gun sharpshooting question Whitman

[LSLGuy]

@GHO57

You mean people who can’t really shoot actually own guns?

…Isn’t that like …extremely dangerous?

Then you get guys like me. I used to be an every-month-or-so shooter. Back in the 80s.

Then we moved to a new area and finding a range was a PITA. Fast forward 20-ish years and I still have the guns, still have the (ageing) ammo, but haven’t touched them in eons.

Oughta sell 'em, but why bother this particular weekend? There’s always something else to do. So they sit.

[Susanann]

@gonzomax

But were the tower shots real difficult? Would an average shooter be able to do the shots? .

Not difficult at all, as long as the people you are shooting at are sitting ducks.

It is not hard at all to kill a bunch of unarmed people from a tower looking down, esp with a scoped rifle.

Yep!!! …any average person could have done the same thing. The only time it becomes difficult is when intended victims start shooting back at you.

[silenus]

@Susanann

The only time it becomes difficult is when intended victims start shooting back at you.

Which is why the Combat Infantryman Badge is the only (non-Valor) award that means jack.

[Zsofia]

@Raguleader

Worth noting that people do not, instinctively, think about threats above them. Honest, when’s the last time you looked up?

OK, now that you’re done staring at your ceiling, consider that adult humans just don’t have natural predators who fly. Most people just don’t think in that dimension as far as getting away from harm unless they have been given particular reason to think about it (if you know the Air Force is out to get you, you probably spend more time gazing at the sky than you would otherwise, or if you were trying to get into or out of a Xenomorph hive)

Also, I know from living on military bases and near airports that sound does weird things around lots of buildings. Got to my new base here on Friday, constantly hearing sounds of jet fighters, but depending on where I was standing, the sound would be coming from the nearest building (echoing off the faces of the buildings). So I never did figure out where the jets were (worth noting, I haven’t figured out where the flightline is, which says much about how totally new I am to this base, if you consider how hard it is not to find the flightline on accident on an Air Force base).

Gunshots would have the same problem, except that a gunshot doesn’t give you much time to zero where the sound came from, and while you’re standing around trying to figure it out (or hiding behind a statue or whatever), you may still be in the open for the next easy shot.

Evidently it’s a challenge in video games to get the player to look up - they develop all sorts of tricks to lead the eye upwards, because otherwise you’ll never do it.

[Todderbob]

@Zsofia

Evidently it’s a challenge in video games to get the player to look up - they develop all sorts of tricks to lead the eye upwards, because otherwise you’ll never do it.

Do you have examples of that? It’d be interesting to know (so I can use it to my advantage).

[Zsofia]

In the commentary for Portal that’s unlocked after you play through once, they mentioned it in several areas - once they had a ladder fall down and disintegrate just to have you look up where it came from, and often they had to experiment with wall panels and those little interpretive signs and things to get you to look up to portal-able walls near the ceiling.

[Raguleader]

@Zsofia

In the commentary for Portal that’s unlocked after you play through once, they mentioned it in several areas - once they had a ladder fall down and disintegrate just to have you look up where it came from, and often they had to experiment with wall panels and those little interpretive signs and things to get you to look up to portal-able walls near the ceiling.

In the Half Life games, the only thing that made the Barnacles a credible threat at all was that people never looked up. To make it worse, they actually just lazily hung their tongue down in front of you so you’d HAVE to know something was there, and people would STILL wander into them.