On Fri, May 09, 2014 at 10:19:24PM +0200, Knapp wrote:
> Given a sight camera and a weapon with an electronic trigger it
> should be a no brainer to make a weapon that always hits the
> target. My 100$ camera can fire when it sees a smile so why not have
> the gun fire when it sees that the weapon is aimed between the eyes
> and the trigger is pulled.

It's not quite that easy.  Even with perfect signal processing, target
recognition, and ballistics, there's still the fact that this gives up
one degree of freedom: time of firing.  Hitting a target is (at least)
a two-dimensional problem.  It's quite likely that the point of aim
would wander around a lot without ever passing over a point between
the eyes.  Sometimes aiming for perfect prevents a good enough result.

Also there's a timing issue: many times you might prefer an early shot
that missed but caused them to take cover, over a hit that would have
happened 0.3 seconds later if they hadn't shot you first.  Spending an
extra second or two to switch the weapon to manual might mean your
death.

Then there are the issues I pushed aside up front: signal processing,
target recognition, and ballistics.  These are all somewhat
addressable with technology and user interface, but the target
recognition problem in particular might be tricky in some cases.

Now if you give the weapon system some fine adjustment to the point of
aim (especially with energy weapons), and you could get a seriously
dangerous smartgun.  Point it within a few degrees of the desired
target, squeeze the trigger, and it shoots at whatever it identifies
as the most suitable aim point within that cone.  A different setting,
and while you hold in the trigger it waits for a suitable target to
appear in the danger zone.  As soon as one appears, *snap*!

These seem like the main two useful modes of computer-assisted aiming.
They obviously have countermeasures that can be taken against them,
steps to defeat those counters, and so on.  But I guess that sort of
technology is of no interest to most RPG players, since these sorts of
things never seem to be addressed at all in futuristic combat game
systems.  Most of their emphases seem to be just guns that make bigger
bangs and tougher armours.

- Tim