So:
in the centre of your screen you have a crosshair. This is where your shots go. Now, on a PC, where you can aim with a mouse, you don't need any autoaim, because you can be very precise. But with a pair of thumbsticks, it's unfair to ask such accuracy of the player - especially when the sticks themselves may not be entirely accurate.
So you have a degree of autoaim; if it's pretty near the middle, it'll probably hit what you want it to.
Now, the other thing that modern semi-realistic games feature is a penalty for accuracy when you move and shoot. Counter-Strike managed to express this to the player by having a four-line crosshair. As the player moved, or sustained automatic fire, the bars widened. They returned more central when firing ceased and motion stopped. The widening target indicates the inaccuracy of the shot - the potential area where aim could go.
Rainbow Six 3 does things a bit differently. The target is a red dot, surrounded by a circle. The diameter of the circle indicates the area affected by auto-aim. As the player zooms in with his weapon, the red circle gets larger. The dot, incidentally, is always central. As the player moves, though, the red circle shrinks, until at a run, all that is left is the dot. So: as you move, the computer will compensate less for you, and your accuracy also decreases. It's quite effective; as long as you can get the target into your sight - which at long range can still be quite tricky - you can probably hit them. Shorter-range weapons have smaller diameter circles, and smaller zooms. It's a surprisingly effective system - it may only be effective on a console, where autoaim is permanently on, but it also removes the need for hyper-accurate input device, and insane thumbskills on the part of the player. It also, I guess, takes into account that the player is meant to be a highly trained soldier, not a half-blind rookie. It takes a while to get used to, but once you do, it's a particularly effective system, that allows for rapid target acquisition, and accurate-enough aiming.
Posted by tajmahal at February 5, 2004 08:30 PM