I also made a version of the 67 reticle (right side), which is basically the same reticle with expanded illumination.





Valgear's video on the 1P86 scope got me wanting a Vintorez, and wouldn't you know it, there's an MP510SD lying around in this mod that nobody on my couch right now really likes, so I drew up the reticle by counting pixels from a screenshot, edited the weapon.def for accuracy, the ammo.def for ballistics, and the Gametext.bin for weapon and ammo labeling, and it's working alright. 9x39mm's 278 grains at 320m/s with 0.65 drag has some good punch, and fits the drops on the reticle. Single torso-hit kills even at 600m! So satisfying. Might need nerfing.

Please understand that the blue barrel is inserted into the map so that it represents a 10 mrad square when viewed from the firing position.

Valgear states that the scope's FOV is 26° at 1x and 6.5° at 4x, but I took liberties. Semi has 7x magnification, reticle is zeroed at 100m, non-adjustably, and the Dragunov viewmodel scope body targa is mounted so the FOV is 6.5°. Auto is 2x mag., and I tried mounting the viewmodel scope body targa to 26° FOV, but it was a bit wider than the 6.5° at 7x, and it felt confusing, so I just changed the mounting to what's on semi.

Note that, while writing this, I noticed I missed some subtensions in the 1P86 reticle, and maybe should increase the auto fire rate from 720 to 900 rpm. Edits are scheduled. [Edit: I added extra windage marks and small chevrons for the 500m and 600m drops.]

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Edit, next-day: Something went wrong. The images I uploaded yesterday disappeared. Luckily, it's a chance to change two, and I got two more:





The Vector Continental 2-12x44 69 reticle, except now it's 3x to 17x in-game.





Have I shared this SFOD version of the Team Sabre G36? *shrugs*

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Edit, the next: Anybody like NightForce? The Mil-R?





The actual Mil-R only has 10 mrads on the lower post, but on the SR-25, zeroed at 200m, the 900m and 1000m drops are at about 11.25 and 14.5 mrads, and I wanted the extra subtensions. I had to fake the 0.2 mrad subtensions, and I think they turned out okay. I really like the shade and shine effect I worked in to make it look 3D-ish and illuminated from the upper right.

I get decent hits with this reticle.

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Edit, the last (?): I like the Sniper: Legacy reticle above, but:





I took the basic concept of that reticle, and made it less confusing, and maybe more usable, with an actual grid-tree of milliradian dots. Also, an illuminated center cross, 'cause sometimes you have to shoot a dude in the dark, and he won't turn on the light.

I've playtested it in one mission with 600m fog, and it went well enough, but we'll see.

[Baldo_the_Don]

About 3:43 into this video I saw this:







And I made this:







I want to say I don't like it, but what's actually happening is I almost like it.

I like my reticles to be functional, and this one isn't, really, but it looks neat, which is enough for AAA games, it seems. You'd think with billion dollar game budgets, giant game publishers would manage to make functional reticles, and I can neither confirm nor deny that this one is scaled correctly in BF6, but I can assure you that, to the best of my knowledge and testing, the details are pure cosmetics. The upper hashes on the lower vertical look BDC-ish, what with the 'wind hold' dots, and sizes implying they'd be shoulder-width at range, but at what ranges? Who can say? My best guess, counting the pixels and mathing up widths, would be 500m and 700m, and with the right (probably way too extreme) ballistic values, they might even be functional, but they are drastically off for what I have the SR-25 doing at this moment. Why are there only two shoulder-width-at-range hashes? And why only for 500m and 700m?

Maybe it's a DMR thing?

I like the mrad subtensions from 4 to 10 on the lower vertical. A soldier between 1.7m (5' 7") and 1.8m (5' 11") tall 300m away would measure, sole to helmet top, between 5.67 and 6 mrads on that vertical, if it's scaled accurately.

Why is the horseshoe 4 mrads wide? Could argue that it's chest-wide at 100m, but my experience is that most optic makers prefer elements of shoulder width, and usually at 200m. The gap at the bottom of the horseshoe looks shoulder-width at 200m, sure, so maybe that's the idea.

I'll keep playing with it, maybe something will clear up in time.

It also irks me to no measurable end that all the holographic and reflex reticles in Battlefield games look etched and badly illuminated. Or is that a YouTube processing thing? Hm. Likely story.

Anyway, inspired by that Sniper: Legacy reticle and the range finder on the G11 reticle, I made this for the MCRT Tactical:







Optimized for 21x, with rangefinding elements for 1m, 1.8m, and the curve for 2m, due to the number of 6' 6 3/4" people in this game. I should probably explain that the 'head' of the tall silhouette target is actually 30720 MEd units wide. That's 46.875cm, or 18 29/64". Slightly less than the standardized 48.26cm, 19" shoulder-width measurement for targets and ranging, by way of explaining that the center cross on this reticle is 1.608 mrads wide. 5' 32" in moa, if you like. 48.26cm at 300m. 19" at 328 yds. Shoulder-width at almost a furlong and a half.

