"An iPhone app called Bullet Flight enables snipers to calculate range and trajectory for their shots, and built-in satellite-positioning allows local weather conditions to be taken into account. The basic version costs $3.99 and the full military one--which even calculates how the Coriolis effect from the rotation of the Earth will influence a bullet’s flight--costs $29.99."
Am I the only one who find this strange? Even with local weather information, there's a lot of uncertainty on wind speed and direction, humidity, etc etc. Does the Coriolis effect actually matter or is it negligible?
Agreed. The shooter would still definitely have to make local estimations of wind speed and direction, there's no way the app could get that data in real-time or in sufficient resolution.
My understanding is that the Coriolis Effect only comes into play at very long ranges. That being said snipers nowadays are more and more using heavy caliber (generally .50BMG) rounds and taking their shots at much longer distances than in previous times.
As an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Furlong
Rob Furlong made a shot against a target that was 2,430 meters away. At that range the bullet's flight time was just under 3 seconds! At that sort of range pretty much anything can affect the bullet enough to deflect it off target...
I'm curious too, so I googled around a bit an I thought this was the best answer:
"As an ex British markman/sharpeshooter, we are trained to take everything into account, the coriolis effect is taught but very rarely acted upon, your generally close enough to see someones face when taking a shot. The Barret M95 has an incredible range, and when your talking anything over 1 click, wind, humidity, spin are all more important than the coriolis effect, but when it comes to taking a shot you do not want to miss, a miss can get you killed, you keep your mind on all variables."
[+] [-] gaius|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TriinT|16 years ago|reply
In what sense? Would you care to elaborate on that?
[+] [-] cake|16 years ago|reply
Would have love to have more details of other consumer grade products they buy.
[+] [-] TriinT|16 years ago|reply
Am I the only one who find this strange? Even with local weather information, there's a lot of uncertainty on wind speed and direction, humidity, etc etc. Does the Coriolis effect actually matter or is it negligible?
[+] [-] aarongough|16 years ago|reply
My understanding is that the Coriolis Effect only comes into play at very long ranges. That being said snipers nowadays are more and more using heavy caliber (generally .50BMG) rounds and taking their shots at much longer distances than in previous times.
As an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Furlong Rob Furlong made a shot against a target that was 2,430 meters away. At that range the bullet's flight time was just under 3 seconds! At that sort of range pretty much anything can affect the bullet enough to deflect it off target...
[+] [-] tvon|16 years ago|reply
"As an ex British markman/sharpeshooter, we are trained to take everything into account, the coriolis effect is taught but very rarely acted upon, your generally close enough to see someones face when taking a shot. The Barret M95 has an incredible range, and when your talking anything over 1 click, wind, humidity, spin are all more important than the coriolis effect, but when it comes to taking a shot you do not want to miss, a miss can get you killed, you keep your mind on all variables."
[Found here: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/569190]
[+] [-] ramchip|16 years ago|reply
Yes, there's some uncertainty, but I'd assume snipers are used to estimating or measuring these values pretty well.