Aim Acceleration

I found a post on the 343 forum about aimacceleration (which I thought I understood) that equated aim acceleration to"aim smoothing", which I had never heard of: https://forums.halo.xbox.com/yaf_postst41006_Aim-Acceleration--Smoothing--ON-OFF-Option-please.aspx

An MLG forum post linking to that has tried toattract attention to it as well, but I do not understand the graphs that the343 post linked to. None of the other posts in that thread that I have read(there are way too many to read all of them) had noticed anything wrong withthem, though, so I ask if any of you had noticed this:

The "Smoothing:" graph shows that the crosshair velocity increases over time (the crosshair accelerates positively) AFTER the reticle displacement decreases. The rate of increase of velocity over time (positive acceleration) at this point is decreasing at what is probably a constant rate (negative jerk) until the acceleration becomes negative (the downward slope of the curve).

Then the acceleration remains constant just as it was when it was positive, but with a long delay after the decrease in stick displacement that I had not expected given my previous understanding of aim acceleration and my experience playing the game. The crosshair velocity seems to be exactly correlated with the stick displacement at first, which also is not what I thought aim acceleration was.

I thought that aim acceleration meant that a thumbstick position (a certain amount of displacement) caused a certain amount of crosshair acceleration until the velocity reaches the maximum that "corresponds" (I mean to say, is assigned) to that stick position, not an immediate change to a certain crosshair velocity as is seen in this graph.

If my previous understanding of aim acceleration was true, there would be positive jerk if the thumbstick displacement increased, producing a somewhat bell-shaped curve, but the peaks of the displacement line and the crosshair curve would coincide as long as the crosshair velocity, by the time that the maximum stick displacement position was reached, was greater than the maximum "corresponding" crosshair velocities of all of the lesser displacement stick positions (which is what seems to be the case in the game on 3 sensitivity) because the velocity would decrease as soon as the stick displacement decreased.

The graph given could not reflect a case that matched my previous understanding of aim acceleration in which the crosshair velocity, by the time that the maximum stick displacement position was reached, was less than the maximum corresponding crosshair velocity of all of the lesser displacement stick positions because then the positive acceleration up until that point would not have been constant; if the positive acceleration had not reached and therefore been limited by the "corresponding maximum velocities" of the previous (lesser displacement) stick positions, the rate of acceleration would have increased as the stick displacement increased.

Therefore we know that for the given graph the corresponding maximum velocities were reached at every stick position (the slope of the velocity line, equivalent to the acceleration, is constant- it's a line and not a curve), and that the equi-displacement stick positions reached in reverse order after the maximum displacement stick position correspond to the same crosshair velocities that were reached on the positive slope of the velocity line- velocities that are less than the velocity reached by the time that the maximum velocity stick position was reached.

Anyway, to fully appreciate the effect of my previous understanding of aim acceleration a hypothetical graph would have to show the stick displacement remain at its maximum (or any position) before decreasing while the velocity increased to its maximum (or maximum for that position). I would not have been surprised if the negative acceleration from reverting to a lesser stick displacement (and its corresponding maximum crosshair velocity) was greater than the positive acceleration based on my experience with how quickly my reticle comes to a stop, even when I flick the stick in the opposite direction as far as possible and back more than once.

I have noticed that the scorpion tank gun is noticeably slow to decelerate, but even then it doesn't match the graph shown, in which case it would have to accelerate in the same direction after the reticle stopped moving.

Also, the "smoothing vs. no smoothing:" top graph showed that there were cycles or periods of stick displacement and crosshair velocity oscillation and that an increase in stick displacement causes an increase in acceleration (positive jerk) even thought that didn't occur when the crosshair velocity started at zero.

The graph seems to me to represent a very counterintuitive way to aim (or more accurately, to hamper aiming) that does not seem to serve a purpose or resemble the aiming in Reach or Halo 3; whether this is "aim smoothing" or not, either this is not aim smoothing, or I am not understanding the graphs correctly, or I am somehow not perceiving the movement of the reticle correctly when I play. May someone please explain this to me?

BTW, the "no smoothing" graph is exactly what I would expect no aim acceleration to look like, so no confusion there.

2nd set of questions: Considering that aim acceleration (as I understood it) had the advantage of allowing newer FPS players to be somewhat accurate with neither the sufficient precision in small stick adjustments nor the quick perception and reaction needed to be accurate without small stick adjustments (what the OP in the 343 forums said), do you think that aiming would be too difficult for many players if there was no aim acceleration, or even the majority of them, especially with how we are used to the acceleration, or do you think that most of us will adjust to it in a reasonably short period of time?

Of course, they suggested that it be an option, so that it wouldn't be an issue. Would it shrink the skill gap too much to allow a toggle button for 2 no acceleration aim sensitivities to choose a slower sens for aiming at targets and a faster one for orientation frequently in the middle of gameplay, with perhaps the current crouch stick? Could crouching could be a d-pad button, or would it be inconvenient to not be able to move and toggle crouch simultaneously? I doubt that 343 will implement no aim acceleration in H4 though.

 

There was definitely stuff I didn't need to include, but if you didn't notice something strange about those two graphs, I guess there's no point in trying to read the rest of the post. If you noticed the same thing thing that I noticed, you'll probably be able to pick out the sentences which explain this. Of course, I still don't know that I'm misinterpreting the graphs.

 

You're probably used to aim acceleration now, and you might have forgotten the change from H2 to H3. I don't think aim acceleration itself is something worth thinking about anymore; I never considered it a problem. Of course, if you're not interested in hypotheticals, it wouldn't be worth knowing about, because it's not going to be changed.

I found the MLG/343 threads a while ago when searching "aim acceleration" and noticed those two graphs. Those threads themselves seemed to get a lot of attention, as if aim acceleration was a problem, but I'm not sure how it compared to average threads on those forums.

After no one replied to this thread it was bumped from the grave; I stopped expecting a reply to it a long time ago. I'll still check for one, though.

Thanks, Alpine Drift, I'll edit the first post into those paragraphs.