The Math behind Gun Kata

[wtf]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet in the forum, but one of the major premises in the film for the gun kata's success is the mathematics...specificially the statistics "gathered" of typical firing patterns.

Given that there is a group here developing this, have they thrown this premise out? Since there is no mention of it, I'm thinking it was dismissed as not practical. Or is there statistical data actually being gathered via paintball/airsoft round hits?

[TrustKill]

it hasnt been dispensed of completely, morely just ruled out because of lack of technology.

-i cant think of a way to record and simulate all the possible results of gun fights like that w/o some kind of super computer and VR and motion capture stuff.

[EsbenF]

Well we did discuss this quite a bit, and we came up with some ways of gathering this data...

Some of the suggestions were;

1: "The Cleric's Chamber" - an idea devised by Rymel, where the cleric would stand in the middle of a room, with 12 "panels" surrounding him. These panels would have 3 sensors and 1 transmitter each. According to his training, he would then go through his katas using a laser-tag gun in each hand, firing away at the panels - if there's one panel he hits too late, it will fire back at him, and using sensors placed on his body, it will determine wether he got hit or not.

There can of course be programmed different excercises into this, varying on distribution and number of opponents.

... This chamber would be most useful in gathering the data, albeit a bit costly and circumsticial, being that we'd have to build the thing, use loads and loads of comples electronics, and then program the software for it ourselves.

With the number of people currently involved, this one is impossible.

2: www.bioval.net/store/detail.asp?Codice=TSV005

Kinda speaks for itself... A bunch of people buy these, and we go at it firing at each other till we drop... then when we un-drop, we go at it again (etc.) :-)

3: Consulting the usual institutions / agencies that are involved in gunfights. Most of these I am sure have accurate records of most of the gunfights, and most likely statistics to go with them...

However they're HIGHLY unlikely to want to share those with us, sadly.

And that, as they say, is that.

So we decided to just "think" our way through it; 'where is return fire from an opponent located here most likely to land?'-kind of stuff.
That's what we're using at the moment... Of course once we get to trying it out some, we will modify these "theories".

Hope that answers your question :-)

Maybe you have some ideas or thoughts you want to share?

-Esben F.

[wtf]

quoted and edited:

EsbenF said:

Well we did discuss this quite a bit, and we came up with some ways of gathering this data...

Some of the suggestions were;

1: "The Cleric's Chamber" -

2: www.bioval.net/store/detail.asp?Codice=TSV005

Kinda speaks for itself... A bunch of people buy these, and we go at it firing at each other till we drop... then when we un-drop, we go at it again (etc.) :-)

3: Consulting the usual institutions / agencies that are involved in gunfights. Most of these I am sure have accurate records of most of the gunfights, and most likely statistics to go with them...

Hope that answers your question :-)

Maybe you have some ideas or thoughts you want to share?

-Esben F.

That pretty much answers it. Thanks!

As for ideas or thoughts, I have some random ponderings. Motion capture is an intriguing thought, but I'm not sure how low cost it is at this point. I did a cursory Google search and came up with this company: www.metamotion.com/gypsy/gypsy-motion-capture-system.htm. The Gypsy system would be idea for simulated combat since it's wireless. Since you guys aren't looking for full emotive sort of animation, something like Poser should work well with it.

I like the Cleric Chamber idea for tracking the practitioner. I'd have to do research in how laser tag is set up to have any idea of what costs are involved. Tracking *opponents* fire proves to be more problematic. I guess data from option 2 would be the best...however how to track the actual trajectories in those scenarios seems difficult.

I have no paintball or airsoft experience, so I may be missing something. I'm looking at this from some background combination of fight choreagraphy and CG Technology.

[EsbenF]

Aikido said:

quoted and edited:
I guess data from option 2 would be the best...however how to track the actual trajectories in those scenarios seems difficult.

True that, but generally when you are hit you do tend to recognise who shoots you.

Otherwise there are a few more or less annoying ways of doing it. Like only half of the opponents firing actual pellets, the rest just firing "blanks" - this way, if you position the "live" guns in the right places, there will be no doubt who hit you.
Even if you know who hits you or not, you still know that you need to get that arm the hell away from where it was when it got hit... Then you attempt to adapt the kata you're currently practicing, and if that fails miserably, you modify the kata again.

