Written on July 7, 2008 – 8:19 am | by Bogdan Alex |
It’s been said that more and more types of animals go extinct by the year, but I’m not sure if this is because people hunting them down, the survival of the fittest theory or Mother Nature’s will. True, man tends to be implicated in many disasters as of recently and it might be that those poor animals can’t cope with the global warming. If hunting animals is what you like, and you don’t really want to become an animal poacher, you might find the ST-2 shooting simulator from Marksman Training Systems a reasonable alternative for your killing spree cravings.

The ST-2 is the first shooting simulator for shotgun and rifle shooting designed specifically for demanding users such as shooting instructors who give professional shooting advice. Is it more advanced than the Duck Hunt game on the old NES? It should be, since we are talking about real guns and a huge screen that provides a wide viewing field.

MTS also claim that both new and experienced in shotgun or rifle shooting, can use the simulator to improve their shooting skills and enjoyment of the sport. This wouldn’t be a complete simulation without a model for external ballistics, and MTS collaborated with the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) in order to include as many weapon behaviors as possible.

Thanks to extensive development and smart programming, the ST-2 simulator can be used with most shotguns and rifles. The camera sensor that registers gun movements and shooting direction can be easily attached to the barrel of your own gun. The shooting direction is calibrated by a single shot at a calibration target. The shooting scenarios include moving and fixed targets. Starting position, trajectory, speed of the targets are parameters that can be altered by the user creating a wide variety of scenarios to practice on. Hit position and the effectiveness of the shot are evaluated according to all contributing factors: ammunition load and weight, range, target size, trajectory and speed. Check out this clip to see how the simulator really performs: