Nao Tomori wrote:

but u can read a stream without being able to accelerate/decelerate properly and/or read jumps but miss then because your hand is unstable or you can't move fast enough or something, in which case the flaw isn't your comprehension of the patterns but your mechanical skill, which is what people suggest improving when they say to fix snap and flow aim. muscle control is a pretty important part of the game which your theory of aim being only reading based ignores

From what people have been saying to me thus far, I think people focus too much on the "knowing what to do" part of reading. Knowing what to do is the easy part of reading, actually doing it is the hard part of it (which I have already mentioned is completely separate to the aim skill).

If you read streams properly there is no acceleration or deceleration of your cursor, you're simply moving your cursor to the circle that needs to be hit next. Thus, when a stream does have changes in it's spacing, you aren't trying trying to change your cursor to match the stream spacing change. The difference in the way you think about how you play this makes a big difference in the end result.

For your jumps problem if you just aren't fast enough in hand movement to hit the jump, then yes, the problem does lie in your aim. Again, unless you're playing a map way out of your league, the culprit in misses is usually in the reading. I will emphasize again, it's not about the comprehension of the pattern that causes the problem but the way the maps being read.

My theory of aim is not solely based on reading which is what I've been trying to point out many many times already.

To illustrate what I've been talking about, let me give an example. Imagine you have a map that's mapped out at AR9. If you were to edit that same map down to AR8, you've effectively increased the object density thus making it harder to read. That shift of 1 AR isn't enough to really hamper the difficulty in pattern comprehension but you'll have more misses on the AR8 version versus the AR9 (assuming you're able to comfortably read both ARs equally) simply because of the object density increasing the amount of noise you have to shift through.

i'm still not happy with the screenshot, please quote someone who is thinking that moving cursor in a flow motion is read differently than moving in a snap motion instead. As you already said, it's obviously wrong.

To stay in the topic,
imo what will make the player to choose if he will snap or flow, is reading, reading well cross screen jumps will make the player trying to snap on them as fast as he can, and reading well a long and fast slider will make him tying to flow it, following the sliderball, for streams, the player will try to move in a flow motion between circles because it's the most efficient way to success at it (aka the most efficient way to make your cursor going from a to b to c etc..).
Even if physicaly, some people are controlling better their hand when they snap or when they flow, a good reading will make them aiming in the most efficient way.

also, you said reading is understanding what to do AND doing it, i see "doing something" as physicaly doing it, aim. when playing, we're reading and aiming, both in real time, i mean there is no "steps", step 1 read the pattern, step 2 do the pattern, repeat. it's not working like this and Almost's description of reading is explaining it well. We need to read and aim at the same time. i always agreed that since the beginning.

But i still disagree with the sentence : "if reading well, aim will follow", unfortunaly, physical fast and precise control of hand is not easy for everyone.
and some can be better at controlling when they snap than when they flow and vise versa.

Starting your argumentation with an insult is a surefire way to kill it before it started.

Juuuuuuuuul wrote:

also, you said reading is understanding what to do AND doing it, i see "doing something" as physicaly doing it, aim. when playing, we're reading and aiming, both in real time, i mean there is no "steps", step 1 read the pattern, step 2 do the pattern, repeat. it's not working like this and Almost's description of reading is explaining it well. We need to read and aim at the same time. i always agreed that since the beginning.

The steps is just to illustrate the process, obviously things breakdown in real life. That physical aspect I would still classify as part of reading rather than aim. If you look back to my example of playing a square in the OP, you will see the the player has the aim skill necessary to play all the jumps involved in the square but failed when they're put together. This is not just for squares but all patterns.

Juuuuuuuuul wrote:

But i still disagree with the sentence : "if reading well, aim will follow", unfortunaly, physical fast and precise control of hand is not easy for everyone.
and some can be better at controlling when they snap than when they flow and vise versa.

With that phrase, I am not saying you'll automatically be able to hit the circle. What I meant by that quote is that you'll automatically pick the best route in your aim to hit the circle (i.e. the flow or snap aim). This completely eliminates the need to specifically train flow or snap aim because it's just part of the process.

The "physical fast and precise control of hand" that you mention is the aim aspect of it. Which is just the skill as I described in the OP. That aspect does not dictate how well you can flow or snap aim as your ability to flow or snap aim is being dictated by your reading.

Endaris wrote:

Starting your argumentation with an insult is a surefire way to kill it before it started.

I made it more friendly I guess.

one movement for one object snaps, one movement for many flows.

rent free

Almost wrote:

Common criticisms

I feel like a bit of a broken record as the same criticisms of what I am suggesting keeping coming up so I'm just going to give a breakdown of the problems here.

1. Snap movement is for jumps and flow for streams...
I will admit that the title of this post is a little misleading... I appreciate that snap and flow movements are apt descriptions of what the movements look like but my argument is that they aren't specific skills you can develop.

2. You can know what to do and still miss because of aim...
Yes, I even have mentioned this multiple times as well. Here is a flow chart I made to illustrate what I mean by what causes misses:

Flow chart

As you go down the flow chart, you can see that the aim component is necessary. It's the question "Can I consistently hit each individual jump in this pattern?" That's the way to test whether or not you have the aim skill required to execute the pattern or not. If you still miss even if you can consistently hit each jump individually, then it's because of poor reading. This poor reading is not in the knowing what to do but in the actual doing of things. This is what I was elucidating to in my description of the player struggling with a square.

3. Just because you have good aim to do jumps doesn't mean you can also aim streams too...
This is true but not because of specifically being better at snap aim or flow aim. Though the basic methodology for reading both jumps and streams are the same, the skills aren't exactly transferable between the two. The timing aspects as well as the spacing between circles are completely different. You have to practice both to get good at both. The flowchart given earlier can also give you the same insight for streams also (just change the 2nd question to "Can I consistently hit 2 consecutive circles within this stream?").

I changed the title of the thread to be less confusing and more towards the point of my argument and added some responses to common criticism.

There's a reason some players specialize in flow aim and others in snap aim (i.e vaxei vs idke) and it's because they played on maps where more of the difficulty came from one than the other.

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

There's a reason some players specialize in flow aim and others in snap aim (i.e vaxei vs idke) and it's because they played on maps where more of the difficulty came from one than the other.

