Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Looks like it's working as it's supposed to, unless I'm missing something.
Shoot where you expect your target to be; it seems perfectly logical to me. I expected the video to show the hitbox 2 feet left or right when the guy was standing still or something.
KT
This might even be a little different from that. In a game like Quake, with the rail gun you lead a target and pull the trigger (click the mouse button), but you only lead them enough to the point where the target's character model will actually be directly in your line of fire.
However, this seems to be more likely taking into account bullet travel time.
People forget that bullets are not physical objects in games. When you pull the trigger in a game the effect is immediate. In the real world it takes a fraction of a second for the bullet to reach its target. Valve is just trying to fix this problem by instead moving the hitbox out in front of the target and increasing its distance based on speed. This instead of making bullets physical objects (which would probably require too much physics processing).
Say your target is 100 Yards away (300 Feet) and the bullet leaves the gun at 3000 Feet per second. If you take away reduction in velocity due to drag (which also would take alot of calculations) then the bullet will arrive at the target in 1/10th of a second. Say the target is moving at 20 Feet per second then in that 1/10th of a second it takes the bullet to travel to the target then the target has moved 2 feet from the time the bullet was fired. Thus you should ideally pull the trigger while aiming 2 feet in front of your target, but due to the fact that your reaction time won't be that fast, you should lead a little farther out.
Now all Valve needs to do is take into accound bullet drop due to gravity....and reduction in velocity due to drag and bullet drift due to wind and thermal factors.....time to put that physics accelerator to work.
edit: Of course the entire pthing about the hitbox traveling in front of the target doesn't take into account distance ...as show by the fact that you also have to stab in front of your target......so in the end, it would be more realistic to just make the bullet a physical object in the game.