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1. The mechanics of the screen and crosshair shake
As you are all familiar with it activating jumpjets causes massive screen and crosshair shaking, but what only a few players have noticed is that the shaking you see is not in sync with the shots made. This means that while the jumpjets are active shots fired won't follow the crosshairs even if you shoot at the millisecond when the crosshair is actually on the target instead it goes off toward a random location within certain limits.
BUT as the Devs hinted several times after the patch that you can still make accurate shots, while you are in "freefall".
This is because the mechanism that causes the shaking is only active as long as the jumpjets are active.
You still see mild shaking even after you are in "freefall", but as far as i can tell that is only client side shaking.
Allow me to illustrate how it works on your client and on the server side:
Shooting without jumpjets on the ground:
Client: crosshair is almost "stationary", slightly affected by movement and incoming shots
Server: shots land roughly where the crosshair is
Shooting with active jumpjets mid-air:
Client: the crosshair jumps wildly within the marked red zone
Server: shots are completely random and unrelated to the crosshair, but roughly stay within the marked zone
Shooting with inactive jumpjets mid-air:
Client: the crosshair shake reduces as time passes, but it is still highly visible
Server: shots are almost always landing where the crosshair would be originally
2. How i've discovered this
After the patch i've tried to play with a 733P that mounts 4 Large Lasers as main weapons and noticed something strange in their behaviour.
Most of the time when i fired Lasers while the jumpjets are active they selected a random location and stuck to that for the whole beam duration.
However sometimes they jumped to another location from the original one, so i went into the the Training Grounds to observe this without the heat of the battle.
The conclusion was that they select another location only and ONLY if i press the jumpjet key while the beam duration has not yet expired. From this and the dev hints i assumed that the script that governs the hit randomization activates WHEN the player presses the jumpjet key.
What bugged me was that i could activate the randomization a second time under one beam duration, so i've decided to test when the randomization really ends, to see if it is tied to something or it is just reseted every single time after the jumpjet key is pressed down.
For this i've used the training grounds and tried to focus my eyes on the original location of the crosshairs (before the jumpjet shake), the static HUD objects linked here helped a lot in that.
After a good number of shots (several dozens or maybe even hundreds) i was almost sure that the convergence randomization really ends after the jumpjet key is released or it is so small that i can count it as negligible, despite that screen and crosshair shake was still very much active.
3. Utilizing this in practice
Very simple, yet it takes some practice to use do the second part properly.
-Jump only as high as you did before the patch.
-Aim with the center of the static objects that are unaffected by the shake, shown here (obviously the red markings are not present in-game) or if you are not that good at focusing your sight just attach a tiny piece of paper to the middle of your monitor 'til you get used to it.
-Remember to release the jumpjet key before shooting.
Many thought poptarting is now impossible.
Well, it can be used with some practice!
Edited by Bloody Moon, 05 June 2013 - 02:32 AM.