People tend to do more of what they're good at and less of what they're not so good at. That's just human nature.

Almost wrote:

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

There's a reason some players specialize in flow aim and others in snap aim (i.e vaxei vs idke) and it's because they played on maps where more of the difficulty came from one than the other.

People tend to do more of what they're good at and less of what they're not so good at. That's just human nature.

and some people are better at flow aim than snap aim because they are more practiced at one than the other, i.e they trained it more.

Play more streams, get better at playing streams. Play more jumps, get better at playing jumps. It's not actually about flow or snap aim at all.

Almost wrote:

Play flow aim maps, get better at playing flow aim maps. Play more snap aim maps, get better at playing snap aim maps. It's not actually about streams or jumps at all.

fixed
you're arguing pure semantics at this point and it doesn't make sense.
we know the difference between jumps and streams and that difference is defined by the types of aim skill you develop by playing either one, if aim was all the same your jump practice would make you a better streamer and vice versa. Ergo the difference between flow and snap aim.

Almost wrote:

Flow chart

The picture you posted describe well what i'm doing when i watch my own replays.
I always tried to found what i have to fix/work because you simply can't fix a problem if you don't know what is the problem.
i think more beginners need to whatch their replays and ask themself why they messed up.

For my case one of of the most comon reason is losing focus, leading to misread or slow reading.
Slow reading usually happen on high bpm (no matter the AR, it't just too fast) or high object density (trying to avoid confusion is slowing down my reading a lot)
Misaims happen usually when very fast moves, or tiny circles on easy-to-read stuff.

In my opinion,
"training snap aim" or "training flow aim" mean training pysically your hand/fingers/muscles to do moves in these motions again and again until you're used enough to not mess (reducing the amount of misaim, but it's not reducing the amount of misread).

Training aim in a specific motion is not helping to read better, it's only helping physicaly. You can't train your aim on an unreadable map. but training too much raw aim on easy-to-read stuff (modern-jumpy-maps?) will make you lack of reading. training both reading and raw aim is better than focusing on one or an other.

People tend to do more of what they're good at and less of what they're not so good at. That's just human nature.

Yes a lot people are doing this but,
some are doing the opposite, back in when i discovered my firsts bursts and streams, i did bullshit on these pattern but, i was like "holy shit i want more maps like this", same for good old style maps, or creative maps, hollow wings, hailie or others unusual maps, i'm doing shit on these maps but i like and play them. And i think i'm not alone thinkink this way.

There is a video with eyes tracker, comparing the eyes movements for AR5 AR8 AR10 and AR11, it's interresting :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO_aorVwRwA

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

Almost wrote:

Play flow aim maps, get better at playing flow aim maps. Play more snap aim maps, get better at playing snap aim maps. It's not actually about streams or jumps at all.

fixed
you're arguing pure semantics at this point and it doesn't make sense.
we know the difference between jumps and streams and that difference is defined by the types of aim skill you develop by playing either one, if aim was all the same your jump practice would make you a better streamer and vice versa.

Arguing semantics is important. It's like calling deadlifts a lower back exercise - yes, it does train the lower back but thinking about it as a lower back exercise will only do wonders for you in the long run. Obviously, this issue isn't as long term impacting as that but you get the point.

For any new players coming into the game not knowing anything, being told to practice specifically to train snap and flow aim is:
a) meaningless
b) hard to really understand how
c) misleading

I've already gone over that it's reading skills not aim skills that are involved in making snap and flow movements. Every single argument made so far for there actually being snap and flow aim skills is 'that we move our cursor in that manner therefore skill'. At the same time, not a single person has questioned my reasoning for those movements looking the way they are and how reading was the driver behind those specific movement patterns.

Basically, you can train those 'skills' but technically you aren't actually training any movement pattern, you're training reading which leads to those 'skills'. It's completely misleading to tell people to train a skill with the name 'aim' attached to it when in reality you're simply training a reading skill. Am I the only one that thinks that's completely bonkers??

I got the idea new people can have trouble specifically with moving their cursor at a constant rate, and can't really follow even sliders properly.

Pretty much any other game or general mouse use requires going from one place to another. You don't get practice in controlling the speed of cursor, just going to another place, usually the faster the better.

I think that perhaps what many people call training a specific type of aim is being able to read properly, I agree that reading is not just knowing what to do but also how to do it. There is pure mechanical skill involved in “flow” and “snap” aim tho, if I look at my replay of a stream where I am stopping and starting even if it is a slow and low spacing one where I can fully read it, my “flow” aim is what is lacking. So if I practice streams, yes I get better at reading them which helps me aim them properly but I also reduce the amount of errors due to my flow aim being more consistent

Juuuuuuuuul wrote:

Almost wrote:

Flow chart

The picture you posted describe well what i'm doing when i watch my own replays.
I always tried to found what i have to fix/work because you simply can't fix a problem if you don't know what is the problem.
i think more beginners need to whatch their replays and ask themself why they messed up.

For my case one of of the most comon reason is losing focus, leading to misread or slow reading.
Slow reading usually happen on high bpm (no matter the AR, it't just too fast) or high object density (trying to avoid confusion is slowing down my reading a lot)
Misaims happen usually when very fast moves, or tiny circles on easy-to-read stuff.

In my opinion,
"training snap aim" or "training flow aim" mean training pysically your hand/fingers/muscles to do moves in these motions again and again until you're used enough to not mess (reducing the amount of misaim, but it's not reducing the amount of misread).

Training aim in a specific motion is not helping to read better, it's only helping physicaly. You can't train your aim on an unreadable map. but training too much raw aim on easy-to-read stuff (modern-jumpy-maps?) will make you lack of reading. training both reading and raw aim is better than focusing on one or an other.

People tend to do more of what they're good at and less of what they're not so good at. That's just human nature.

Yes a lot people are doing this but,
some are doing the opposite, back in when i discovered my firsts bursts and streams, i did bullshit on these pattern but, i was like "holy shit i want more maps like this", same for good old style maps, or creative maps, hollow wings, hailie or others unusual maps, i'm doing shit on these maps but i like and play them. And i think i'm not alone thinkink this way.

