Here are some tips that may be useful for beginners that are trying to improve their aim:

- Experiment with your video settings to try and get 100 frames per second or better. If the screen updates too slowly you will be shooting where your target used to be instead of where he is.

- Set the video resolution as high as possible so you can see more in the distance. Then you can see more detail without having to zoom in.

- Brighten the scene if some areas are too dark (but be aware some of these controls can lower your frame rate)

- Experiment with your mouse sensitivity. Lower sensitivity gives you more precise control, but means you have to move the mouse further to do a 180 degree turn.

- Use strafing (sideways movement) to make small adjustments to your aim instead of moving the mouse. It usually makes smaller, more controlled adjustments than mouse movement.

- Take into consideration the speed of your weapon. For example, the rocket is slow so you have to aim where the enemy will intersect with the rocket instead of where the enemy is when you fire.

All you sharpshooters out there, feel free to add to this list.

Basicly i just would add this: http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=1344
At least the part with the mouse and aiming

AceOfThumbs wrote:Experiment with your video settings to try and get 100 frames per second or better.

I would disagree with this. That's unnecessarily high and many people will have to sacrifice resolution to achieve this.

I would also suggest not to go mad with the fov settings. It may give you a larger field of visibilty but gives you worse depth perception. Try detonating rockets at the right time with fov 150 and you'll find it hard.

Sorry esteel, I should have given credit to your post. That is where I learned about strafe aiming and mouse sensitivity.

Oh cool, my guide was useful for someone.

What might also help with aiming is the crosshair. For me a crosshair has to combine the following aspects: it has to be big so its easy to concentrate on it in the heat of a match, it should not cover too much of what i'm aiming at and it should be possible to aim with pinpoint accuracy.
Some of the crosshair like 1/2/7 do not allow the last one as they do not have marks right in the center. Some like 9/10 are just too much and make it hard to 'see whats under the crosshair' or the opposite 2/6 are too small for my taste.
But i know it comes down to taste.. after all i added crosshair 7 even though i like others better. For me 8 was the perfect one, in Nexuiz 2.4.1 i added number 11 which is a multicolor version of 8 which should help with light/dark maps.

Here is what I know about aiming

Lowering your sensitivity is in most cases a very efficient way to improve aim (and you don't have to buy a new mouse with 2000dpi with a low sensitivity. Keep your old one HIGH sens needs high dpi!)

There are two ways for aiming (with mouse of course, maybe there are people who use a joystick, touchpad or touchscreen ). You can use your wrist or the whole arm. I have asked many players how many centimeters they need to do one turn in nexuiz to get more experience.
Armaimers seem to have about 30-40cm / 360degree (I know only one player with 40cm thats kojak )
Wristaimer are around 15cm / 360degree

But there are some very weird exceptions:
Most of us who play minsta know pat. He told me he is a wrist aimer, has about 30cm/360 and fov 90 (it was 80 in the 2.3 times iirc). I have no idea how he can play with these settings. But this nonstop zoom and extreme low sensitivity seem to work, even without moving the whole arm.
Another exception is Bundy. A 1on1 player and 6cm/360. As 1on1 player your fov is usually somewhere around 120. (His mouse has 2000dpi. as i already said: "high sens -> high dpi")

My aim has become a lot better after lowering my sensitivity (from 2cm/360 to about 16cm/360 ) but i'm not satisfied with it. Compared to those guys above my aim is still terrible weak.

The last thing I want to mention are reflexshots (or flickshots, thats how bundy calls them). In some situations in the game, you just move your mouse as fast as you can and press fire. Somehow these shots are hitting surprisingly often. The more normal way would be moving your crosshair with your mouse onto your target (no strafing). This is where I have some question myself.

Which is the best way to aim?
1. Doing hectic reflexshots and wild mouse movements as much as possible?
2. Trying to aim like a aimbot, so that your crosshair is always on your target?
3. Wait (which maybe hard in a battle) untill your target moves onto your crosshair?

Atm I'm doing mostly 1. Sometimes 2.
Somehow 3. doesn't feel like aiming to me. But I suppose 3. is the best method, even if it feels very ugly.
Any suggestions how to get advanced aim?

I get about 7.5 360s to 10 inches. I would suggest massive amounts of minstagib playing if you really want to improve your aim. A good way to improve without changing settings.

I do only "flickshots" and strafe-aiming when I need to hit things in the distance.

I can confirm that lowering the sensitivity helps a lot. I lowered mine from 8.5 cm to 17.5 cm for 360°.

I usually aim with my wrist as I am used to this for years, however, I have my whole arm on the table, and I can easily use my arm if needed, e.g. for 180° turns and the like.

What I found out to be a convenient method to find the best mouse speed is to find a sensitivity with which you will make a perfect 180° turn (and the movement of your arm or wrist needed for that still feels natural, as well as repositioning the mouse after this manouver has to feel natural). Doing this helped me finding the sensitivity I have now.

About my aiming: I only let the enemy "run into my crosshair" in a situation where I have nexgun, and only when I already know where he is and I am sure that he will go from place a to b. Otherwise I usually aim by doing flick-like mouse movements. It is important to get a feeling for this, as ping really influences this kind of aiming (I don't trust antilag anymore ). What really works for me is to aim a bit ahead of my enemy, but only so little that I actually aim on the edge of the playermodel. This is especially important when using the machine gun (I don't hit anything if I really aim on the middle of the body of my enemy).

