Room requirements

Almost any room with do

You need a room with one wall free from about 1m upwards. DryFire will handle flat vertical walls or sloping walls (in a converted attic for example.)

Wall details

• Width: 3m - 5m (10 - 16 feet).
• Height: 2.2m - 4m (7 - 12 feet).
• Distance from wall (where you stand to shoot): 2.25m - 3m (7 - 10 feet)
• No direct lighting or reflective material on the wall.
• The wall should be clear from about 1m above the floor. Radiators, chairs, beds, sofas, etc. are fine - they won't get in the way.

Other information about the room

• Don't try overhead shots if the room is less than 3m high - your shotgun will hit the ceiling. (We know shooters who practice overheads shots on their knees!)
• Wall/ceiling type: any reasonably smooth surface such as paint or wallpaper. A pale colour is preferred to a dark one.

  The system will not work with a rough surface or one which absorbs rather than reflects light - such as curtains, tapestries or carpets.

• The simulator should be between 1m and 2m (3 feet and 6 feet) away from the centre of the wall.
• The simulator should be between 0.75m and 1m above the floor. A tripod bush is provided in the base of the simulator.

  Some skeet layouts require that the simulator is tilted backwards by about 45 degrees - a tripod is best for this.

• The shooter should stand behind the simulator - between 2m and 3m (6 feet and 10 feet) from the wall.
• There must be no direct source of infrared light (sunlight, spotlights) that can be seen by the simulator while it is projecting the target path on the wall. Normal background lighting is perfectly acceptable though curtains should be drawn during bright sunlight.

Wall backgrounds that will not work

• Dark green. Infra-red light is absorbed by dark green backgrounds so your shots will not be seen by the simulator.
• Concrete, brick and other rough surfaces. Both the target laser and the IR laser fired from your gun may will be lost in the pits in concrete or brick.

Using a screen

A wall is best but the system has been used extremely effectively with a large screen - 3m x 3m or larger - where the wall surface is not suitable or where there is no uninterrupted flat space to use (wall broken by windows, doors, chimneys etc.)

An ideal setup

All simulator measurements are taken from the top centre of the spirit level.

All shooter measurements are taken from the location of the shooter's eye when in the mount position.

• Simulator 1.5m from the wall.
• Simulator 0.75m from the floor (on a tripod)
• Shooter 2.5m from the wall - standing directly behind the simulator with full gun movement left/right and up/down.

For trap disciplines, call a few targets then use a strip of masking tape on the wall to mark the location of the trap house as a reference point for hold position. The target laser movement starts from the trap position (lower down, inside the trap house - the laser won't actual appear until there is nothing between it and the shooter) so for left-going targets it will appear to the left of the trap house location and for right-going targets it will appear to the right.

Is there an ideal wall width?

This diagram shows two positions for the shooter for a given width of wall. The simulator remains in the same position in both cases.

It is obvious that position 2 offers a much narrower maximum swing angle than position 1.

Accurate distances

The spreadsheet table below shows the maximum width of wall required for a worst-case crosser such as Skeet station 4 where the high house is approximately 55 degrees to the left of the shooter and the low house is approximately 55 degrees to the right giving a total worst-case swing of 110 degrees.

Position of the simulator

The table above shows the wall width required with the shooter at different distances from the wall.

The position of the simulator is not critical but would normally be in front of or to one side of the shooter.

What is critical is that the position of the shooter and the position of the simulator are defined accurately to the software using the "Simulator settings" option of the "Configuration menu".

With DryFire the rule is simple:

You can stand further from the wall if you wish but if you want accurate angles (like the 55 degrees either side shown in the table), you should stand fairly close to the simulator. For a given width of wall, the further back you stand, the narrower the angle between the extreme positions of the target - and the less swing you will have.

If you are using DryFire for serious practice you should stand close behind the simulator so that your body movements are exactly the same as on the range.

If you are just having fun you can stand further back - but don't go beyond 3/4 metres (10/13 feet) from the wall or the camera in the simulator may not see your shot.