There is a video with eyes tracker, comparing the eyes movements for AR5 AR8 AR10 and AR11, it's interresting :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO_aorVwRwA

Sorry, I didn't see this earlier. I will agree that there is a component of muscle memory in having proficiency in using a mouse/tablet like a tennis player with a racket. However, I don't know if you've ever seen a good tablet player switch to playing mouse before but after a short period of adjustment to the mouse, they can form good snappy movements as well as 'flow aim' consistently too even without prior practice on the mouse (though obviously not as well as with a tablet). The way the muscles are used in both are different thus those movements don't come purely from muscle memory.

Thanks for the link to that video. Was interesting. It did highlight something I've been mentioning this entire time on reading also being doing. You can see when she plays the jump practice map with the rotating triangle pattern, she starts to miss once her reading starts breaking down which is when she starts to have difficulties moving her eye to each circle. It's not an issue with aim as she's obviously still able to move her cursor to each circle without problem (not to mention in a snappy motion).

placeholder wrote:

I got the idea new people can have trouble specifically with moving their cursor at a constant rate, and can't really follow even sliders properly.

Pretty much any other game or general mouse use requires going from one place to another. You don't get practice in controlling the speed of cursor, just going to another place, usually the faster the better.

[Arc] wrote:

I think that perhaps what many people call training a specific type of aim is being able to read properly, I agree that reading is not just knowing what to do but also how to do it. There is pure mechanical skill involved in “flow” and “snap” aim tho, if I look at my replay of a stream where I am stopping and starting even if it is a slow and low spacing one where I can fully read it, my “flow” aim is what is lacking. So if I practice streams, yes I get better at reading them which helps me aim them properly but I also reduce the amount of errors due to my flow aim being more consistent

I think flow aim is actually the most misleading by far honestly. I've mentioned this previously somewhere but when you 'flow aim', you're not actually supposed to be trying to move your cursor at a constant velocity. Let me illustrate with an example.

The pattern in Figure 1 is is not a stream but is made up of 1/2 notes. I don't know what people call this pattern but it's a very common one. There are 2 methods of playing this pattern; by trying to match the velocity of your cursor to the circles or by looking at each circle within the chain directly as you're about to hit it. Many new players tend to do the first method as it's the least energy consuming method however, it's also the most inconsistent method of the two by far. The second method can be done with a more snappy or flowy motion, the choice is up to whoever is playing it but both yield the same levels of consistency. We'll be looking at flow aim as that's what we're talking about.

Now to an outside observer, both methods will yield the same movement pattern, a flowy aim. However, the goal of both methods is completely different. In the first method, the player's goal is to move their cursor at a velocity to match the spacing and timing of the pattern. The second player however is purely aiming at moving their cursor on top of the circle that needs to be hit next. The end result of the second method just happens to be that of a (somewhat) constant rate of velocity. The same methods can also be applied to streams (albeit it's not 100% exactly the same but pretty close).

Now onto our conundrum, if you tell a player floundering around on the first method to try out the second method, they will see instant significant improvements to their 'flow aim'. In reality, all they did was improve their reading skills.

For sliders, I can't comment too much on them except to say that assuming a good flow aim is required for sliders, then people who are good at streams would also be good at sliders but I'm not sure there's any evidence to support that notion at all.

Yes, when reading, the eyes are close to the current object to hit, while the peripheral vision "pre-process" the next object or only a few, not several objects.
Trying to look at a whole pattern of several objects is a common mistake and high density lead to confusion (too many objects make hard to keep focus on only the necessary).
Speed is also an issue, if the bpm is fast enough, i just don't have the time to read properly.
I hope we'll see an eye tracker's video from people like -GN, it should be very interresting.

I see an alternative definition for flow-aim : going between circles as slow as you can.

I can also argue there is curve aim; it's when you do aim in the process of doing curvy patterns. Not to be confused with flow aim, which can contain curve aim but also not. As ridiculous of a thing I just made up, it's as made up as do "snap" and "flow" aim. Things "exist" simply because people objectify and define them. Are they a useful metric? That is an entirely different debate.

Almost wrote:

A square is a very basic pattern that we can all recognize immediately upon seeing it. There is no issue here in knowing what to do. Even a monkey could look at it and know what to do. But when many newer players try to execute this pattern, they tend to either draw some awkward looking circle, slightly miss one of the circles or forget about one of the circles altogether. Is that a problem with aim then? Well if you were to give the same player each jump individually (A -> B, B -> C, C -> D), they would tend to be able to hit it no problem. It's only when the circles are put into that sort of shape do problems arise. Then where do does the problem lie? In the reading!!! It doesn't matter if you know what to do if you can't actually do it. It's like understanding a language but not being able to speak it yourself.

Knowing whether to go in a circle or snap in a square is not a reading problem. It's more of a muscle memory/knowing what to do problem. Similar to the problem of knowing how to hit the color you want to hit in taiko without messing keys up. There is no reading issue when doing a square if you recognize and acknowledge all four circles a reaction time's worth before aiming. Now, aiming to hit a square in a circle is pretty hard due to the short duration the cursor spends on top of each circle if not snapping, and due to the precision required during the continuous movement in the perpendicular direction.

About your flow chart. Everything is fine until "did I loose my focus" part. You need focus to be able to read, and knowing how to read better is not going to give you better focus. Good rest and determination does.

-----------

Now replying to stuff after

Almost wrote:

The pattern in Figure 1 is is not a stream but is made up of 1/2 notes. I don't know what people call this pattern but it's a very common one. There are 2 methods of playing this pattern; by trying to match the velocity of your cursor to the circles or by looking at each circle within the chain directly as you're about to hit it. Many new players tend to do the first method as it's the least energy consuming method however, it's also the most inconsistent method of the two by far. The second method can be done with a more snappy or flowy motion, the choice is up to whoever is playing it but both yield the same levels of consistency. We'll be looking at flow aim as that's what we're talking about.

Now to an outside observer, both methods will yield the same movement pattern, a flowy aim. However, the goal of both methods is completely different. In the first method, the player's goal is to move their cursor at a velocity to match the spacing and timing of the pattern. The second player however is purely aiming at moving their cursor on top of the circle that needs to be hit next. The end result of the second method just happens to be that of a (somewhat) constant rate of velocity. The same methods can also be applied to streams (albeit it's not 100% exactly the same but pretty close).

