Not silly. It’s just unclear.
Now if I move the reticle down to be lower then the shots will not align with the crosshair.
Perhaps you’re assuming that the 2d crosshair has something to do with 3d tracing. These 2 entities know nothing about each another, the crosshair is just a fake visualisation of where we’re hoping the trace is going… (it’s also badly offset by 8px in the first person template)
So this happens to be the centre of the screen because we’re using a forward vector (of the gun to which the camera is attached!) to aim . So it’s a sheer coincidence these 2 align…
move the reticle down
Down is arbitrary in 3d. How are we shooting:
When you look at 99% of the shooters, it makes no sense whatsoever:
Where the heck are those bullets flying? It’s somewhat easier to justify if the gun is centred; still, gets weirder the longer you think about it. According to this, I will not blow my face off:
The best examples are games that use hardcore mode where there is no aiming reticle. You still aim with the centre of the screen because that is natural - here you can cheat and put a sticker in the middle of the screen.
One somewhat graceful way of doing it is to deproject the location of the trace hit and paint the crosshair there. Think laser beam minus the actual laser.
Could you provide an example of how you envisioned it to work?
- are we going to fire physical bullets
- are we just tracing and damaging the target and the bullets are fake?
- are we firing beam weapons