Your equipment is the first step for good aiming. Without a good mouse + mousepad, you will never be able to play with your best aiming.

Here are 2 examples to check if you are comfortable with the sensitivity:
1.) Try to move your mouse exactly around an item and see if you have troubles doing it (like painting the border of it).
2.) Try to hit an item while doing a 180" turn, just to see if you are accurate on a none moving target.

Make sure your mouse sensitivity is /just/ fast enough to catch up to enemies, but slow enough to actually aim.

Also get the cable out of your way as much as possible, it can drag on things. Also try and reduce friction.

Lastly, don't make fine adjustments with your whole arm. Hold the mouse with just your fingertips and use your thumb and ring finger to make the fine adjustments. You could use your wrist, but I find that it is painful after a while.

I use 90 fov also.. (always have done).

my sensitivity is pretty low..most people who used my .cfg are like..wtf how do you play with that!

I also use L for my nexgun..which some will find strange since it is the other side of the keyboard compared to my other weapons, i just stretch my thumb to hit it since i got quite big hands..works for me.

Low sensitivty normally produces much better aiming results in general..so thats the way to go..but you should be able to move relatively comfortably when have it (as in you should be able to move the mouse nicely aiming also..not ultra mega-slow that its impossible then to aim!)

Play with whatever makes you feel comfortable, but a lower-level sensitivty produces better results (for hitscan weapons) like the nexgun, whilst high-sensitivity is better for splash weapons like RL and mortar (why bundy makes much air mortar imo).

Many thx for your answers guys.

I think I have reached my limit now (16cm/360°). Something lower wont improve my aim much. I have tested some sensitivities today playing minsta. I tried three different ones:
18cm/360° (with arm movement, uncomfortable)
16cm/360° (with arm movement, slightly uncomfortable)
13cm/360° (only wrist movement, comfortable)
I usually play quite well with 16, which I'm using now for about 6 month. But there are days where I hit nothing like today. So i switched to 18. No difference. Then 13. Suddenly my aim was back. Not insanely good but I felt my aim was normal. My perfect sensitivity should be somewhere between 13-16.

I just hope now that those days where my aiming is nearly = 0 won't come back now

k0jak wrote:I use 90 fov also.. (always have done).

OMG!

Seriosly.. 40CM? thats sounds insane to me

I used to have abt 5 cm/360, but that was a bit hard to aim at range, so i tried to go for abt 8 or so. where the hell do you even find a mousepad thats 40cm wide?

Another thing to consider wrt to aim is if you want to use a "finger" or a "palm" mouse. its a similar topic to wrist/arm but more dependent on your mouse type. me im a finger aimer, meaning i use my fingers to control the finer movement, and i have a razer mouse witch fits this well. some ppl dont feel confortable with this and use palm aim, eg keep the hand flat on the mouse, fingers are just for clocking. typicaly thise ppl use logitech or m$ mice.

yeah 40cm/360° is a bit much.. i use 10.. tried with up to 15 but it just does not feel ok in close range fights

I always liked low sens around 35cm/360 - can vary around 30-40cm/360.
I have a huge mouse pad, and need room for my arm-action at close range.
At long range I never need to utilize the whole pad.

low sens is superior to high sens when you want to aim. Which means I always use nex if I have it.

Well, 6-8cm/360 for me, fingertip only movement, flick aim purely using timing to aim for fast situations, slightly lead on the edge of players for predicitive aiming. Fov 90, larger just makes me seasick. 2000 DPI mouse, sensitive enough that you can see my heartbeats when idling in demos...

Get a mousepad too, where you can actually move your mouse smoothly... I should get one soon :p

Bundy wrote:

k0jak wrote:I use 90 fov also.. (always have done).

OMG!

yes yes

130 fov (can't play under ^^)
aprox 25cm for 360°
I have a 2000dpi @ 1Ghz razer© death adder mice (sens win + driver at max) .
sensi in nexuiz is about 1.5 ^^
My mousepad is razer© mantis, large enough to make a 360+180 easily.

About improvin aim,
1 - low your sens !
2 - try to take the nex the most as possible and use it when you got it. (I talk for DM)
3 - some minsta can help
4 - buy a mouse and mousepad (but that don't do all, see me =) )

OR

Watch my 1st movie and try to do the same shoots ^^

Qz

i use "nice -20 nexuiz-sdl-x86_64" that works no need to change enything

I used to play with extreme sensitivity - moving about 3cm would do a 180 degree turn. 6cm would usually be enough to do a 360 turn.

How to improve aim? Just keep playing. Before quitting, I used to play with a 250 ping on Galt's servers, and I was playing on a MacBook, so good FPS wasn't an option. My nex aim was sufficient enough to do whatever I needed to do.

I have 3/4 of the max sensitivity, a 200 (yes, two-hundred) dpi mouse, and a MacBook. You don't need good fps to make a shot, you just need to play the game so much that you know where you are without looking at the screen.
Really, though, it's all about feelin'-it. If you play enough, the shots start coming effortlessly, and you only need to see that moving flash of color in the corner to make a twitch-shot. The Quake pros are experts at that, look at it on Youtube.