We did also consider paintball at some point, in which case each oponnent could just use different colour.
... But the laundry involved with measuring thousands of gunfights does kinda discourage me he he ;D

The gypsy thing is interesting - I knew those things existed already, but didn't know any specific examples. If it is accurate enough we could use it to track who actually hits you in option #2. That would be easily seen on the computer afterwards (who is actually pointing their gun at the place you get hit, at the time you get hit).

I can tell you that the costs of building the cleric's chamber would be quite a lot... firsly you need a free room (duuh), then to aquire the sensors, transmitters, laser-guns, computer & wires would probably set you back on the wrong side of 3000$ I'm afraid. Added to this comes a software system that can register the hits , control when the transmitters fire back, plus on-the-fly aiming and adapting for the targets.

The whole idea of the cleric's chamber is that you wear sensors yourself, like the ones on the targets, and then the transmitters in the targets would be the same as the ones in the laser guns... Those would then aim slightly differently every time (always at your head / arms / torso) and the sensors you are wearing would then give away wether you get hit or not.

Well anyways, since I don't have any large free rooms in my appartment , or 3000+$ I'm not using for anything better... I'll leave that one on the blueprints untill I amass a inconciveable amount of green.

I'd like to build it up little by little one time - it would be applicable in many situations, if the aiming devices are advanced enough.... You could even practice those "Oh-shit-I'm-out-of-ammo" situations, where you have to go around to each of the oponnents and deal with them using melee combat.

Hey, if one was to put the effort into building that thing, you might as well make the targets so they can move slightly sideways and quite a bit back and forth between you and their standard position. That'd also make it a bit more interesting when you go melee.

But!

Let's not forget that a computer simulating combat will never prepare you sufficiently to unpredictable human beings. That's why I personally like the #2 option better.

[EsbenF]

Quick additional comment to the price I mentioned earlier - that's if you go to a "radio shack" and get all the little tiny electronic parts, like sensor eyes, transmitters, transmitter circuit boards etc. and then build the targets from scratch not using any pre-built units.

It was also based on the danish prices (in danish kroner) a few months back, when I last checked this kind of equipment out, and then roughly converted into $.

It could become much more if I forgot some parts or simply didn't know I'd need them (and that's not a totally unlikely scenario hehe).

[puff]

Hi folks,

Tripped across this site. I enjoyed Equilibrium, though I'm not the sort to get that devoted to *any* movie :-). I'm more of a martial arts aficianado than a movie fan, so the gun kata comments spurred me to register and post a couple of comments.

Paintball wouldn't be a valid source of statistics (though it sure is a lot of fun). While you may well be able to train some combat-useful skills by playing paintball (I won't venture an opinion here; if you want a valid opinion, ask somebody who gets shot at for a living and plays paintball), the positions and relationships are *definitely* not going to map. Paintballs don't fly as far, as fast, as straight, or as hard (a bush is hard cover) as real bullets.

While we're on paintball, a friend just let me know that he has an article accepted for publication by Action Pursuit Games, on training yourself in snapshooting. If/when I find out what month it's going to be published, I'll try to drop by and post. His article is based on some of the programs the British SAS and US military developed after WWII, during Vietnam after by counter-terrorist units.

On more formal sources of statistics. This information is out there, to some degree, if you do some legwork. Somebody mentioned R. Talsorian's _Cyberpunk_ game. The original (first edition) combat rules for that game, _Friday Night Fire Fight_, had some interesting comments about statistics gathered by law enforcement; most firefights take place at night, in poor visibility conditions (a dark alley), at close range.

As a side note, FNFF had extremely lethal firearms combat rules; though there were a few statistical oddities, for the most part it's one of my favorite firearms combat RPGs.

On a statistical basis for gun martial arts, I've heard a few odd mentions of modern firearms combat training regimens that somewhat resemble martial arts, but I doubt that any of them are anything like what you saw in Equilibrium. There is some historical basis for gun-oriented martial arts in japan, hojutsu, but again, not the same sort of thing as in the movie.

