What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here.
I have had a good number of requests asking me to weigh in on the topic of perspective
in Rainbow Six Siege and I recently spent some time with Z1ronic, exploring the issue
in Siege as well as other games, specifically CS:GO and Insurgency Sandstorm and in this
video, I want to highlight some actionable tips that may be useful to you when playing
Siege in terms of choosing your positioning or character stance.
So let’s jump right in.
Now of course, there have been quite a number of videos made recently discussing perspective
and I don’t really want to spend too much time covering those points again in detail
but I will briefly highlight the two main facts, as a brief reminder.
If you’ve been following the discussion, you will know that at the beginning of Operation
Burnt Horizon, the developers changed how the 1st person camera behaves when leaning
in Rainbow Six.
Before the patch, the camera used to shift all the way over to the side of the head when
leaning and after the patch it has been fixed to the centre of the head, between the eyes,
no matter if you are leaning or standing up straight.
This seems like a significant change and I also fully believed that it must have had
an impact on the game.
The other important fact that has been discussed on other channels is that when it comes to
perspective, it is important how close or far you and your opponent are away from cover.
If the first person cameras were represented by single pixels, this would not matter at
all since no matter how far each camera is away from the cover, they will always see
each other at exactly the same time.
The issue of one person being able to see and shoot the other, while not being seen
themselves, arises because the 3rd person character models extend out to the sides quite
a bit and become visible before the camera itself.
So, the simple conclusion is that whenever you are playing a first person game, the player
who is closer to cover is always be at a disadvantage, sometimes to such a degree that they can be
taken out without ever seeing their opponent.
For 3rd person games, where the camera floats above and behind the character, the opposite
is the case since and you can get a huge advantage by seeing around corners without exposing
yourself at all but that’s a different topic altogether.
Those are the facts that are important to my exploration of this topic.
Being as far away from cover as possible is an advantage when peeking and the camera positioning
has changed somewhat recently.
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And as I mentioned, Z1ronic and I tested the principal of perspective and view quite extensively
and the same phenomenon exists in every other 1st person shooter as well in Siege.
In Rainbow Six, we may have been shielded from this phenomenon a little by the way leaning
used to work or maybe in the past, perspective related deaths were assumed to be netcode problems instead.
I think it is also worth thinking about why we were noticing the problem more in Siege
than maybe in other games.
The instant headshot death, easy to control guns and fast time to kill overall are probably
important factors to consider.
In games where you die a little slower (be that because of a larger health pool, less
lethal headshots or harder to control recoil) you may face the exact same issues of being
shot at by an unsighted opponent but at least in those situations, you may still have some
time to react and either get further into cover or attempt to peek out more in order to return fire.
And another factor that is worth considering is also the reasonably high quality kill cam
we get in Siege compared to other games.
Dying to an unseen enemy and then getting to see a clip of how much of us that guy was
able to see and how easy it was for him to kill us may make us feel even more cheated
than if we had not been shown the clip.
Am I arguing for the kill cam to be removed?
No, absolutely not!
I think the kill cam is a valuable tool in helping players learn from their mistakes
and also in helping to identify cheaters and suspicious players and I think more games
should aim to have a robust replay system in place.
Nevertheless, I do also think that it is possible for the replay to add frustration in some
situations and maybe that is just one more factor that makes perspective related deaths
jump out at us more in Siege than they do in other first person games.
Whatever the explanation as to why perspective related deaths have become so noticeable in
Siege lately; there are still some factors that you should take into consideration when
choosing your positioning and stances while playing Rainbow Six.
Let’s take a closer look at those!
Back when the camera position was changed, the image that the developers shared in their
blogpost about the leaning change, gives us a relatively good idea of where the first
person camera is mounted onto the character model.
Centre of the head, just above the eyes.
I ran a few tests and confirming the horizontal camera placement was really easy, it is always
the centre of the head.
When looking straight ahead, a simple test of shooting at a wall at close range also
revealed the vertical positioning of the camera and it is exactly where I expected it, just above the eyes.