Now onto our conundrum, if you tell a player floundering around on the first method to try out the second method, they will see instant significant improvements to their 'flow aim'. In reality, all they did was improve their reading skills.

This is so misleading. Changing the how you read something does not make you read better over all. It's going to help you read the pattern better, but it does not improve your capacity to process visual complexity in unit time. In other words, your reading ability remains the same.

Also the pattern is related to "flow" aim because of the flowing motion the cursor appears to do regardless of how the pattern is being read.

Almost wrote:

For any new players coming into the game not knowing anything, being told to practice specifically to train snap and flow aim is:
a) meaningless
b) hard to really understand how
c) misleading

I agree. They should get the "play moar" treatment. Then after some time they should be told to train snap and flow aim.

Almost wrote:

I've already gone over that it's reading skills not aim skills that are involved in making snap and flow movements. Every single argument made so far for there actually being snap and flow aim skills is 'that we move our cursor in that manner therefore skill'. At the same time, not a single person has questioned my reasoning for those movements looking the way they are and how reading was the driver behind those specific movement patterns.

Basically, you can train those 'skills' but technically you aren't actually training any movement pattern, you're training reading which leads to those 'skills'. It's completely misleading to tell people to train a skill with the name 'aim' attached to it when in reality you're simply training a reading skill. Am I the only one that thinks that's completely bonkers??

Honestly, there is some truth in this, but not really. Let's just say training aiming comes packaged with learning how to read as well. There is some preliminary reading abilities the player needs to have to be able to do basic patterns, yes. But beyond that, reading low AR, reading convoluted overlaps, that is what we refer to actual reading. The reading you are referring is learned with in parallel with other skills and cannot be easily taken standalone. When all preliminary reading abilities are perfected, all you can talk about is "snap" and "flow" aim because those aiming aspects can be developed further than what you are going to get out of perfecting preliminary reading.

abraker wrote:

I can also argue there is curve aim; it's when you do aim in the process of doing curvy patterns. Not to be confused with flow aim, which can contain curve aim but also not. As ridiculous of a thing I just made up, it's as made up as do "snap" and "flow" aim. Things "exist" simply because people objectify and define them. Are they a useful metric? That is an entirely different debate.

That's a good point. The point of this thread is to steer everyone towards a better paradigm of thinking about things.

abraker wrote:

Knowing whether to go in a circle or snap in a square is not a reading problem. It's more of a muscle memory/knowing what to do problem. Similar to the problem of knowing how to hit the color you want to hit in taiko without messing keys up. There is no reading issue when doing a square if you recognize and acknowledge all four circles a reaction time's worth before aiming. Now, aiming to hit a square in a circle is pretty hard due to the short duration the cursor spends on top of each circle if not snapping, and due to the precision required during the continuous movement in the perpendicular direction.

Knowing what to do is a component of reading. It's how you interpret the information you're receiving. I really didn't need a primer on why drawing circles to hit a square pattern was difficult but thanks anyway lol.

abraker wrote:

About your flow chart. Everything is fine until "did I loose my focus" part. You need focus to be able to read, and knowing how to read better is not going to give you better focus. Good rest and determination does.

I had a feeling I would get some shade on this. I was merely hinting that when your reading improves, maps that once required huge focus will require less. I'm sure you can attest to that in your own experiences.

abraker wrote:

This is so misleading. Changing the how you read something does not make you read better over all. It's going to help you read the pattern better, but it does not improve your capacity to process visual complexity in unit time. In other words, your reading ability remains the same.

Also the pattern is related to "flow" aim because of the flowing motion the cursor appears to do regardless of how the pattern is being read.

As I mentioned many times in this thread already and elsewhere, reading is more than just knowing what to (i.e. process visual complexity). Improving skills in the "knowing how to do it" department of reading is important also. These skills are all branched under the reading skill.

Yes, I know it's related to 'flow' aim but I've already debunked basically all the main criteria to what flow aim is namely; ability to move at a constant velocity, ability to accelerate/decelerate and ability to move in a more 'curvy' manner. You're actually doing none of that at all. The first 2 are actually modulated by reading well and the last is just a visual illusion of a bunch of straight movements combining into a curved movement overall. I did forget to add though that there is a very slight curved motion in this type of movement when you need to change directions due to physics (though it's not very noticeable unless you have wide enough spacing).

abraker wrote:

I agree. They should get the "play moar" treatment. Then after some time they should be told to train snap and flow aim.

They should be told to focus on refining their reading process rather than training some esoteric concepts like 'snap' and 'flow' aim. If you focus on good reading habits, you'll tend to get good 'snap' and 'flow' aim in the process.

abraker wrote:

Honestly, there is some truth in this, but not really. Let's just say training aiming comes packaged with learning how to read as well. There is some preliminary reading abilities the player needs to have to be able to do basic patterns, yes. But beyond that, reading low AR, reading convoluted overlaps, that is what we refer to actual reading. The reading you are referring is learned with in parallel with other skills and cannot be easily taken standalone. When all preliminary reading abilities are perfected, all you can talk about is "snap" and "flow" aim because those aiming aspects can be developed further than what you are going to get out of perfecting preliminary reading.

There is too much emphasis in the community on reading as being only knowing what to do. That's only 1 aspect of it. The other 2 aspects being knowing how to do it and also separating signal from the noise. All these aspects are distinct entities and as I mentioned in the OP, knowing what to do is probably the least relevant of all those aspects of reading unless you're playing super low AR. The problem with the designation of 'snap' and 'flow' aim is that they are misnomers. People honestly shouldn't be worrying about how they move their cursor and should instead focus on just trying to hit the circle because it doesn't matter how good you are at snapping or 'flowing' your cursor if you overall miss the circle you're trying to hit because of reading skills (namely due to the inability to focus on the signal).

Pretty interesting topic, been reading for a while and only really want to add one thing (two things) that hasn't been said here, yet. It was said kinda indirectly, but with different meaning and focused on a different point.

