My peeve: Incorrect usage of the term "chain gun."

[McCoytheGreater]

Idiom: Moot point

Idiom Definitions for 'Moot point'
If something's a moot point, there's some disagreement about it: a debatable point. In the U.S., this expression usually means that there is no point in debating something, because it just doesn't matter. An example: If you are arguing over whether to go the beach or to the park, but you find out the car won't start and you can't go anywhere, then the destination is said to be a moot point.

from usingenglish.com

[jrrdw]

Simulation games need tons of copyright permissions to portray accurate "simulations" of machines.

Not necessarily. A simulation doesn't need to be of anything that exists in the real world. (After all, we do just that regularly with GGDT, simulating launchers that don't exist.)

Did you miss the key word here or just not understand the usage of it? We are talking about the real world and real machines in it. Since games make profit, you need permission to use simulations of someone elses design's/creations. At least here in the USA you do.

Maybe thats why in the game Doom there are "mistakes" in the games weapons etc...

[POLAND_SPUD]

@jrrdw
I don't think you need permission to simulate ak47

anyway what do you mean by simulate? there are quite a lot of games which try to be realistic, like ARMA 1&2 but I wouldn't say that they are accurate simulations... lol you aim with a mouse...

if you want real simulation you'd need use a controller which looks, weights and recoils like a real M4 but it would so impractical that you might as well go to a shooting range and try the real thing

[D_Hall]

Regarding sims... It shouldn't be any big deal. No video game is actually simulating weapons. I mean, do the gatling guns have inertial effects to their rate of fire or do they just go full bore? Has anybody ever heard of a misfire in a video game? Blah blah blah. You could accurately model ideal weapons behavior and effects with simple lookup tables and such (which is I suspect how they do it). This is NOT a simulation.

Now, you might get into trademark issues and such, but that's a different can of worms that apparently isn't a problem given that so many games use the proper names.

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

Now, you might get into trademark issues and such, but that's a different can of worms that apparently isn't a problem given that so many games use the proper names.

I don't really see proper names that often.

As an example, in Hitman 2:

Walther WA-2000 - "W2000 sniper"

Blaser R93 - "R93 sniper"

Barrett M95 - "M195 sniper"

Franchi SPAS-12 - "SP12 Shotgun"

HK MP5A3 - "SMG"

HK MP5SD6 - "SMGSD6"

Beretta 92FS - "9mm pistol"

Ruger Mk II - "0.22 pistol SD"

There isn't a single brand name acknowledged.

Maybe thats why in the game Doom there are "mistakes" in the games weapons etc...

In the case of Doom, the "chain gun" term is actually a trademark as pointed out earlier, so they would have been better off referring to it accurately. In the Quake followup, the Gatling was referred to as a "super nailgun", it became the "chain gun" again in Quake II but was never mentioned again.

[D_Hall]

There isn't a single brand name acknowledged.

OK, that I would expect.

I was thinking more along the lines of military designators.

AK-47.
M-16.
M-4.
M-9.

Etc. Those designations are owned by the military (well, all but the first) and as such are not copyrighted.

[kenbo0422]

At 1500 meters, near the equator, it makes a difference only if your target is very small. If I shot N-S I aimed barely just east of the 'X' if I was really wanting to hit dead center. Only one time with a .50 at that range, but it was a fuel tank (which did not explode) but made things very bad for the bad guys. Most shots were 300 meters or even less, and the high powered rifles had enough speed to make the effect negligible. A silencer has been used on occasion, but the rifle was already tuned in to have it attached. This was done when there were several shots to be taken in a relatively quiet setting, and the targets weren't exclusively in one small area. Shoot and move. The silencer alone was 18" long and 4" in diameter.

[inonickname]

My point wasn't any licensing issue. It doesn't matter all that much if a gun isn't 100% accurate to it's real life version (eg. you don't use the folding stock on the scorpion in mw). Sure, some things will be misnamed slightly (eg. the "W2000"- even though it's a Walther WA2000). You'll get some confusion from this-such as the use of "chain gun".

I'd rather deal with people who can't use the correct names for weapons than people who think "war" plays like call of duty. People aren't superman. If you get hit by a .50 bmg rifle (in the upper chest), you WILL flinch, you WILL fall over and you WILL die (unless of course, you are superman). There's differences in naming inaccuracies and blatant rubbish.

And it's not just the hokey multiplayer. What kind of captain lets his lieutenant take a shot at a high value target (aka- terrorist armed with fuel rods) using an anti material rifle?

Obviously, if it were 100% realistic the gameplay would be rubbish. Though there was a lot that could have been done to make it slightly more accurate.

[jackssmirkingrevenge]

And it's not just the hokey multiplayer. What kind of captain lets his lieutenant take a shot at a high value target (aka- terrorist armed with fuel rods) using an anti material rifle?

Or indeed mention that the coriolis effect - which affects long range artillery, but not much else - would have to be taken into account for a 50 calibre shot!

[Ragnarok]

Did you miss the key word here or just not understand the usage of it?

A simulation can be accurate, yet not be of anything that exists! I have literally done thousands of simulations of things that don't exist - and there wouldn't have been much point in any of them if they weren't accurate simulations.

Let's say I simulate a launcher in GGDT that doesn't exist, and get a velocity of 210 m/s. If that launcher would fire at 208 m/s if it was actually made in the real world, the simulation was accurate and of something that didn't exist!

There is NOTHING that says a simulation of anything is automatically not accurate because what it simulates doesn't exist in the real world (be it yet, or ever).

Or indeed mention that the coriolis effect - which affects long range artillery, but not much else - would have to be taken into account for a 50 calibre shot!

Although it's not significant, it's more than you might expect.

At a range of perhaps 800 metres (at my own latitude), in a North to South shot, you could expect a .50 calibre bullet to deviate perhaps a centimetre due to the Coriolis effect alone.

Admittedly, not significant compared to other factors (such as wind), and unlikely to be enough to make you miss, but it does start to have an effect at ranges shorter than you might imagine.