Now one of the questions I set out to answer in this video, is: how do various stances
and leaning affect how likely you are to be spotted first by your opponent?
To get to answer this question, let’s first explore what leaning actually means in terms
of a first and third person perspective because this will already throw up a few little dangers to be aware of.
From the first person perspective, leaning is pretty simple.
The camera just shifts to the side by a few inches while staying perfectly vertically
aligned and without turning the view left or right at all.
What this means is that you essentially end up with a perfectly parallel line of sight
to the one you have before and this means that your bullet impacts will always be spaced
exactly the same distance apart, no matter how far away from your target you are.
This only works though when you are aiming straight ahead.
When aiming up or down, the lean is no longer perfectly in line and your aim will either
pivot up (when aiming up) or down (when aiming down).
The 3rd person character movement when leaning has been modelled in such a way that the camera
position, above and between the eyes, shifts pretty much in line with the movement of the
first person camera, although the character model does straighten up and become maybe
an inch or so taller and the head also tilts a little bit.
And this is where we run into our first little danger.
When you lean and you are aiming down your sights, your camera position moves perfectly
horizontally but your character becomes a bit taller and in certain situations, this
can make you a slightly easier target without you gaining any advantage.
The reason for this is that aiming makes your character hunch down a little bit but leaning
cancels out this benefit.
When peeking over solid cover, leaning will make your head stick out just that little
bit more while not providing you with a better view in any way.
Sure, you can be argue that the difference is only a couple of centimetres but in a game
where headshots mean instant death, this could make all the difference, so my advice would
be to use caution when leaning behind cover and only lean if you actually have a valid
reason to do so.
This does not apply though when fighting from an elevated position.
If you are above your opponent, fighting over a balcony, through a hatch or maybe a floor
breach, leaning will actually make your character appear significantly shorter and will increase
the advantage you have over your opponent.
But apart from the minor disadvantage of leaning behind hip high cover, leaning can have significant
advantages and the fact is that the closer to cover you are, the more you will get out of leaning.
Because what leaning will also do, in terms of your character model, is to shift the head
and also the camera further towards the side while keeping the body and legs where they are.
When you lean to the left, your 3rd person character model will even switch to a left-handed
grip on their firearm and this is really useful in terms of minimising how much for their
body and legs will be visible from behind cover.
As you can see in the footage of one of my tests, leaning (even after the removal of
the camera shift to the side of the head) goes quite a long way towards helping mitigate
the risks of fighting around close cover when your opponent is further away.
There is still a possibility of being seen first but you are presenting a much smaller target.
So the closer you are to cover, the more important it becomes to lean and to lean in the right direction.
Leaning the wrong way will basically present everything but a small part of your head to
the enemy and as several studies have shown, this is a bad thing to do!
When kneeling and leaning close to cover, the results are pretty much exactly the same.
Leaning the correct way will always expose less of your body and head.
The prone position is a little more complex though especially since we have to differentiate
between lying face forward or backward.
When prone, instead of bringing the head further over to one side, leaning will shift your
entire body around.
This means that when your feet are facing backwards, you will have to expose your arm
and head around a corner before you can see your opponent further away.
When not leaning though, your operator exposes more of their legs and body but at the same
time exposing less of their head.
Sure, with the low time to kill in Siege, this is definitely going to get you killed
but interestingly, your head is safer in this position.
Leaning the wrong way is still a really bad idea though because you have to almost fully
expose yourself before you get to see anything of your opponent.
What is the difference when lying feet forward, well: see for yourself!
As with all of the other images, I have moved Rook out to a position where he just can’t
see me and while I can see his arm because I am still in the much more powerful position
at long range from the cover, I can see almost nothing of his head.
Not leaning with Rook fully exposes one leg but still, the head is more in cover than
when lying face forward.
Leaning the wrong way…
yeah still terrible…
So my conclusion here would be that if at all possible, it is worth making sure that
you back up again cover and force your operator to turn around when holding a prone angle.
