The kicker is, most people find their long distance shooting improves with a red dot (I know I do). When I shot the Caracal Quick Sight, I found my short distance speed was better, but long range suffered.Originally Posted by LittleLebowski
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Confirmation from MG: they are indeed milled. Rear is fixed, since no adjustment is needed. Reportedly, cross eye dominance is also no longer a factor. I am *very* curious, but I'll have to wait until I can try Matt's, due to the milling commitment. I will look for a chance to do just that.
That's logical with any short sight ratio vs long sight ratio handgun. Less distance between sights, less blurred rear sight. But also less precise for accuracy shots.
For me, with a little practice just the focus on the front sigth is more than enough for short distance.
There are some things in the video that sounded like complete BS to me. Expected, and not really worth discussing.
The concept of "focal band" however, is definitely not BS. "Depth-of-focus" is the technical term if you want to research. "Beam waist" may also play into it. Bottom line, the rear sight will definitely look crisper while focusing on the front, and it's not clear what variety of pros and cons that will imply.
There's something else these sights do though that hasn't been mentioned, and I think it's worth people thinking about. For all that follows, forget about vertical alignment:
Think about what happens when the sights are misaligned. There's your body, shoulder, and arm alignment, but that mainly controls what the entire sight picture is centered on. Then there's your wrists and grip. That's usually what we're correcting when the sights are misaligned relative to each other at extension. As you use your wrists to adjust the gun left and right, the slide angles left and right. There's roughly an axis about which it rotates, somewhere near the grip or the rear sight. Basically, there's a point somewhere on the slide that always stays centered on the target as you move your wrists left and right, and the rest of the slide pivots about that point.
If the rear notch is exactly on top of that point, then the rear notch is a direct indicator of your body/arm alignment and should almost always stay centered on the target. As you adjust your wrists, the front sight would move around and the rear would stay in the same spot.
For me on a G17, sometimes it feels like the rear sight is slightly behind this point. So, when I adjust the front sight to the left with my wrists, the rear sight moves slightly to the right, and vice versa.
Now imagine a rear sight that was well in front of this point. As you misalign left and right with your wrists, the rear sight will follow the front sight, trailing a bit behind. It will move left when you rotate your wrists left.
If you think about alignment this way, and imagine a straight line pivoting about this point, with three important reference points---the center of the rear notch, the center of the front post, and the POI on target---you'll realize that as the positions of the front and rear sight change relative to this pivot point, the amount and type of apparent misalignment you'll see in the sights for the same amount of real misalignment on target will be different. The closer a sight is to the pivot, the less it shifts for the same POI shift on target. Note, this perspective also highlights how the benefits of sight radius are more complicated than just the distance between the sights: where they are relative to the pivot point matters too.
In the limit where the rear sight is on top of the front sight, it would be useless. It is effectively the same as aiming only with the front. It would be in perfect focus at the same time, but it would misalign the same amount in the same direction as the front sight, so it wouldn't give your eyes any extra data.
In the limit where the rear sight is wayyy behind the pivot point (imagine the slide extending way back over your arms), it'd be extremely awkward and unwieldy to aim with. A small wrist misalignment to the left would produce a drastic rear sight misalignment to the right. Also, the rear sight would be even blurrier when you focus on the front sight.
Beyond having the rear sight exactly on the pivot point, the next most intuitive point I'd be interested in trying is halfway between the pivot and the front sight. The Graham Combat FAST sight is almost this, but the rear is a little closer to the front I think. For me on a G17, the halfway point would be right in front of the ejection port I think, or maybe on the ejection port. I can't tell if my pivot point is exactly on my rear sight or a little bit forward of it. It also might vary depending on how drastic the misalignment is, the grip I get, etc. So the concept may not be the same as I've presented it here. Also, the effect may be a lot smaller than I'm imagining for the distances involved.
How all this effects performance, who the hell knows. There's way more going on here that interacts with perception than can be worked out in terms of math or figures. Bottom line is people have to try it out. Slightly complicating things, an experienced shooter is likely to have intuition about using traditional sight positions that may not carry over well to other sight positions.
Last edited by GRV; 07-25-2017 at 12:16 PM.
If only there were some way to evaluate a system with speed and accuracy both being weighted together. Then we could evaluate these new sight ideas and compare them to traditional sights amirite?
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Sounds like you're proposing a FAST test.
While an amusing suggestion for obvious reasons, a 7 yard test is hardly a good testing ground for the claims of this sight. It's not like one really needs any sights to do well at that distance.
TY83544
I was thinking more like some classifiers like "long range standards" or others that put a premium on mid range accuracy at speed.
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First, I am a big fan of Matt's and really like him. I find he explains things well, which helps people like me who are very "why" oriented on things. I am not a fan of his flashlight stuff....but understand it because of how Matt explains it and the context is solid. Just not for what my needs are.
In the case of this stuff, I ll wait and see.....because I respect Matt and do not see him as a snake oil salesman. With that said, I know for absolute fact that I hated the Guttersnipe sight on he ASP pistol that I carried for a short time in the 80's. Also, on the "focal band" thing....the first thing that came to mind on a short sight in the same plane as my front sight was "oh, just like my J frames". Not what we tend to look at in regards to awesome surgical accuracy. So right now, I am seeing good J frame sights on a service size auto. Could it work in conjunction with the size of the pistol and in conjunction with pivot areas? I a, at least open to "maybe". Should be interesting.
Just a Hairy Special Snowflake supply clerk with no field experience, shooting an Asymetric carbine as a Try Hard. Snarky and easily butt hurt. Favorite animal is the Cape Buffalo....likely indicative of a personality disorder.
"If I had a grandpa, he would look like Delbert Belton".
In the video, he claims for a pistol that a short sight radius is inherently more accurate, not a long sight radius. I outright disagree with this, and I can't imagine any interpretation or explanation of it that'd get me to agree with it.
My guess is that the sight radius on these is too short to maintain the level of usable accuracy people like those on PF have come to expect from a full size handgun. Experiences with similar systems multiple people have now posted about has lent credence to that, and it makes sense.
Even if these particular sights end up being a bust, I still think the ideas are interesting and might be useful elsewhere. Perhaps on long slide pistols like the G17L you could move the rear sight up enough to get some of the benefits while still retaining a G26-size or better sight radius. The pivot point stuff I mentioned above doesn't require a short sight radius. At first glance, you'd think the focal band idea requires a short sight radius, but experimenting with a bluegun just now it seems to me that the effective depth-of-focus of eyes is better as the gun gets further away. So, the same sight radius pushed further out might still reclaim some of the focal band effect. Though, I don't know if the accuracy benefits of sight radius are reduced as you push it further and further out.
In light of these things, it's interesting to think about rear sights that intentionally sit further back on the slide: like Dawsons and Trijicon HDs. The claim is that they add sight radius, which is true, but there's more going on there with respect to the pivot area and the focal issues.
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