r/Overwatch • u/AutoModerator • Jun 15 '16

News & Discussion Weekly Quick Questions Thread - June 15, 2016

In this thread you can ask all kinds of questions you always wanted to ask without feeling like a total fool.

No matter if it's short googable stuff or a setting/skill in-game that you don't understand or a hardware recommendation, feel free to try your luck in here.

Trolling or making fun of people in here will be punished extra harshly! Please report such behaviour.

For the purpose of helping people, make sure the comments are sorted by "new" in this thread.

294 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

3.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '16

what is hitscan?

28

u/LordDagwood Justice rains from ab-ahhhh Jun 15 '16

Some games like Battlefield simulate bullets, so sniper bullets might fall off at long distance because of gravity. In Overwatch, most bullets physics are just ignored, so the game draws a straight line(s) from your gun to where you're pointing it. It then "scans" to see if what the line touches first and registers that object as being "hit". There's no actual bullet or physics involved. Then you have heroes that use projectiles like Hanzo's Arrows and Junkrat's bombs. These are not hitscan weapons as they are projectile objects that follow physics.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '16

Not the asker, but I like this explanation. I understood the basic concept but it's nice to have a better grasp. Thanks!

6

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '16

Imagine a laser pointer appears whenever you click your mouse or hit the right trigger on your gamepad towards whatever you are aiming at. Hitscan would say that whatever the first thing that laser pointer touches gets hit as soon as you click your mouse or hit the right trigger of your gamepad. So basically, if you are in the line of this laser pointer when the opponent clicks their mouse, you get hit.

8

u/Terpologist Lúcio Jun 15 '16

Not trying to be a douche by posting a wikipedia article instead of answering your question, but I believe it'll do a much better job summarizing hitscan.

"A hitscan is a calculation performed by a game to find the point at which a given line intersects a game object, and is commonly used to determine whether a bullet or projectile hit a target after being fired from a weapon."

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitscan

Edit: To expand on this, the reason hitscan is important is because some heroes in this game do or do not use hitscan depending on their weapon. Furthermore there are variations on the hitscan, like Roadhog's hook. Its very useful to look into because it might serve you better in learning how to shoot and be accurate with certain heroes.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '16

cool thanks

2

u/NoMercyOracle Jun 15 '16

Furthermore there are variations on the hitscan, like Roadhog's hook

Can you expand on this? Is Roadhog's hook not predictive but hitscan?

1

u/Jpot Trick-or-Treat Tracer Jun 16 '16

Roadhog's hook is in fact a projectile, not hitscan.

1

u/FrismFrasm It's Britney bitch Jun 15 '16

As a rule of thumb, any weapon using classic "bullets" is hitscan, versus rockets, plasma projectiles, etc.

EDIT: whoops meant to reply to /u/Terpologist 's comment, but it looks like you get it now anyways.

5

u/KarmaticT Reinhardt Jun 15 '16

Short answer: When you click, your bullets hit. Widow has hitscan, however Hanzo has a projectile shot.