You will still potentially suffer if you are in a disadvantageous position but at least
your head is reasonably safe.
When you are in the stronger position (that is: further away from cover) the perspective
shift of leaning will only provide you with a minimal benefit but nevertheless, it is
still good practice to lean because of the change in stance of your 3rd person character
model and this is particularly true when you are prone.
The change in angle of your body when leaning will make a significant difference in terms
of how early you expose yourself.
In the test you can see on screen now, I always arranged the two characters in such a way
that the forehead cameras can only just see each other and as you can see, leaning the
correct way makes a significant difference in terms of the amount of your body and legs
that will be exposed to your opponent.
So those are the general considerations of perspective and leaning in Siege but I have
two more topics here that could have an impact on your engagements.
At the beginning of the video, I talked about the dangers of leaning when fighting from
an elevated position and there is another factor to be aware of when fighting at different heights.
What you need to be aware of here is again the camera position which right now is just
above the eyes at the front of the head and it’s this last detail that is important.
In the past, the camera position used to be further back inside the head of your character
but now that it is right at the front, it can make fighting from a lower position extremely
dangerous, even if your opponent above you is technically closer to the cover that is
separating the two of you.
This is because, as either you or the enemy move out of cover, the first thing that will
become exposed for the lower player is the top of the head, starting at the back.
This means that the elevated player has a very good chance of killing the lower one
via headshot, before the lower player ever has a chance to fight back.
When fighting through a hatch of doorway from elevation, the advantage again lies with the
top player, since they will be able to see the opponent’s feet and body long before
the lower player has a chance to get a decent view.
This definite advantage for the top player has its limitations though.
Once the distance between the two players increases, the earlier principle of “the
closer to cover you are, the greater your disadvantage” comes into play more.
As you can see, once the lower player moves far enough away, they will actually start
to take the advantage to the point where they could get a kill onto the other player without being seen.
And finally, there is one last quirk in Siege that could end up costing you a gunfight when
you are holding certain angles and the problem appears to be an ant infestation at Rainbow HQ.
When standing still, every operator in Siege cycles through a continuous movement animation
that is undoubtedly caused by ants that are crawling down the character’s back at all times.
The movements may be subtle BUT they do present an issue in that your 3rd person model and
hitbox will shift around ever so slightly, while your 1st person view stays exactly the same.
When we run a test with two players on the same team, you can see that it’s not just
the model but also the hitbox that can become just that little bit more exposed when you
allow your character to bobble about like this and something that adds to the issue
is that it is not even consistent.
Standing straight up and leaning right will allow your character to bob around but when
you lean left, the animation stops and your operators suddenly becomes focused and disciplined
for no reason whatsoever.
When kneeling, the animation becomes simplified and shorter and it also becomes consistent,
no matter which way you lean.
It does still involve swaying left and right but maybe not quite to the same degree as when standing.
When prone, a similarly simple and consistent movement cycle is used but with a little look
out to the side thrown in at the end.
Now of course the movement is very subtle and chances are that you may never die to
an opponent that happened to be just in the right place to catch your character jiggling
out of cover but even a minor desync in what your 3rd person model and first person perspective
are doing is a risk factor.
My conclusion would be that this animation is the most dangerous when standing up and
leaning to the right and a minor as the issue may be, there is something you can do to eliminate
it altogether.
Aiming down sights will immediately stop your operator from swaying around so much and so
if you are in a situation where your character might inadvertently stick part of their head
out of cover, aiming will help you reduce that risk to zero.
And that is it, my take on the question of perspective in Rainbow Six and a few small
practical tips that you can hopefully use to try to avoid falling victim to unseen enemies.
DO lean to the correct side, especially when you are close to cover but DON’T lean unnecessarily
when aiming and peeking over the top of cover.
If you are fighting from an elevated position though, leaning WILL be beneficial to you.
When holding an angle, you are just that little bit safer if you aim down sights, since this
removes the random character movement and if you are prone, you are better off face
back than face forward.
Do let me know what you think about the topic in the comments section below and with that:
thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!