Practicing "snap aim" intentionally improves reading and is a good way for practicing it. (Small Edit here to make one thing more clear: What I want to say is that it works both ways, your point is, that practicing reading will naturally result in snappier and sharper aim, that is correct, but properly practicing snap aim also vice versa results in improved reading, as it's tied together)

The logic is simple, you're trying to make a stop and go motion, stopping on every object, the focus is on the object, you don't just want to stop anywhere. To do that, you actually end up directly looking at each object individually. Especially in the pattern example you gave above (12345..), you'd treat and aim it as a bunch of tiny jumps, stop and go from circle center to circle center, looking at each of them individually as you have to click them (properly reading them).

When I practiced it, it felt only natural to watch the target+cursor in order to snap. Reading was necessary to snap aim, so in the end, the advice both improved my reading and my mechanical skill at aiming, as I trained my hand muscles in a new way.

With that said, I don't think it's bad advice, but when given, people should add a little more context and explanation as to what to think about / focus on when practicing snap aim. (I also practiced it on AR8, slowly moving up in difficulty, before going back to playing AR9 & 10, I even improved quite a lot at 10.3 from practicing reading on AR8)

And tbh, I want to make one more point here that is tied to this. Longer story, based on my own experiences as a player. Reading isn't simply learned as you go, you can imo go wrong and stuck easily, and this happens, when you play maps above your level / too high ar / complexity too early, before building the proper reading fundamentals.

I call this the "lazy eye" or "lazy reading", where you do not look at objects individually and mostly stare in the general direction at best. I've had this and also personally beat this habit and actually only like 2 months ago. I'm not a new player at all, but I've played DT and hard maps from the very beginning back in 2011. When I returned in 2017 I made an effort to improve sightreading and followed advice such as not retrying and nomod and saw lots of improvement, but my bad reading and bad consistency was kinda set in stone and whenever I tried individually looking at things, it felt straining and not really possible to keep up at all, I questioned it and wondered how others could do that. Naturally I just needed to practice it more on easier/slower maps, where my eyes would actually have had a chance to keep up and slowly learn and improve, but I wasn't given that advice and didn't think about it at the time.

Fast forward to 2019, I returned once more and again tried improving reading, but ran into the same issue, until I was actually given the advice to play AR8 and snap aim. That conversation that day fundamentally changed my reading and I finally started taking the correct steps to actually learn "real" reading and beat my years old habit of "lazy reading". For me it's now finally a steady process of improving my ability of being able to follow objects with my eyes faster and to be able to filter noise properly and look directly at objects in the middle/behind other objects and staying more focused, maintaining concentration all the way, something I could never do before. Object density would seriously mess with me, and when it passes a certain complexity, it still does, but that's natural, but I'm finally improving at it.

I really hope that fellow DT players / newbies that played too hard maps too early, that suffer from this same issue, end up reading this, so they can also fix their bad reading. It really helped a lot. My primary motivation for posting on these forums atm is basically just to share and give back. I've improved so much from advice I received, so I want to help spread what I learned.

Thanks for sharing Kyomaku. It's a pretty interesting strategy to focus on creating snapping motions as a reminder to focus your eyes on a specific circle. In essences though, improved reading is actually the key to the entire puzzle. Learning purely to acquire snappy movements alone isn't sufficient without the proper fundamentals in reading.

I still have issue with you putting many important aspects under one umbrella, "reading". It's pretty important to distinguish the different types of reading there are and what physical aspects they affect - aim and/or tapping.

Almost wrote:

All these aspects are distinct entities and as I mentioned in the OP, knowing what to do is probably the least relevant of all those aspects of reading unless you're playing super low AR

I think you have it backwards. Knowing what to do is the most important aspect, and what I am thinking of is unrelated to low AR. It's basic connections like when a note appears and you need to hit the note. Basic connection that you probably want to alternate the stream instead of single tap it. It's instinctual, something that gets ingrained into you and passively used. We don't think about it much because it's so mundane and we do it subconsciously, but it's there, and it's reading on the most fundamental level.

For me, knowing what to do is the end-point of reading. Processing out all the noise, recognizing the patterns, these are just means to reach that end.

abraker wrote:

I still have issue with you putting many important aspects under one umbrella, "reading". It's pretty important to distinguish the different types of reading there are and what physical aspects they affect - aim and/or tapping.

That's a good point however there aren't recognized terms that we can use to really distinguish all those aspects of reading. I think that's also why there's a lot of confusion regarding reading altogether. Currently (from what I can tell), many aspects of reading have been packaged as an aim skill which makes things even more confusing. This leads to further confusion especially for newer players who get thrown all these different terms around when seemingly everyone has a slightly different interpretation of their meanings.

abraker wrote:

I think you have it backwards. Knowing what to do is the most important aspect, and what I am thinking of is unrelated to low AR. It's basic connections like when a note appears and you need to hit the note. Basic connection that you probably want to alternate the stream instead of single tap it. It's instinctual, something that gets ingrained into you and passively used. We don't think about it much because it's so mundane and we do it subconsciously, but it's there, and it's reading on the most fundamental level.

I will admit, that's an aspect I have been taking for granted since I've been playing this game for far too long haha. Yes, that's the most fundamental reading skill in the game but it's one that gets mastered very early on. Once you master that aspect, it's the other parts of the game that get all the focus.

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

For me, knowing what to do is the end-point of reading. Processing out all the noise, recognizing the patterns, these are just means to reach that end.

The problem is that your definition is too condensed. Each part of the reading process deserves attention and each can be targeted in more specific ways.

to me flow aim just means how good you are at aiming streams and snap aim is just how good you are at aiming jumps.

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

to me flow aim just means how good you are at aiming streams and snap aim is just how good you are at aiming jumps.

Flow aim is how the cursor is following correctly sliderball as well. (edit: very fast and long sliders, or reverse sliders without sliderticks, may be snaped, that mean you can ignore following the ball and go directly on the sliderend or reverse arrows, waiting for the ball)

Almost wrote:

these different terms around when seemingly everyone has a slightly different interpretation of their meanings.

Exactly,
and i think that's why it's confusing.
For me, reading is brain work and raw aim is hand/muscles work. Both are linked and reading is mandatory for the aim to work.

And also, what about cursor dancing ? theorycally, you can get SS on a map while dancing, but cursor dancing is intentionnally mixing snap motion with flow motion without caring about what was the most efficient.

