Set Up for Real Results
What the advanced shooter needs to know to make simulator training carry over to the range.
Who This Is For
This document is written for shooters who already know what a good shot looks like — competitors, instructors and serious club shooters who want the simulator to reinforce what they do on the range rather than build a second, separate technique.
TrueClays runs real physics. But physics alone does not guarantee transfer. A handful of settings decide whether the hours you put in here make you better outside, or teach you something you then have to unlearn.
Work through the topics in order. Each one builds on the previous, and changing them out of sequence makes it very hard to tell what actually caused a change in your shooting.
One change at a time. Every setting below shifts where the correct sight picture sits. Change two at once and you can no longer tell which one moved your hits.
Before anything else
Shooter Profile: Height and Pattern
Set your height correctly
Every human being sees the horizon at their own eye level. That is not a preference — it is geometry, and it is the reference every angle in Skeet and Trap is judged against. If TrueClays places your eyes 10 cm too high or too low, the entire scene is rendered from the wrong viewpoint and every rising, falling and crossing angle is subtly wrong.
What the system needs is your eye height in your shooting stance — not your height standing upright with shoes on. Measure it the way you actually stand on the station, with your normal footwear and your normal posture.
With the correct value entered, the system shifts the whole scene so the horizon sits where your eyes actually are. Stance, gun mount and the angle of the target then feel exactly as they do at the range.
Measure, don't estimate. This is the single setting most often left at a default. If you share a machine, make sure you are shooting on your own profile and not the last person's.
Match the simulator to how your gun actually patterns
TrueClays cannot know where your gun shoots. Point of impact relative to point of aim is a property of your gun, your stock and your mount — and it is different for every shooter.
Shoot a paper pattern plate in real life first, at a known distance, and read where the centre of the pattern sits relative to your aiming point. Then enter that same relationship in TrueClays. Until you have done this, high-shooting guns and flat-shooting guns behave identically in the simulator, and they do not on the range.
See the separate video on pattern setup for the full procedure, including distance, plate marking and how to read a pattern that is not symmetrical.
The setting that separates good from great
Perceived Lead
TrueClays calculates lead from physics. Where the shot string and the clay have to meet is not an opinion — it is a computation. But what a shooter sees at the moment of firing is not the same as what the physics says, and it is not the same from one shooter to the next.
Interpupillary distance — the spacing between your pupils — is one of the drivers. It changes the visual relationship between the barrel, which is close to your eye, and the target, which is far away. The closer the focus area sits, the more noticeable this becomes, which is exactly the situation on a projected screen.
We have measured this across a wide range of shooters. World-class athletes frequently — though not always — see less distance between barrel and clay than everyone else. That is not a mistake on their part. It is how their visual system resolves the picture, and it works for them.
Put two shooters side by side and the scale of it becomes obvious: a beginner may perceive one metre as roughly twice the distance an experienced athlete perceives it. Same target, same physics, two different pictures. The physics is not negotiable, so the setting exists to move the simulator onto the picture the shooter actually has.
Where to find it
Shooter profile → Expert (left side menu) → Perceived Lead| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Range | −40 to +40 |
| Negative value | Less lead — the simulator now breaks the target with a shorter picture than physics alone would require |
| Positive value | More lead — the simulator now requires a longer picture |
| One unit equals | 1 millisecond of clay travel |
| In centimetres | Depends on clay speed. A Skeet clay at 25 m/s travels 2.5 cm per unit. A slower target moves less per unit — always think in milliseconds first. |
| Observed elite range | −20 to −18, in the athletes we have seen who read lead short |
Setting It for the Simulator
- ✔ Come straight from the field. Your references are freshest within a day or two of live shooting.
- ✔ Shoot a known target. Same station, same target, enough repetitions to see a pattern rather than a bad shot.
- ✔ Look for consistency, not misses. The signal is hitting the same wrong place every time — not scattered misses.
- ✔ Missing behind means less lead. Go negative. Missing in front means more lead — go positive.
- ✔ Convert the error to units. 30 cm on a 25 m/s Skeet clay is 12 units. Adjust by that amount.
- ✔ Re-test, then stop. If it is right, leave it alone.
Rules Before You Touch It
- ★ Only if you are certain. If you are not sure your technique is repeatable, this setting is not the problem.
- ★ Small increments only. A few units at a time, then shoot again.
- ★ Never mid-session. Change it, then shoot a fresh block of targets.
- ★ Write down what you changed. Including the date and why — you will want the trail.
- ★ You can always return to 0. Zero is true physics.
If a top shooter is consistently off in the simulator
An accomplished shooter who places the shot in the same spot every time is not shooting badly — the simulator is asking for a picture that is not the one their eyes give them. When we see that, we change the simulator, not the shooter.
The common case. A shooter who reads lead short applies a shorter picture than the physics wants, and drops behind the clay. Every miss lands in the same place, just behind. That shooter needs less lead in the simulator: go negative. The athletes we have measured in this group settle around −18.
The mirror case. A shooter whose misses all sit in front of the clay is being asked for too little lead, and needs a positive value by the same logic.
In both cases, work out the error in centimetres, divide by the distance the clay covers per unit, and adjust by that many units. A shooter who needs 30 cm less on a 25 m/s Skeet clay goes to −12, then re-tests immediately.
Using it the other way: fixing a real-life habit
The setting also works as a deliberate training tool. If you know you carry too much lead on the range — you "nag" the front edge of the clay, breaking chips off the leading side instead of centring it — you can train against it here.
Set a small negative value, train for a day, then go back to the range. The simulator will refuse to reward the extra lead, and your references re-programme surprisingly quickly. For a habitual 20 cm of extra lead on a Skeet clay, the arithmetic gives 8 units — but start around −6 and let the correction come gradually. Deliberate under-correction is safer than overshooting a reference you have spent years building.
