Alexa wrote: Perhaps I'm missing some subtle inside joke here or my thought is flawed but would anybody tell me: why should the shots fired be supposed to follow the vanishing point? Imagine in the picture you posted you'd strafe to the left, thus shifting the vanishing point to the left...would you want to fire the shots there?
I expect (I'm playing Nolf2 mainly) my shots to hit the center of the screen, where my crosshair is. And in reality you would hold the gun in front of your face (ideally) and fire the shots straight ahead (which I believe is done in the calculation of the shots). The animation should show the shot to be fired from the muzzle to the center, which is also done correctly, just draw diagonal lines from the corners into your picture (I think the vanishing point for the shots should be a point faaaaaar away in Z direction, but center screen X, Y). Just the direction of the gun does not match completely, but eh, can't have everything. Or not?
You're not missing any joke (this time
) as this is a serious matter
As you well know, the crosshair is centered on the screen and is fixed (together with the gun) .
So the vanishing point is allways what you're aiming at according to the laws of perspective and is used, in that case as a mean to show and measure the evidence of wrong angles.
Where ever you're looking at, you obey the laws of perspective (3D) so if you strafe to the left (following your example) you'll still obey these laws.
They were discovered around the 16th century and can't be changed as a 4th dimension is out of reach
The Z direction is'nt "faaar" but infinite and we can't (yet) change that.
Up to this point, we are dealing with three subjects: one is the CJ aiming problem which is ponctual (
) the second one is shooting straight and the third is the principle of representing and reading space which is a HUGE matter.
When Matisse was asked: "what is painting?" his answer was: "don't you have a smaller question?"
So, to make it short, the gun's angle, the shooting axis and the blank point should be aligned.
Alltogether, if those questions are of any interest, i'll be glad to talk about it (not only me I guess)