Aim Trainer

How to use the aim trainer

1. Choose a Target size: Large (easy), Medium or Small (hard).
2. Press Start (30 s), or click or tap inside the target area.
3. A round target appears at a random place. Click or tap it as quickly as you can: a new target appears as soon as you hit one, always some distance away from the last one.
4. Clicks that miss count against your accuracy, so aim before you click.
5. After 30 seconds the round ends and the summary shows your score. Stop (or Escape) ends a round early without saving a record.

The round also stops by itself if you switch to another tab, so an interruption never produces a bad score.

What the numbers mean

• Hits is the number of targets you clicked during the round. It is your score, and Best (hits) keeps your record for each target size in this browser.
• Accuracy is hits divided by all your clicks in the area: 30 hits and 10 misses give 75 %.
• Time per target is the average time between a target appearing and your hit. It combines your reaction time, the time to move the pointer and the time to settle on the target.
• Time left counts down from 30 seconds.

Speed and precision pull in opposite directions. Clicking wildly raises your hits a little but lowers your accuracy; the best players keep accuracy above 90 % while cutting the time per target.

Choosing a target size

Target size changes the difficulty far more than it seems. Fitts’s law, a well-established model of pointing, says the time to reach a target grows with the logarithm of the distance divided by the target’s width. Halving the target size therefore adds a roughly constant amount of time to every movement. Start with Large (easy) to learn a smooth motion, then move down once your accuracy is steady. Compare records only within the same size, and on the same screen, because a larger window also means longer movements.

Tips for better aim

• Move in one motion. Aim for a single fast movement that ends on the target, instead of many small corrections.
• Keep your eyes ahead. Look at the new target the moment it appears; your hand follows your eyes.
• Find a comfortable sensitivity. If you overshoot constantly, lower your mouse or touchpad speed in your system settings; if you need several movements to cross the area, raise it.
• Use your arm on big moves. Gamers often move the mouse with the forearm for large distances and use the wrist and fingers for fine adjustment.
• Practise little and often. Several short rounds a day improve consistency more than one long session.

Touch, pen and accessibility

The target area works with a mouse, a touchpad, a pen or a finger. On touch screens, a few pixels of tolerance are added around each target because a fingertip is less precise than a mouse pointer. The game itself needs a pointing device; the buttons and the size menu can be used with a keyboard. When your system asks for reduced motion, targets appear without their growing animation and hit markers do not expand.