Reset afterwards. A value used to correct a habit is a deliberate mis-calibration. Once the habit is gone, return the setting to your true value — otherwise you will train the error in the opposite direction.
Topic 2 — Non-negotiable for reaction shooting
NVT Is Not Optional
NVT was built for one purpose: to make your eye movement behave the way it does on a real range. Without it, the screen offers information a real clay does not — and your brain will happily learn to use it. That produces a shooter who is excellent in the simulator and no better outside it.
NVT in TrueClays is deliberately a little harder than real life. Train against the harder version, and the range feels easier. We have measured the difference between a good shot and a bad shot at as little as 30 milliseconds of timing. A shooter who goes on the flash — moving before they know where the clay is actually heading — misses. NVT teaches you to shoot at the moment you have enough information, and not before.
Why the defaults are what they are
Clay Speed and Advanced Reaction
Default clay speed, relative to real life
Advanced Reaction, by default
Projector refresh — fast, but still not continuous
Slower on purpose
TrueClays runs clays at 94% of real-life speed by default. This is not a limitation — it is a training decision. Training slightly slow builds correct movement, and speeding up afterwards is easy. Training too fast builds a rushed, compensating technique, and slowing that back down is close to impossible.
Advanced Reaction: the first few metres
On top of the overall speed, Advanced Reaction is on by default and slows the clay further over the first couple of metres of travel.
The reason is the display itself. Even a fast projector at 240 Hz is still flashing frames rather than showing continuous motion, and the brain does not connect those frames into movement as quickly as it does with a real clay in the air. With Advanced Reaction switched off, we consistently see shooters break targets sooner in real life than in the simulator — measured as distance from the trap — because in the simulator it simply takes longer to register that the clay is moving at all.
Advanced Reaction compensates for that gap, so the point at which you commit to the target matches the range instead of lagging behind it.
Speed is something you read, not something you compensate for. A slower clay needs slightly less lead, but the difference is small — on a one-metre lead, 94% costs you about 6 cm, and you would still centre the target. Experienced shooters do this all the time on the range: a clay breaking into the wind flies differently and they simply register "this one is a little slower" and break it anyway. Provided Perceived Lead is set correctly, the default speed will not cost you a target.
Once the profile is set — the part most shooters skip
Change the Environment, Often
The brain is very good at solving a problem it has already seen. Shoot the same background, the same trap sound, the same still air and the same break threshold for a few weeks and you are no longer reading a target — you are replaying a solution you memorised. The score goes up. The skill does not.
This is the single biggest difference between a shooter who trains a lot on a simulator and a shooter who gets better on one. A target you have seen a thousand times tests your memory. A target you have not seen tests your shooting.
So change things. Deliberately, and often — every session if you can.
Backgrounds
Sky, terrain, light and contrast decide how quickly you pick the clay up and where you acquire it. Train against one background and you learn that background. Rotate them, including the ones you find difficult.
Thrower sound
Sound tells you when, and often where. If the same cue arrives in the same place every time, you start shooting off the sound instead of the clay. Change it — and shoot without it too.
Wind — level and gusting
Wind changes the flight path, so today's clay is not yesterday's clay. Gusting makes it non-repeatable, which is exactly the point: you have to read the target instead of predicting it.
Minimum Force
Raise the force required to break a clay and a marginal edge hit no longer counts. You stop being rewarded for chipping and start being told, honestly, where your pattern actually was.
Stations and order
Do not always start where you finished last time. Changing the order breaks the rhythm the brain builds and forces every target to be shot on its own merits.
Time of day and light
A clay against a low sun is a different clay. Practising only in perfect visibility is practising only the easy half of a competition day.
This is separate from calibration. Height, pattern, Perceived Lead, NVT and clay speed are set once and left alone — they define what "correct" means. Background, sound, wind and Minimum Force are meant to be moved constantly. Do not confuse the two: if you change your calibration every session you will never know what you are shooting against.
Raising Minimum Force
Minimum Force is how much of the pattern has to reach the clay before it breaks. Left low, the simulator is generous: a thin edge of the pattern chips the target and the scoreboard calls it a hit. That is comfortable, and it hides a shot that was 20 cm off centre.
Raise it and only a properly centred pattern breaks the clay. Scores drop for a session or two — then technique tightens, because the feedback finally matches what a real target does at longer distance or in a stiff crosswind. Advanced shooters should be training above the default most of the time, and dropping back only when working on something else entirely.
Use the Features — They Are There For You
- ★ Every setting in the system exists because it changes what you learn. Nothing in TrueClays is decoration.
- ★ Comfortable training is finished training. If the session feels easy and predictable, the environment has stopped teaching you anything.
- ★ Vary the environment, keep the calibration. Change what the target does; never change what "hit" means mid-block.
- ★ Train the conditions you fear. Bad light, a gusting crosswind, an unfamiliar background — these are the ones that cost targets at a competition.
The Order to Do It In
Every step below changes the reference the next one is judged against. Work down the list.
- 1. Enter your correct height.
- 2. Pattern your gun on paper, then match the setting in TrueClays.
- 3. Confirm NVT is on.
- 4. Set clay speed and Advanced Reaction, then leave them alone.
- 5. Shoot a known target and only now consider Perceived Lead.
- 6. With calibration settled, start varying background, thrower sound, wind and Minimum Force between sessions.
If in doubt, go back to defaults and start again.
Questions About Your Setup?
Perceived Lead in particular is worth setting with someone watching. If you coach a squad, run a club, or are preparing for a season, get in touch and we will walk through the profile with you.
Contact TrueClays