Almost wrote:

Each part of the reading process deserves attention and each can be targeted in more specific ways.

Yes,
but that don't mean we have to neglect others aspects of the game, examples : rythm sense or physical abilities like tapping raw speed or aim raw speed.

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

to me flow aim just means how good you are at aiming streams and snap aim is just how good you are at aiming jumps.

As I've been arguing this entire time, that's a complete misdiagnosis of the actual problem. I'll give another example.


In Figure 2, you can see a simple triangle pattern with the numbers denoting the order of the circles, the red line the cursor path of the player and the red crosses where the player tapped. The reason there's a curve in the cursor path and failure to hit circle 2 is because of a reading issue not an aim one. We'll look at it from the lens of a newer player and a more experienced player.

You can see in this video, the type of eye movement that newer players tend to have. The newer player tend to be overwhelmed by the information on the screen and to counteract this, they subconsciously start to look ahead to process as much information as quickly as possible. So what happens in our example is that the newer player starts at circle 1, looks briefly at circle 2 and immediately looks towards circle 3. At the same time, because they looked so far ahead, they tend to lean towards the latter information first and so are more focused on circle 3. Because of this, they have a more curved aim and then miss circle 2. The other case is that because they processed so much information, they 'forget' about circle 2 and they move directly to circle 3 in a straight line.

This isn't only an issue for newer players but also something that happens to more experienced players when they play maps that are out of their league. However, more experienced players tend to have more of a problem of Figure 3 below.


In this case, they move their cursor to the correct location but just before they're finished with circle 2, they move their attention to circle 3 and so they move off circle 2 as they tap thereby missing circle 2. Figure 3 shows they moved it perfectly but most cases, because they look off circle 2 too quickly, they would tend to have some drift in their aim off of circle 2 so it usually wouldn't end up looking so perfectly like that but I think you get the picture.

The same thing can be seen on streams too. The circles are generally bunched up so close together that it's quite easy to look a little ahead which messes up your aim in the process.

As you can tell with many of the people in this thread, there is a confusion in the idea of "I can read this". Newer players may place over-emphasis on the idea that they can read it simply because they can acknowledge all circles on the screen whereas more experienced players based on the idea they are looking at each circle directly. Sure, you can look at each circle directly but you're still looking too far ahead which means you technically aren't reading it properly. Because of the belief we're reading it correctly, we're more easily on board to jump to the conclusion that some sort of aim skill is deficient.

In the end, the type of maps to be recommended to anyone struggling with this problem would be the same; lower difficulty and lower AR. The problem is that when someone comes to the forums with a problem such as above, telling them to improve snap aim and playing those recommended maps doesn't really give them a true solution as their focus will be on trying to purely have a more straight aim with a pause in their movements but they'll still end up missing a lot because the problem has more to do with what they're doing with their eyes.

Juuuuuuuuul wrote:

Flow aim is how the cursor is following correctly sliderball as well. (edit: very fast and long sliders, or reverse sliders without sliderticks, may be snaped, that mean you can ignore following the ball and go directly on the sliderend or reverse arrows, waiting for the ball)

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, there's not much of a case behind this too. Sliders using flow aim would also assume players who 'specialize' in streams would be better at playing sliders compared to players who 'specialize' in jumps but there isn't much evidence to support this notion. Besides, the mechanism behind the cursor movements in following a slider are different to that of following a stream.

Juuuuuuuuul wrote:

Exactly,
and i think that's why it's confusing.
For me, reading is brain work and raw aim is hand/muscles work. Both are linked and reading is mandatory for the aim to work.

And also, what about cursor dancing ? theorycally, you can get SS on a map while dancing, but cursor dancing is intentionnally mixing snap motion with flow motion without caring about what was the most efficient.

That's why my experiment of separating the individual jumps out is a good way of isolating the problem. You can test whether or not you have the aim and when you have the aim, reading is the cause of most of the misses experienced.

Cursor dancing isn't really relevant to this discussion as you're intentionally taking inefficient cursor paths to your destination and just increasing odds of misses altogether.

Juuuuuuuuul wrote:

Yes,
but that don't mean we have to neglect others aspects of the game, examples : rythm sense or physical abilities like tapping raw speed or aim raw speed.

This discussion isn't trying to take away from those other aspects of the game, it's simply discussing the problems with the current paradigm in the way people think about aim and reading.

Maybe i feel highly conscerned by physical moves because i play mouse-only, clicking, especially on streams, have a physical impact on my cursor (shaking, hic-up) and that why i feel that controlling hand/muscles physical is important too.

Anyway, i agree with the fact that the most common reason for misses is missreading.

Playing mouse-only/tapx I can imagine would be difficult in that you have to be conscientious of how your clicking/tapping effects your aim but that's a topic for another discussion though.

sliders are a little different for me
that's mostly about knowing how and when to abuse the leniency without dropping acc, you want to leave sliders as early as it's possible.

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

sliders are a little different for me
that's mostly about knowing how and when to abuse the leniency without dropping acc, you want to leave sliders as early as it's possible.

That's why i wrote "correctly", abusing leniency is a bad habit, sliderends are on the beat, the correct way to treat them, is to play them on the beat.
By "correctly" i mean following the beat/music, not just cheesing to get 300s and dodging breaks. (thanks scoreV1?)

Almost wrote:

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

to me flow aim just means how good you are at aiming streams and snap aim is just how good you are at aiming jumps.

As I've been arguing this entire time, that's a complete misdiagnosis of the actual problem. I'll give another example.

Figure 2

In Figure 2, you can see a simple triangle pattern with the numbers denoting the order of the circles, the red line the cursor path of the player and the red crosses where the player tapped. The reason there's a curve in the cursor path and failure to hit circle 2 is because of a reading issue not an aim one. We'll look at it from the lens of a newer player and a more experienced player.

There are also alternative explanations for this example.

1. You misfired. It happens. Sometimes you accidentally apply more or less force than needed when moving the cursor from start to finish. You told your hand to move one way but it moved another for whatever reason.

2. Your hand-eye coordination is miscalibrated. This happens when you change sensitivity and need to get used to needing to move the hand further or less further.

