Declan was saying that the nasrpc were bringing red dots and scopes into their own class. so that so even things up

My opinion is that they do offer shooters with them a competitive advantage.

I think currently there are so few people using them in competition (maybe 3 or 4) that its difficult to show the difference at this stage.

I do know of a clear example, where a shooter, who does not normally shoot SB pistol used a Red dot sight and out shot the vast majority of pistol shooters in the country with it.

Now there would have been luck and skill as well, but I believe the Red Dot also played a major part

Sparks wrote: »

focussing on a single point for more than a fraction of a second in that we think we can but in reality nobody can no matter how hard they try (anyone want to see the rather cool proof?)

Yes! Yes! We want to see! I hear nobody cry. Okay, here it is



Stare at the center dot in the left half of the image for thirty seconds.
Then try to stare at the center dot in the right half of the image.

What you should see (and if you don't, you may have a medical problem and should get your eyes checked) is an afterimage that looks remarkably like a set of peep sights surrounding the center dot on the right side of the image. That's fine; but do you see how it's jiggling about the place?

That's not because the screen's moving; it's because your eye is moving. They call that kind of motion microsaccades and they're completely involuntary and utterly necessary -- you'd be effectively blind without them, and explaining why properly would take a much longer post, but the basics are that if you hold your hand out with your arm fully extended and stick up your thumb so you can see your thumbnail, that nail is approximately the entire area in your visual field that you can see in any detail at all. While you stare at that tiny tiny area, everything else you think you can see in detail you actually can't, it's all vague and blurry. The brain moves your eye around like a jelly on a plate many times a second and stitches all those little areas together deep down in your subconcious so your concious mind is never aware of it (and those tiny motions are microsaccades and they're coordinated between both eyes to build up that picture that is what you think you see normally).

So there you go. Even when you think you're holding still and are utterly focussed, your subconcious is making you jump about like you've a cattle prod somewhere quite unpleasant.

Reality. ****ing cool, innit?

clivej wrote: »

@sparks
Feck sake your like brains from Thunderbirds (if you can go back that far in TIME) got an answer for everything :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Oh I can outshoot that fecker all day long and twice on Sundays
(And yeah, I'm old enough to remember 3..2..1... )


(And the reason I know this stuff is that I used to work in the Vision lab in Trinity so you had to pick up a few things along the way, and when you do shooting as well and you depend on your eyes so much, you learn about them and how they work )

Leupold wrote: »

So whether you can hold steady, or not, at the point at which you are aiming has no affect on accuracy then?

With pistol shooting, that's correct because unless you're using a red dot sight, you can't see the point you're aiming at because you're focussed on the sights not the target. The target will just be a blurry shape somewhere in the background. Learning to accept that, to accept that it's an area hold, that's one of the major changeovers from rifle to pistol shooting, in my experience. But once you get used to it, you can get pretty decent results.

It boils down to basic geometry and basic anatomy. Take one-handed shooting, because it's easier to see it with one-handed shooting (the same applies to two-handed, but the geometry's more complicated). The pistol is at arm's length, you arm is roughly pointed towards the target and you're looking at the aligned sights:



Now, if your arm is off, so that your natural point of aim isn't on the center of the target, then you won't hit the center of the target, you'll miss by a little bit:



This is why you'll see ISSF pistol shooters spend so much time before they start shooting pointing at the target - they're adjusting their natural point of aim to coincide with the target center as much as possible.

The problem is, if you don't accept that area hold, if you don't focus on the sights and instead look at the target, your hand is not going to keep the pistol perfectly aligned on its own, and it will wander a little away from being aligned. That's just biology, it's not something you can eliminate, ever, no matter how much you train. And even a little misalignment of the sights at this end of the range can mean huge misses at the target end of the range (the deflection of the foresight is exactly the same in both the diagram above and the diagram below; the difference is that the sights are aligned above and not aligned below):



But this should all be basic practice to a pistol shooter. The OP's original question related to red dot sights and what advantage they had, if any. I think we've pretty clearly shown they have an advantage over iron sights by now.

dc99 wrote: »

So....
If I follow (as a beginner at target shooting), as I wear perscription glasses, I would be better off wearing my reading glasses so I can focus on the front sights and not the target? (I have astigmatisim in my eyes)

Correct. For both pistol and rifle shooting with iron sights, you want to have your prescription for close-focus work (specifically the distance from your eye to the rearsight in pistol shooting and your eye to the foresight in rifle shooting, when you're in position on the line).

Is there anywhere that has good info on perscription glasses and shooting?

There's a few threads on here over the last few years on shooting glasses. And at the risk of recommending just the one place (I'd recommend more but I only know of this lad and he's the one I use), there's a fairly good rifle shooter who's an optician in the specsavers in Finglas.

Hi,
Sorry, forgot to specify it's pistol shooting I'm starting.

I'm due a perscription review soon and will mention it to the Optician.

At least I have a starting point now.

Thanks,

Liam