Show HN: A new kind of FPS aim trainer
47 points by pmazumder 4 hours ago | 23 comments
I played a lot of Valorant and got mad, so I made an aim trainer that analyzes your raw crosshair movement to explore your raw motor and perceptual weaknesses instead of scoring scenarios. It also chooses sens and difficulty as part of the tasks, and makes playlists that are optimal difficulty for you to learn and progress faster!
  • King-Aaron 3 hours ago |
    CS 1.6 scouts and knives was the ultimate aim trainer
    • psalaun 3 hours ago |
      woah, so many memories bubbling up right now, thanks!
    • superxpro12 an hour ago |
      UT instagib for me
      • pelagicAustral 36 minutes ago |
        never played this mode, I might just give it a shot later on, thanks for the off-shoot comment
  • pmazumder 3 hours ago |
    writeup on the rationale behind it: https://www.pramit.gg/post/i-made-an-aim-trainer
    • tranceylc 3 hours ago |
      Haven’t had the chance to use it use it yet, but the writeup on it is super cool.

      Encourage anyone to check it out

    • maccard 2 hours ago |
      I enjoyed this. Does the same theory apply to a gamepad? My intuition says yes but curious what you think
      • pmazumder an hour ago |
        I imagine it would generalize well to any fine motor control task with a defined tracking objective. The literature I reference mentions that human error when steering cars also roughly follows the same distribution.
    • dkdbejwi383 2 hours ago |
      Even with "reduce motion" enabled the background of this page is constantly animating - it's so distracting I just gave up.
      • pmazumder 2 hours ago |
        I didn't realize it could be distracting, sorry. It shouldn't happen now
  • MayeulC 3 hours ago |
    Interesting project! I am relatively skilled at FPS with a mouse, but would like to improve with my trackball (so that I don't have to change my setup when playing an FPS). This could cone in handy, though I imagine that there aren't multiple "mouse profiles" built-in? It could be useful for players to understand how much of a difference different mice make.
    • pmazumder 2 hours ago |
      Hi, thanks for the feedback! Multiple mouse profiles isn't something I considered, but I'll definitely look into it. I know a lot of FPS gamers are super particular and switch between mice/mousepads/skates constantly, so it would probably help to provide a semi objective measurement of what setup they're doing best on as well
  • Tox46 2 hours ago |
    So cool! but somehow the simulation does not work on firefox. the crosshair is just stuck in the middle
    • pmazumder an hour ago |
      It should still work on firefox, but the experience will likely not be as good. Chromium is the only browser engine (as far as I know) that gives me access to raw, unaccelerated mouse events, so it's the smoothest experience.
      • dminik an hour ago |
        I had the same issue. Linux + Firefox resulted in zero movement. Chrome worked fine.
  • poly2it 2 hours ago |
    Interesting project. One suggestion I'd make is to reduce the configuration complexity up front on new users. It is kind of overwhelming before you have a feel for how your settings translate to the actual training experience.
  • lelanthran 2 hours ago |
    You might want to look into this page - it slows my PC to a crawl :-(
    • pmazumder 2 hours ago |
      What browser are you on? Hardware acceleration? It shouldn't be very difficult to run, so I'm guessing some sort of a compatibility issue
      • lelanthran an hour ago |
        > What browser are you on? Hardware acceleration? It shouldn't be very difficult to run, so I'm guessing some sort of a compatibility issue

        Sorry, the linked page, not the actual app. It slows my PC to a crawl.

  • pprotas 2 hours ago |
    The aiming is very choppy because it feels like my cursor is "on rails", or stuck in some kind of grid. Not representative of any modern shooting game I've played. I think this would teach the wrong habits if someone were to use it as an aiming coach.
    • pmazumder 2 hours ago |
      Are you using it on chromium? It's the only browser I get raw mouse events from right now, so other browsers tend to be more choppy.

      As for the habits, the point of this program is that it ultimately admits that far domain transfer for aim trainers is difficult regardless of what you do, so it tries to optimize in an absolute sense your motor control over your mouse. That way, regardless of scenario you'll have smoother and more efficient aim.

  • ralferoo 18 minutes ago |
    It needs some way of clearing all data. I chose "don't know" on calibration because I couldn't be bothered to try to work it out (but my mouse will be on the low end because it's just some random cheap mouse). Then, the training was ridiculous having to move my mouse miles between targets, but there's no way to change the initial calibration step. Not even in settings / data / delete.

    I'm not really the target user though. I guess those who are will already know exactly how many DPI their mice are.