3. You panicked. Technically a misread, but a different one from not knowing what's on screen altogether. You read the notes correctly and sent the commands for your hand to move, but midway you realize that you need to get to note 3 faster than expected and attempt a course correction, resulting in what is displayed in the example.

4. You have not learned how to aim properly. This is actually what I am facing as a player today. I read the notes and know where to go, but I am too conservative with my mouse movement. It's like that kid that goes to dance class and you can see by his movements how unsure he is. For me I tense up holding the mouse and end up in going in these slightly hesitant movements.

Almost wrote:

This isn't only an issue for newer players but also something that happens to more experienced players when they play maps that are out of their league. However, more experienced players tend to have more of a problem of Figure 3 below.

Figure 3

In this case, they move their cursor to the correct location but just before they're finished with circle 2, they move their attention to circle 3 and so they move off circle 2 as they tap thereby missing circle 2. Figure 3 shows they moved it perfectly but most cases, because they look off circle 2 too quickly, they would tend to have some drift in their aim off of circle 2 so it usually wouldn't end up looking so perfectly like that but I think you get the picture.



The same thing can be seen on streams too. The circles are generally bunched up so close together that it's quite easy to look a little ahead which messes up your aim in the process.

Assuming that path is perfect, Example 3 is indeed a reading thing, more specifically dealing with hand-eye coordination reading; reading when to tap based on motion of the cursor.

abraker wrote:

There are also alternative explanations for this example.

1. You misfired. It happens. Sometimes you accidentally apply more or less force than needed when moving the cursor from start to finish. You told your hand to move one way but it moved another for whatever reason.

2. Your hand-eye coordination is miscalibrated. This happens when you change sensitivity and need to get used to needing to move the hand further or less further.

3. You panicked. Technically a misread, but a different one from not knowing what's on screen altogether. You read the notes correctly and sent the commands for your hand to move, but midway you realize that you need to get to note 3 faster than expected and attempt a course correction, resulting in what is displayed in the example.

4. You have not learned how to aim properly. This is actually what I am facing as a player today. I read the notes and know where to go, but I am too conservative with my mouse movement. It's like that kid that goes to dance class and you can see by his movements how unsure he is. For me I tense up holding the mouse and end up in going in these slightly hesitant movements.

Explanations 1 and 2 are plausible ones I admit however for a different type of miss. My example in Figure 2 shows a pronounced curving in the aim and no sharp change in direction when there should be. Your first 2 explanation would reveal itself with a noticeable pause in aim before or past circle 2, no curve.

Explanation 3 is a possible one to explain Figure 2 but again, I'm talking about most usual cases. EDIT: Explanation 3 is basically what I gave as an example. I didn't give specific reasons as to why you look ahead earlier but thinking you have to move earlier is one of those reasons. Most cases, you have plenty of time to execute it correctly but because it appears fast, you subconsciously adjust and read ahead (as I explained earlier).

Explanation 4 would result in something similar to 1 and 2, you wouldn't have the curve. If you are truly being over conservative in your cursor movements and are reading it correctly, you will pause first before circle 2 before changing direction to circle 3. The curve in the aim only exists because you don't stop. It's basic physics in what produces curves, not being deficient in 'snap aim' skills.

abraker wrote:

Assuming that path is perfect, Example 3 is indeed a reading thing, more specifically dealing with hand-eye coordination reading; reading when to tap based on motion of the cursor.

Again, that hand-eye coordination reading is one part of reading and it's what I have been discussing for this entire thread. The problem is the same in Figure 3 as it is in Figure 2 except the timing of when focus has been changed from circle 2 to circle 3 is slightly different.

Almost wrote:

Explanation 4 would result in something similar to 1 and 2, you wouldn't have the curve. If you are truly being over conservative in your cursor movements and are reading it correctly, you will pause first before circle 2 before changing direction to circle 3.

I don't though, I don't even snap fully - maybe glide over notes or bounce from one to next. Try having your hand tense up while holding mouse. It's as if your hand suddenly has some weight you can't account for and end up coming short.

Almost wrote:

Sure, you can look at each circle directly but you're still looking too far ahead which means you technically aren't reading it properly.

Please re-read that. If you have any sort of curvature towards circle 3 in your aim before you have even finished with circle 2, you are not reading it properly. The basic fact you're already drifting your cursor towards circle 3 before hitting circle 2 already implies the fact you're anticipating where you want to go next. Until you're finished with circle 2, circle 3 is just noise.

As to your particular problem, I honestly do not know as your explanation is a little vague. I'm hypothesizing 3 things; you're playing stressed, the songs you play are too fast for you and/or your DPI is very high and you tense to try and stabilize your movements.

In the end, my overall philosophy of reading and aiming in general is this: don't worry about how you move your cursor around, focus on your reading and your body will automatically move your cursor in a way such that you'll hit the circles.

Almost wrote:

you're playing stressed, the songs you play are too fast for you

It's definitely this, but I can read the pattern. For example, I know the next set of notes make a star pattern. I know what movement I need to do and how to time it. However when I try to do it, I do it wrong.

Almost wrote:

Please re-read that. If you have any sort of curvature towards circle 3 in your aim before you have even finished with circle 2, you are not reading it properly. The basic fact you're already drifting your cursor towards circle 3 before hitting circle 2 already implies the fact you're anticipating where you want to go next. Until you're finished with circle 2, circle 3 is just noise.

How can you be so sure that it's because it's not read properly? You can mess up the execution, plain and simple. That happens not because you read wrong but because you translate what what you read into motor action wrong.

I challenge you to propose an experiment that allows to confidently determine it's a reading related issue and not a motor movement translation issue. Now I am really curious.

abraker wrote:

It's definitely this, but I can read the pattern. For example, I know the next set of notes make a star pattern. I know what movement I need to do and how to time it. However when I try to do it, I do it wrong.

You actually don't need to know where the next circle is until it's time to play it. That's what I do quite often playing the high object density stuff I play.

abraker wrote:

How can you be so sure that it's because it's not read properly? You can mess up the execution, plain and simple. That happens not because you read wrong but because you translate what what you read into motor action wrong.

I challenge you to propose an experiment that allows to confidently determine it's a reading related issue and not a motor movement translation issue. Now I am really curious.