However, the movie has a distinctly japanese flavor of martial arts, and the general idea of the gun kata (statistical analysis of angles and positions) is somewhat similar in flavor to some japanese martial arts. Various japanese martial arts (Aikido Al can chime in here) try to dissect the flow of combat into angles of attack. This isn't exclusive to japanese martial arts (the guy who's training in filipino stick-fighting can attest to this) but a lot of japanese martial arts (especially as practiced in the mainstream today) tend to put a lot of emphasis on having "all the answers" in a preset network of moves that chain together.

Puff

[puff]

I meant to mention, when discussing the japanese martial arts. Japanese archery seems to have a lot of interesting material. Though I've never had an opportunity to study it, from what I've read they had a variety of exercises in shooting from odd angles, especially while mounted.

This general angle could probably be applied to gun combat interestingly, though I don't know if the payoff would be really worthwhile. You'd have to balance the improved effectiveness you'd get by learning to fire from odd stances against the improved effectiveness of just spending more time at the range, shooting at targets. I would expect that at some point you'd hit diminishing returns on conventional range shooting, but do most people get the opportunity to get to that point?

I think it'd be interesting to review curriculums for various handgun combat courses. I've only done a very modest amount of handgun stuff myself, but off the top of my head, here's what I might hope to see in such a course, aside from the obvious of safe gun handling and storage, gun maintenance, and basic marksmanship:

Physical Skill:

- snapshooting
- quick draw
- quick reload
- combat stance
- fire and movement

Mental Skills

- gunfight tactics
- small squad tactics
- using cover

The thing is, firearms are a means, not an end. Even highly-trained firearms users have more important things to worry about than funky physical manuevers, and those probably take precedence:

- Cops have to worry about beings cops (which is an odd combination of keeping the peace, enforcing the law, and holding things together until the paramedics, firefighters or other emergency personnel show up).

- Soldiers have to worry about accomplishing their mission objective and supporting their squad/platoon to that end.

- Bodyguards have to worry about keeping their client alive.

Even in the most pure gun combat situation you can think of, you have to worry about winning the war, not just the battle.

Puff

[TheJackal]

Guys the maths point was put foreward in the "I have the answer to the gun kata! Need some help" post jst above this 1. Check it out da guys got some good ideas. I also would like 2 point out that i agree that bodyguards are closest to having the environmental awareness of the clerics (them and the CIA), so if any1 can find out how they train that they shld post it so evry1 can get working on it. Gun katta or not that kind of awareness can be lifesaving.

[wtf]

puff said:

However, the movie has a distinctly japanese flavor of martial arts, and the general idea of the gun kata (statistical analysis of angles and positions) is somewhat similar in flavor to some japanese martial arts. Various japanese martial arts (Aikido Al can chime in here) try to dissect the flow of combat into angles of attack. This isn't exclusive to japanese martial arts (the guy who's training in filipino stick-fighting can attest to this) but a lot of japanese martial arts (especially as practiced in the mainstream today) tend to put a lot of emphasis on having "all the answers" in a preset network of moves that chain together.

Puff

Chiming in here (heh, you rang...)

In what I'm currently training in, most of our stances and approaches are on a straight axis in terms of how we stand. That is, we don't do any bending over or anything that would put us in jeopardy of losing our balance. There are quite a few other arts that operate within that same notion. O'Sensei (the founder of aikido) also developed the movements with a square, circle, or triangle in mind (if you can imagine the moves following the aforementioned geometric shape on the floor.) In aikido there is also the classic entry of getting off the line of attack by 45 degrees when moving in. I believe Preston does that when he charges the sweepers gun before he proceeds to throw him with it during the arrest of his wife. Man, I love that scene.

This is a gross simplification of the type of things I train in in terms of "patterns". How useful this will be for gunkata development I don't know except I did not see any change in stance that broke the central axis.

Puff, can you elaborate on tend to put a lot of emphasis on having 'all the answers'" in a preset network of moves that chain together. " I'm not quite getting the exact direction of that in order to make an adequate comment on it.

[Yobun]

I have taken a course in media production and video editing, i have all sorts of software at home and at the place i study for motion capture and editing...
i would be more than happy to help in the work on any footage anyone may have.
I myself have been watching many paintball scenes that i have recorded but, i feel youd need thousands upon thousands of footage just to even get a simple idea of the directory of fire...