Aim Trainer

The two numbers, and why both are shown

Time per target is the headline: total time divided by thirty. Between 500 and 700 milliseconds is typical with a mouse, and under 400 is fast.

Accuracy is the one usually left out, and leaving it out changes the incentive completely. If only speed is reported, the optimal strategy is to click wildly in the target's general direction until something connects — which produces a better number and worse aim. A 550ms run at 62 per cent accuracy is a worse result than a 620ms run at 96, and you cannot see that without the second figure.

What is actually being measured

Mostly a well-described relationship called Fitts's law: the time to reach a target depends on how far away it is and how big it is, and it does so predictably. A target twice as far takes longer; a target twice as wide takes less.

Two consequences follow, and they explain most of the variance between attempts:

• Where the last target was matters. A run where targets happen to appear close together is genuinely faster, through no skill of yours. Over thirty targets this mostly averages out, which is why it is thirty rather than ten.
• Screen size changes the result. A larger arena means longer travel. Comparing a laptop run against an external monitor is not comparing like with like.

Mouse against touch

These are different tasks and the tool records which one you did. A finger occludes the target it is reaching for, travels differently from a cursor, and has no equivalent of resting your hand near where you expect the next target. Touch runs are typically slower and the two are not comparable — so the result line says which input you used, rather than quietly filing both in the same history.

Will this make you better at games?

A little, and considerably less than the genre implies.

Clicking static targets trains one narrow component of aiming: the ballistic movement to a known point. It transfers only partly to tracking a moving target, and not at all to the target selection, timing and prediction that most of a game actually consists of. Commercial aim trainers make strong claims here; the evidence for transfer to in-game performance is thin.

What it is genuinely good for is a consistent, repeatable measure of pointer control — useful for comparing a new mouse against your old one, checking whether a sensitivity change helped, or seeing what tiredness does to you. Those are all within-person comparisons, which is exactly what the history strip is for.

Practical notes

Targets never appear closer than 8 per cent to the arena edge, so one cannot be clipped and become unhittable — which would silently inflate your time. They stay at least 44 pixels across on a phone, the smallest comfortable tap size. And each new target takes keyboard focus, so the run is completable without a pointing device at all.

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