| rdfs:comment
| - Projectiles, like all matter, are subject to gravity. Therefore, while it makes sense to shoot horizontally at point blank range (which is the literal meaning of "point blank"), the shooter usually needs to fire above the target. Likewise, archers will shoot at an angle, somewhat upwards. In Real Life, group archers would fire massive volleys of arrows which functioned as a form of indirect fire, much like modern artillery. Not to be confused with The Straight and Arrow Path. Examples of No Arc in Archery include:
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| abstract
| - Projectiles, like all matter, are subject to gravity. Therefore, while it makes sense to shoot horizontally at point blank range (which is the literal meaning of "point blank"), the shooter usually needs to fire above the target. Likewise, archers will shoot at an angle, somewhat upwards. In Real Life, group archers would fire massive volleys of arrows which functioned as a form of indirect fire, much like modern artillery. This is often portrayed on screen incorrectly: the angle often stays the same regardless of the distance. On one hand, we have bullets and arrows that are shot straight across the battlefield and still don't fall on the ground halfway through, and scopes with the sole purpose of compensating for the screen's inferior resolution, while on the other hand, if a video game does try to portray archery realistically, often the angle stays the same regardless of the distance, so we have archers shooting upwards to hit targets right in front of them, so the arrows should really fly over them. If the arrow is shown in a close up or slow-motion, it will always travel straight as, well, an arrow. Real arrows don't: they bend back and forth and also spin, the direction determined by the angle of the fletching (the feathers at the end of the arrow, though most are now plastic). This is often also ignored because the trope tends to occur when trying to emphasize The Archer ideal; wobbles and arcs that make the Arrow Cam face up at the blank sky don't help that. Contrast that with Rain of Arrows where this trope will be averted with gusto when fired by a large faceless military unit and where it is now cool to obey the laws of physics. It also gets averted a lot in Video Games due to the fact that the player is the one firing the arrow and the technique of arcing is used as a skill challenge and to make the player feel personally competent. Just as other tropes have transferred from the The Archer to the Cold Sniper, we find this can happen for firearms. For firearms, the sight is calibrated for a specific distance, 200 meters for an assault rifle, for instance. At distances up to this (ammunition-specific) limit, the deviation of the bullets path from the straight scope-line-of-sight is less than about 5 cm/2 in., so it can be ignored. Going beyond this limit, however, will cause in increasingly rapid drop of the bullet's path. If the enemy is 400 meters away, one needs already to aim way above the head. Sniper scopes have a knob to adjust the distance (among other things). This is arguably their main feature as anyone can aim for a head at 400 meters through a good scope; estimating the distance, and hence the drop, is the tricky bit. Even then one must also take the difference in altitude into account, not to mention the wind. Grenades, including those fired from Grenade Launchers, seem to be the one kind of projectile that near-universally avert this. Like firearms, arrows suffer from dispersion, which is to say that the exact same weapon firing the same ammunition with the same aim will land the arrow in a slightly different place. Dispersion is often much greater in archery (especially the preindustrial kind), due to greater variation from shot to shot in the bow, the arrow, the bowstring, and the draw of the bow. Not to be confused with The Straight and Arrow Path. Examples of No Arc in Archery include:
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)