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Well. 9-Hole Reviews covered the Accuracy International AXSA. They mounted a Vortex Razor Gen II 4.5-27x56. They didn't show the reticle, but I googled around:







Maximum 27x magnification, which would be 19.8 px/mrad, but I drew it 20 px/mrad, so it's a bit off, but not perceptibly within 10 mrads. Field of view at 27x is 25 mrads. I shaded things to seem illuminated from beneath.

The numbers are 3x5px, but I might make them 5x7px. We'll see.

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Edit, a bit later: I do like the 5x7px numbers.







Included a non-illuminated version, and an NVG view.

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Edits now: The PSO-1 looking reticle in BF2042 appeals to me.











It's apparently 5x in BF2042, but I counted pixels and mathed up a more fitting 6x for NL titles. The spacing on the 1 mrad hashes is wonky 'cause 4.4px per mrad does that. (More edit: I tried a trick to de-wonk the 1 mrad hashes, and I redrew the 4 on the rangefinder.) The 5 and 10 mrad hashes are locked in. Went through several iterations on the scope body mounting size before confirming the FOV of 5° looks the closest.

I don't know why the rangefinder's particularly optimized for 1.5m, but I made it functional, and it's usable enough. A kneeling soldier is more like 1.4m, but a 2m tall sergeant standing straight 200m away? The curve centers on his sternum. Hope I can figure this out.

I cannot, for the life of me, quite nail down the best shades of baby-aspirin orange-pink in this game to match what the chevron in BF2042 is doing. At this point, I got RGB [255][158][128], but I'm unsure. I may keep trying, and can always fall back on red, needs must. A little shading around the edges of the chevron goes a long way to cutting the glare on bright backgrounds. I don't know, I'll keep messing around with it.



Edit: I did. It was fruitful. See the new screenshot I uploaded.

The observant viewer may be wondering why the HUD info is no longer centered. This is why:







I put some slight tweaks on this Schmidt & Bender MSR reticle, mounted it on the M24, attempted to memorize the DOPE, and got frustrated with the text laying right on top of the 900m point of aim. The hudpos.def got an edit, and we'll see how it works out.

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Edit (Impulsive): Well. I don't know how many of you are subscribed to 9-Hole Reviews on YouTube. A day ago at the time of this edit, Henry and Josh ran an AUG A3M2 through their accuracy test with an SAI Model 6 1-6x24. The one peek through the scope they showed in the intro made me curious, and finding the review that C_DOES made three years ago got me intrigued and informed, and the M14's been sitting in a neglected corner of the SFOD experiment anyway, so:



















This is one of those reticles that I don't really like that much. I think the points set in an X is a bit extra. If this was only 12x, I'd still think so, but that X is an eyecatcher at 2x. I think it's going to grow on me. Or I've wasted a whole Saturday on a reticle I'm 'meh' on, and the sunk-cost-fallacy's gonna warp my thoughts about it. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I guess.

I like how I managed a decent copy of the font, though. And I tried a new variation of the multiplyat shading trick that's pretty in pink.

Hmm. Molly Ringwald.

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Edit, the last (!?): I got worried about engagements beyond 800m:







Added a 900m drop with some windage dots, and moved the tip of the post to the 1000m point of impact. Won't help me sleep, but it won't bother me anymore.

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Edit, insomniac: This is what I do when I should be sleeping:







My understanding as googled: A holographic circle of dots reticle for the optic from Valdai, designation PK-120. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I've been awake uncounted hours, and a Gen-X metalhead gets weirder by the minute.

This one was kind of fun, and I'm surprised it works, honestly. Mounted on the AK74, auto 1x, semi 3x. I found no dimensions besides the FOV of the optic being 10.5°, so counting pixels and mathing up a clue, I got a dimension of about 25 mrads for the diameter, but I drew it 20 mrads wide 'cause most circle-dots are. My surprise is due to how tricky it is to draw a ring of twelve evenly spaced dots in a targa small enough for 1x. Might explain why and how after a nap.

Playtesting pending.

[Baldo_the_Don]

Today, I felt like Dragunovs, 11x magnification, and bold lines:











And that's what I got. Snack time!

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Edit: Saw C_DOES's new video about the Primary Arms PLxC RDB 1-8x24 in FFP, reticle adapted immediately:







Optimized for 15x magnification, with a 50 mrad FOV.

And this is the most accurate adaptation of the Primary Arms Nova reticle I've done yet:







Optimized for 11x magnification, with a 2° FOV. The weight of the lines is as close to perfect as I can get it. Authentically bright red dot. I love it.

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Edit: Did I know there was a BDC version of the Nova reticle? I do now:







This is the unilluminated version for the pick-up SR-25, if you're wondering where the red dot went.