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Video games usually determine gunfire with one of two approaches: an immediate scene check called hitscan, or a simulated projectile that travels through the world and can collide over time. The distinction affects travel time, aiming, and how a shot interacts with moving targets. What you see—a tracer, muzzle flash, or impact effect—does not necessarily reveal which method the game uses.
How hitscan shots work
A basic hitscan shot is an invisible ray or line query. When the player fires, the game chooses an origin and direction, checks the scene, and uses the first eligible intersection as the shot result. The result can include the object hit, the distance, and the point in the world where the ray met it. Unity demonstrates this approach in its shooting with raycasting tutorial.
The query can be constrained. In Unity’s version 6000.5 Raycast API, parameters include the ray’s origin and direction, a maximum distance, and a layer mask. A layer mask can exclude objects that should not count for that shot; the maximum distance limits how far the query checks. The exact API and available options depend on the engine version used by a project.
Because the game resolves the query when the shot is fired, a basic hitscan weapon has no simulated time-of-flight. A straight ray also does not curve under gravity or wind by itself. A developer can add extra rules, but those are additions to the basic ray check.
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How simulated projectiles work
A simulated projectile is an object whose position advances through the game world. Its speed and trajectory determine where it travels, and the game checks whether it collides with a target or another object. Unity’s Netcode for GameObjects 1.6.0 projectile overview describes projectiles in terms of travel speed and trajectory. In an Unreal Engine example, a collision component and hit callback handle a projectile’s collision.
That does not mean every game uses the same underlying simulation. A developer might use a physics body, custom movement code, or repeated collision queries along the projectile’s route. The shared idea is travel through the world before a hit is resolved, not one required implementation.
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What the difference changes during play
| Question | Basic hitscan | Simulated projectile |
|---|---|---|
| When is the hit resolved? | When the ray query runs at firing time; there is no simulated travel delay. | After the projectile travels far enough to reach or collide with something. |
| How does distance matter? | Distance can be limited by the query, but it does not create travel time in the basic model. | Travel time depends on the projectile’s speed and the distance it covers. |
| What about a moving target? | The game checks the scene state used for the query; the shot does not inherently spend time in flight. | The target may move while the projectile travels, so aiming ahead can matter. |
| Does the shot have a curved path? | Not in a plain straight-ray check. | The trajectory can be designed to include a curve, such as bullet drop. |
These are consequences of the basic models, not rules for every game. A game can add range falloff, custom trajectory logic, or other behavior to either approach.
Why visuals do not prove how a shot is calculated
A tracer can make a shot visible, but it may be a presentation effect rather than the object the game uses to determine a hit. The game can render a muzzle flash, tracer, or impact effect while resolving the shot with a ray query. Conversely, a visible moving object may be part of projectile simulation. Visual effects alone are not enough to establish a game’s hit-detection method.
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How online games handle hit registration
In multiplayer, a player’s view and the server’s simulation may represent different moments or positions. That creates an agreement problem: should the game judge a shot against the world as the shooter saw it, or against a later server state?
One documented technique is lag compensation. Unity’s Netcode for Entities 1.2 lag-compensation documentation describes a server consulting a collision world from an earlier tick, corresponding to the client’s view. This is one approach, not a universal feature of online shooters. Network authority and hit-registration rules vary by game, so a player’s experience alone cannot establish that a particular title rewinds the world or identify its netcode design.
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Further reading for developers
- Unity Learn: shooting with raycasting for a basic ray-based weapon example.
- Unity 6000.5 Raycast API for query parameters and filtering.
- Unreal Engine: implementing projectiles for an example using collision and hit handling.
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