

TrackingPoint Takes Aim at the Future of Firearms Targeting - clarkm
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/07/trackingpoint-takes-dead-aim-at-the-future-of-firearms-targeting/

======
woodman
The comment section of the page is predictably full of hand wringing over how
this can turn anybody into a sniper. While it is an interesting setup (I'd
love to know more about the image processing on board), this device would
really not be very useful for sniping.

1) Laser range finder. It will give away your position to anybody with a
detector (yes, they exist and those who you would expect to have them do).
Also, unnecessary for actual sniping. One of the first things you do when you
setup a hide is do a range card - you can do that with a hand held laser range
finder, but more often than not you just use simple algebra and known object
sizes (height of telephone polls, car widths, width of men's shoulders, etc).

2) Wind. This thing only accounts for bullet drop. A light breeze will push
5.56 far enough off target at 500 yards that you can easily miss man sized
targets. At 300 yards wind plays a role in shot placement within a man sized
target, at 200 yards you can disregard most wind. At that range you do not
want a scope, as it delays target acquisition and reduces field of view.

3) Target marking. It is very rare for a sniping target to remain stationary,
so unless their image processing is really clever - this is going to be a much
greater hindrance than help. This isn't really a problem for hunters, because
they rarely take a shot at critters on the move (except with shotguns). I'd be
pretty surprised if their tracking software can handle vanishing targets
(transitions in and out of concealment like a window or bush).

It is a great toy for hunters with money, but it isn't going to turn anybody
into a sniper.

~~~
hga
Really good hunters like my father, and to a _much_ lessor degree myself,
perhaps with _lots_ of shotgun wing hunting experience, can make shots at
moving targets. I witnessed my father make his very best shot in a long three
quarters of a century of hunting at a running coyote (a pest as they've vastly
extended their range due to our wiping out nastier apex predators) at ~350
yards with a 7mm Remington Magnum.

You "simply" lead enough so the target and the bullet with its time in flight
intersect. In that hunt I did the same thing at maybe 50 yards, my point of
impact was less than a foot off (it was a snap shot as the coyote briefly
exited a dry waterway to get over the road there, absolutely no way would I
have tried it without quite a bit of (generally unsuccessful :-) wing shooting
experience). (Hey, it's _conceptually_ simple.)

From another description of their stuff I got the impression a laser is only
used to take a reading of where the end of the barrel is ... a laser range
finder indeed problematic.

As for wind, if you're serious surely you'll use something heaver than
5.56/.223 ... maybe they didn't want the recoil from those rounds to disturb
this newbie. They certainly didn't give him an opportunity to shoot their .338
Lapua Magnum wildcat round!

Yep, a toy for a class of hunters, and perhaps some will use this for
mischief, but the high price and perhaps traceability due to the custom ammo
etc. will deter that. But not the usual crew of pearl clutchers who, like the
author, know nothing about how this has been done in real life since at least
the American Revolution (the British thought it was terribly unsporting that
our riflemen liked to pick off their officers).

Very much not the future for a whole lot of us. For US self-defense uses, the
world's biggest gun market today, totally irrelevant, we first use handguns,
and for rifles I'll take an Eotech holographic sight (one of many good modern
innovative sights) over this any day. Or the forward mounted low magnification
fixed power scope of my .308 Scout Rifle. Then again echoing a commentator, by
the end of high school I'd finished my "10,000 times" on my JROTC rifle team.

