Truth be told, reaction time is something of a threshold. Human reflexes seem to be necessarily adapted to catch Newton’s metaphorical apple half way to the ground.
Aiming, perhaps the most demanding task, is done by anticipation of where to point when the event will occur, never to where an event has already occurred.
Differences in human peripherial nervous system latency are a tiny fraction of total latency. Last time I researched this, apparently, older/younger people had a ~1% difference in reaction time, out of something like ~10ms from head to fingertips, with a frame time of ~10ms.
If this were worth addressing, I would expect aircraft to eliminate rudder pedals in favor of twist-stick, to perhaps improve reaction time by half.
Genuine enthusiasm and endurance may be more variable factors between players.
I daresay anyone with enough enthusiasm and experience could reach the top of the scoreboards against such persons in the likes of Onward, PavlovVR, DCS World, Elite Dangerous. Or anything else with physics remotely comparable to hand-to-hand or aircraft-to-aircraft.
I know I can carry my weight in competitive matches, and hold the top of the scoreboards.
Absolutely the potential is there. A friend of mine his son used to be banned from Medal of Honor Allied assault as he could head shot you while falling or you were. People thought he was using hacks when it was literally just his reflexes with hand eye coordination. His Dad was usually able to resolve this by telling them he had been pc gaming since 5 and spectate follow and watch him play.
I once had a young lad (assumed to be young) accuse me of cheating in the Half life 2 French Village map. I kept shooting him in the head with the Barr from the other end of the map.
I asked why he thought i was cheating and he said “because I’m really good and you killed me 10 times and i haven’t hit you once”. I said " well you could try moving around a bit. Stationary targets are so easy to hit". He quit.
Reaction time is certainly helpful to a degree but nothing replaces muscle memory when under stress. 25 years of RL firearms training has only help me improve and now that we have mag ejection, slide racking and such, I am reborn.
Sniping is a whole different strategy, as long as the enemy’s sniper doesn’t reciprocate and dispatch you without prejudice. Reminds me of a great War film called Enemy At The Gates.
What makes this remarkable though is that at any reasonable degree of proficiency, we are really just initiating a sequence of reflexes that happens completely autonomically. Even just walking down the street.
This is very true. The anecdote was more about the lad not knowing enough to move around and yet thinking he was all that, than my ability to hit him. It’s not like I was camping.
I recall another map that was mainly indoors and everyone was using Thompsons. I grabbed a shotgun and started running though the buildings killing anything that moved. When I reached the top of the leaderboard, everyone started leaving. They all came back in with shotguns and started hunting me for sport. Glad they finally chose the right tool for the job.
Repetition can be your friend or enemy, depending on how you train. One of the biggest examples our trainers used to illustrate this was an incident with RCMP officers here in Canada where the officers would eject their “revolver” brass into their hand and put it in their pocket rather than to have to pick it up later. They also loaded their guns from shells they kept in their pockets.
During a firefight against a larger force of drug dealers they were all killed. They had gone “condition black” under the stress and when found many had reached into their pockets and were trying to load empty brass into their guns. Under the stress they had resorted to the way they trained and it got them all killed.
Sorry. That happened in the 1950s and I wasn’t trying to bring anyone down. History is a good teacher despite it sometimes not being pretty. I suspect their are those who would find a first person shooter game to be even darker. Those that tried to label Doom being on the simulator used by the military to de-sensitize troops to killing comes to minds.
Sounds like the same group who labelled Dungeons and Dragons Devil worship.
And Rock and Roll Satans Music.
I’m seriously surprised that they haven’t called out VR yet. Even I have to admit if the called Gorn a murder simulator, I’d have to agree and say something stupid like
“I know you are, but what am I?”
…stick my tongue out and run. Lol
Lol they thought mortal Kombat and GTAV were bad before?