The experiment is simple, if you were to divide whatever you're having problems executing into individual jumps (this includes streams), would you be able to do that consistently. Doing that almost completely eliminates reading issues as you have only 1 real focus. If you are able to consistently hit the jumps doing that, then the issue is in reading. I have already outlined that experiment multiple times throughout the thread.

This is a very interesting thread. Some good points were brought up, but I personally don't agree with this meaning of "reading".

Reading is a mental four-part process: "detect, process, store, translate". When you're playing a map, you see a pattern (detect), break down their spacing and order (process), keep the info in your head for a short time (store), then turn the info into signals (translate) so your body can perform moves at the right time. There are studies that prove this is exactly what happens when reading and acting on information live such as on typing speed tests or musical sight-reading (playing instruments w/ sheet music). There is no "doing" component, only "telling" other parts of the body what to do (ex. "hand-eye coordination"). This is important, since nobody calls mistakes from changed sensitivity/area a misread.

Aim ("motor skill", "muscle memory") is a totally different beast. In theory, straight lines and perfect stops are the ideal movement between objects. But in practice, those things would be very hard, maybe impossible. Human anatomy and physics simply doesn't allow that. Our physical bodies need to comply with the concept of momentum, and it's very often that which actually goes wrong during live play.

As we play, our muscles need to apply the right amount of force at just the right time, and we usually apply an opposite force even before the end of a jump. This is what I call "soft snapping", and it is probably the most natural way of dealing with jumps. Stopping abruptly is a very unnatural movement for the body, so hard snapping (see Doomsday's aim around 2014-2015) is definitely a bad habit.

For streams and sliders, we normally apply a force in one direction and maintain it, only making course corrections by gradually changing the angle of that force. This is "flow aim". Streaming is usually where the abstraction of "straight line, perfect stop" completely breaks down, because the body just won't keep up if it had to process everything in segments of straight lines.

Our bodies just intuitively pick up on when we can flow or snap a pattern, and 1/2 linears are usually slow enough to snap (personally I would flow them since it saves me energy for the rest of the map). But when it's too fast like in the case of 1/4 streams, we would just process the spacing then move at a certain speed using flow aim. Given all this, it's important to note that Auto is not a role model for human play. It's perfect play, but nobody can play exactly the way Auto does.

I was just reflecting on somethings and there are a couple things I am wrong about though the main thesis of this thread should be fine..

Antiforte wrote:

Reading is a mental four-part process: "detect, process, store, translate". When you're playing a map, you see a pattern (detect), break down their spacing and order (process), keep the info in your head for a short time (store), then turn the info into signals (translate) so your body can perform moves at the right time. There are studies that prove this is exactly what happens when reading and acting on information live such as on typing speed tests or musical sight-reading (playing instruments w/ sheet music). There is no "doing" component, only "telling" other parts of the body what to do (ex. "hand-eye coordination"). This is important, since nobody calls mistakes from changed sensitivity/area a misread.

I actually like this quite a lot, the translation step I mean. I think all the other steps are basically the same as what I postulated. The problem with what I was saying was there wasn't a very clear line between where reading ends and aim begins. So I'll have to "borrow" that from you hehe. The only change this brings to what I am saying now is that there is a problem in the translation phase. The problem can be in the actual mechanical aspect (i.e. your aim ability) or it could be in the what you're actually translating. The latter being the most cause of misses (in my opinion). For example with my Figure 2 example, it would change to looking ahead in your reading causing more noise to be translated causing the prominent curving. As an aside, it would be nice for you to actually link studies rather then just mentioning them as an aside.

Antiforte wrote:

Aim ("motor skill", "muscle memory") is a totally different beast. In theory, straight lines and perfect stops are the ideal movement between objects. But in practice, those things would be very hard, maybe impossible. Human anatomy and physics simply doesn't allow that. Our physical bodies need to comply with the concept of momentum, and it's very often that which actually goes wrong during live play.

As we play, our muscles need to apply the right amount of force at just the right time, and we usually apply an opposite force even before the end of a jump. This is what I call "soft snapping", and it is probably the most natural way of dealing with jumps. Stopping abruptly is a very unnatural movement for the body, so hard snapping (see Doomsday's aim around 2014-2015) is definitely a bad habit.

This was my other mistake. It's actually not possible to get a hard pause in your cursor movements due to momentum unless the map is slow, you are given enough of a break between circles or you change directions abruptly by going in the opposite direction or somewhat opposite direction (because to go in the opposite direction, you must at some point reach a velocity of zero). Due to this, actually separating jumps out in a map to test whether you can aim it is also incorrect as it doesn't factor those momentum changes in your cursor movements. It's hard to really say how much trying to change your momentum when jumping really effects your aim altogether though since you can't exactly test it objectively. This might be a skill in itself though a completely different skill compared to what is described for 'snap aim' currently.

Antiforte wrote:

For streams and sliders, we normally apply a force in one direction and maintain it, only making course corrections by gradually changing the angle of that force. This is "flow aim". Streaming is usually where the abstraction of "straight line, perfect stop" completely breaks down, because the body just won't keep up if it had to process everything in segments of straight lines.

Our bodies just intuitively pick up on when we can flow or snap a pattern, and 1/2 linears are usually slow enough to snap (personally I would flow them since it saves me energy for the rest of the map). But when it's too fast like in the case of 1/4 streams, we would just process the spacing then move at a certain speed using flow aim. Given all this, it's important to note that Auto is not a role model for human play. It's perfect play, but nobody can play exactly the way Auto does.

I have some disagreements with you here. There are still straight lines been drawn in streaming as I described earlier in the OP. When you read streams, you are still doing it in a circle-by-circle nature and as a result are still moving in straight lines directed between each circle. You don't actually have to process it in your brain as straight lines purposefully as it's done automatically when you read it circle-by-circle. After the initial curve on trying to change angles due to momentum, you will trace those sorts of patterns in a straight line, even if the stream itself is curved in nature. You can see it on more complex 1/2 linears where there is a gap in between circles. In the end though, the focus shouldn't be on trying to maintain a steady velocity but on trying to hit each circle which is done by reading the pattern correctly (eyeballing the correct circle as you play it).