The last Scav tech (and the last review of tech in the nerdsourced reviews of Oblivion) is a short one. During the drone assault on the Scav compound, we get a glimpse of the reticle used by the rebel Sykes as he tries to target a weak spot in a drone’s backside.
The reticle has a lot of problems, given Sykes’ task. The data on the periphery is too small to be readable. There are some distracting lines from the augmentation boxes which, if they’re just pointing to static points along the hairline, should be removed. The grid doesn’t seem to serve much purpose. There aren’t good differentiations among the ticks to be able to quickly subitize subtensions. (Read: tell how wide a thing is compared to the tick marks.) (You know, like with a ruler.)
The reticle certainly looks sci-fi, but real-world utility seems low.
The nicest and most surprising thing though is that the bullseye is the right shape and size of the thing he’s targeting. Whatever that circle thing is on the drone (a thermal exhaust port, which seem to be ubiquitously weak in spherical tech) this reticle seems to be custom-shaped to help target it. This may be giving it a lot of credit, but in a bit of apologetics, what if it had a lot of goal awareness, and adjusted the bullseye to match the thing he was targeting? Could it take on a tire shape to disable a car? Or a patella shape to help incapacitate a human attacker? That would be a very useful reticle feature.
It could be a lower tech bit of UI design: These drones are the main thing they fight, so they’ve customized the weapon to help fight them. You don’t need a generic sight if you always shoot the same thing, so why not adjust it to the task?
Well thought out. Specialization of weaponry would be very useful in that story world, and easy to dismiss if they’re using the weapon for something else.