Visual patience & high-visibility sights

[LSP552]

Do you find that high-visibility front sights challenge your visual patience and tempt you to shoot sooner than you should?

I’m pushing 60 and my eyes are showing it. My distant vision is fine, up close/arms length sucks. Sight alignment has become trying to distinguish equal amounts of blur. A white outline front helps, but I can no longer read feedback from a plain black front sight.

Lately I’ve been working with an Ameriglo ProGlo Square (.140 green/orange) front on a 2nd gen G19 with Pro Operator rears (.180 yellow). Most of my Glocks currently have standard Ameriglo Operator night sights (.125 green front-white ring /.150 notch yellow rear).

I’ve made my 2nd range session and sent about 600 rounds down range with the ProGlo setup. It’s WAY more visible than the standard white outline tritium front. Almost too visible? They work fine slow fire and the generous notch of the Po Operator rear provides readable feedback.

My problem is running them at speed. I find myself not waiting for the front to return fully into the notch. I’m not talking about using a target focus, just seeing that big honking bright front sight and lacking the visual patience to wait until it settles into the sight picture I need for the accuracy demands for the particular shot. This really showed up working smaller targets at speed.

The ProGlo Square really fills the entire front sight with bright orange. I’m wondering if the round ProGlo would tone things down enough to still be useful but be a bit less tempting? I’m probably splitting hairs, just wondering if anyone has worked with both the round and square and noticed any performance differences?

I really like being able to fully track my front sight again. I just need to work on my patience. The wife says that’s not a bad thing…

[Chuck Haggard]

I have both styles of the orange front sights, they shoot the same for me.

[Redhat]

I had a FO front on a Commander a while back and found it to be so bright (in sun light) it washed out the rear notch. I couldn't quickly tell if my front was somewhat centered in the notch or level so I went back to the factory sights. These days, I just use Trijicon HDs...better but not perfect.

[breakingtime91]

Have you tried slowing down your cadence? Maybe from 1,2,3,4,5 go to 1 and 2 and 3....etc. worked for me

[LSP552]

I have both styles of the orange front sights, they shoot the same for me.

Thanks Chuck.

[Chuck Haggard]

If you are the type of guy that can focus on that top edge of the front sight hard, then the dots have a bit more black metal in the corners for your eye to pick up. It's a pretty small difference though

[LSP552]

Have you tried slowing down your cadence? Maybe from 1,2,3,4,5 go to 1 and 2 and 3....etc. worked for me

I don't really like the concept of a cadence, instead I work for the speed needed to meet the requirements of a particular shot. I like to use the analogy of the sights as the gas peddle because they control how fast you can go. The high-vis front makes it stupid easy to get fast hits up close on reasonably large targets, and that's a good thing. They are a bit challenging for me on smaller targets when pushing speed.

I need to work on my patience to get hits on smaller targets at speed. For me, it's learning to process what I'm now seeing and work the gas peddle based on the feedback the sights provide. I don't want to shoot slower, I want to shoot more accurately but faster.

[LSP552]

If you are the type of guy that can focus on that top edge of the front sight hard, then the dots have a bit more black metal in the corners for your eye to pick up. It's a pretty small difference though

Until a few years ago, the Heinie serrated front with tritium was my favorite sight. All of the advantage of a glare reducing serrated front with glow tube. Sucks getting old. I'm wondering if the smaller high-vis element of the dot would be easier to tuck into the notch. I'm going to order a set for a G17 and put it to the test.

[CCT125US]

Something similar is what pushed me away from Trijicon HD. I however wanted to bury the bright orange ball in the bottom of the notch (that is not where it should be for my eyes) I believe If I used level sights, they shot to POA, but at speed I always ended up putting the dot in the gutter. At least that is how I would describe the RS. Too tall for my tastes.

[41magfan]

When I had near perfect acuity, I shot my best with all black sights. I'll be 58 soon and haven't seen a clearly focused front sight in nearly 15 years, despite wearing bifocals for the last 7 years. I have a pair of single-vision glasses that corrects for the front sight and I can still shoot pretty well when using them, but they're not practical since I can't wear them for anything else.

In the interim years I've experimented with various colors and configurations and have come full circle back to either plain black sights (Heinie) or a Heinie tritium front only. I do however, require a wide notch rear (.156) which allows for much more light around the front sight. The best I can do with uncorrected vision is "manage the light" in the sight picture afforded me by a wide rear or a narrow front sight. That obviously takes some additional time if the distance is long or the target is small.

My best friend and fellow COP buddy from way back when, went through a period of testing using the XS Big Dot sights on all of duty pistols. I shot his guns quite a bit and discovered a dichotomy of sorts; I couldn't shoot paper "groups" or hit small targets at distance as well as I could with post and notch sights but I could hit reasonably sized targets - at reasonable distances - MUCH faster with much LESS effort, especially in low-light conditions.

I guess it really depends on the application, but I could make XS sights work for me on pistol used solely for defensive use. As an additional note relating to XS sights, I found the "Standard Dot" sight to offer no improvement in accuracy or speed unless I took the extra time to work them like traditional sights. I don't want to divert the thread into an XS debate, just relating my experience as a point of context.

Hope you find something that works.