Esports once thought of as a stagnant and skill-less hobby has emerged as the world’s fastest-growing sport and has attracted a wide variety of players and viewers of all different ages. It is now considered a competitive sport and high schools and colleges now have teams and are competing. Those players who rise to the professional level of Esports compete in tournaments and leagues all around the world. Successful pro gamers can earn millions if they are skilled enough and have enough training.
Today’s generation of pro gamers grew up playing on systems such as Nintendo 64 and the original Playstation system. Fast forward to today and these elite-professional level gamers are competing on fast, crystal clear systems like PCs, Xbox Series X, and the Playstation 5. Players must be at the top of their game due to the evolution of games and gaming systems. The increase in the visual complexity of games combined with the enhanced speed of game objectives and actions has made being an elite and successful professional gamer even more difficult.
Many professional gamers play shooting games in which victory is often achieved in a matter of minutes. In this time, a player must choose the correct order of actions and have extremely quick reactions. For a gamer to compete at the highest level of professional gaming they usually need to spend time every day to hone their reaction time and in-game vision. Esports is a fast-paced and visually demanding sport, and having superior vision can quickly separate the average gamer from a professional gamer. The eyes are being used every day by professional gamers. Vision training can strengthen vision, reaction time, and decision making which can improve a gamer’s level of play.
Visual alignment is your ability to aim both eyes accurately at a given target. With proper alignment, gamers are able to focus on the intended action which increases the accuracy and precision of one’s aim and movements. Alignment comes into play most often in shooter games, in which the player’s objective is to shoot an opponent. Oftentimes there are several opponents on one team who are moving in different directions while also shooting at you. Alignment comes into play in first-person shooter games specifically when a player is aiming down sight on their gun.
In this Call of Duty clip above, you see the player aiming down sight on the sniper. When doing so the screen zooms in on a given area and this is where alignment is used. When zoomed in with the sniper the player tracks the moving enemy and aligns the center of the scope onto the target. The player hits with his first shot, then misses the next, and then finishes with a successful 3rd shot kill. Strengthening visual alignment can help with a player’s aim when shooting a weapon wherever the target may be. In this case, the player does a great job at quickly aligning the scope to the target and getting 2 kills out of his 3 shots taken.
We head to the popular battle royal game, Apex Legends, for our next example of visual alignment. This player is in a tight position extremely close to the enemies. As you can see, the player does a great job at aligning the center of the scope right onto the targets and is able to clutch up and kill both remaining enemies. In this scenario not only does the player show great alignment skills while shooting the gun, but also while throwing grenades at the enemies. The player throws the grenades and aligns them in a strategic spot where they know the enemies are and will be, even behind a pole. Enhancing alignment through vision training will help make plays like this happen more consistently on a game-to-game basis.
Vision and reaction time are the two most important things for a competitive gamer who wants to play at a high level, which is why Vizual Edge vision training can absolutely be the difference-maker in the competitive Esports world. Vision training is used to improve one’s ability to make accurate eye movements. Vision is something that can be learned and trained, but only with proper guidance. The visual system relies on past experiences in order to make judgments and anticipations for current and future experiences. Vision training needs to be consistent, customized and progressive, to ensure improvement.
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Collin Capodice
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