Hello, fellow Tarkovites!
A thing that has been bugging me for a while is the inconsistency between sight magnifications.
You know what I'm talking about? You pick up a 4x scope. You slap it on a sweet gun. You run a few raids with it. You get rekt. You build a new gun, a better gun, a more badass gun, and slap an even deadlier looking sight on top of it for that extra tacticoolness (it counts, this is known).
Well then. In the sight's description, it says the magnification is 4x – the same as on the other sight you used. But in the next raid, when you ADS, it just seems… off. Kinda difficult to say what it is, but it's definitely not the same. And it starts to bother you. Because it should be the same (4x = 4x), but it's not. What's going on?
So long story short, I decided to scratch this itch once and for all and created the .
I used the M4A1 as my testing platform, my in-game FOV was 58, and the screenshots were taken crouched with my back to the shooting ranges table. I compared the size of the target through the sight to the un-magnified screenshot I took from the same place. At this time I cannot say what the differences might be when comparing different gun platforms, say an AK to an MDR. Further investigation is needed. Also, I did not do an exhaustive test of how a different game FOV settings would affect the relative zooms.
Some interesting results from this comparison:
- Valday 6x, TAC 30 1-4x, ACOG 4x (TA01NSN) and Elcan 4x all have the same relative zoom. TAC 30 wins with its wide sight picture.
- ACOG 3.5x has a larger relative zoom to HAMR 4x and Bravo 4x.
- Prism 2.5x has almost the same zoom as HAMR and Bravo. Its sight picture is also significantly larger.
So why are the relative magnifications different between sights of the same reported magnification? Shouldn't they be the same?
The discrepancies between the rifle scopes and assault scopes might be explained by how ADSing works in Tarkov. There is a small ADS zoom for irons and red dots (1.5x as far as I can tell), a bit larger one for assault scopes (2x or so) and a still larger one for rifle scopes (+3x, not sure about this one). Then on top of this, we get the magnification of the optic. For example, the TAC 30, being a rifle scope, gets its 4x magnification multiplied by the larger rifle scope ADS zoom and thus has a larger relative magnification than the HAMR.
Is this a bug or a feature? Hard to say. Perhaps the differences between the scope types are a feature, but the Elcan and ACOG TA01NSN having double the magnification compared to HAMR and Bravo, despite them all being 4x scopes? I doubt this is intended.
Anyway, I hope some of you found this helpful!
TL;DR: The described magnification of the sight might not be the actual zoom you get. Also, different sights of the same magnification don't always have the same relative zoom.
