recommended ballistic program for IPhone

[Rob01]

Hmm odd. All I use and found 4dof very accurate. More accurate than my old stand by JBM.

 

[kelbro]

Try saving a bullet trajectory with "no wind" as a favorite. Then open it and apply a wind condition by hitting the wind symbol at the top of the page. What does it display as the influence of the wind on the point of impact at your zero distance and your required wind adjustment to compensate for this new wind? Try the same with the HUD. IMHO there are issues with this app that the developer fails to recognize.

Interesting. Never considered using the app for wind. Only use it for my clicks switching back and forth between distances.

 

[INTJ]

Ballistic AE

 

[mensajd]

[stuff deleted] I will say that if you want to try one for free to see if you’ll use it or how they work the Lapua app is pretty simple to use and it’s free. No as feature packed as others but for the average weekend warrior is pretty darn good and will at least let you know if you want to pay for a better one.

Common software development terminology:
Alpha software - not yet feature complete.
Beta software - feature complete but not free of material bugs.

The first few releases of the Lapua app were not even alpha quality software. I’m sure it’s resolved now but I don’t invest time and effort in instances where the software QA is so poor. I’m a big fan of their brass though...

 

[Capt. Oblivious]

I used Shooter for a couple years after using Strelok Pro and really enjoyed shooter but when I got a new Iphone a had a issue getting Shooter loaded on it and decided to give Hornadys 4Dof a go. I only shoot red bullets in one rifle and Bergers in the rest but for the last 6 or so months that I have been using the app im very happy with the results. Took a little tweaking of the "Axial form factor" but after getting that dialed in its been spot on to where I shoot

 

[Hohn]

Try saving a bullet trajectory with "no wind" as a favorite. Then open it and apply a wind condition by hitting the wind symbol at the top of the page. What does it display as the influence of the wind on the point of impact at your zero distance and your required wind adjustment to compensate for this new wind? Try the same with the HUD. IMHO there are issues with this app that the developer fails to recognize.

There are definitely issues with Ballistic that make me scratch my head. Other apps, too.

For example, why is there no “recently used” selection? How hard would it be to keep me from having to scroll forever or dive the layers of menus?

The developers will tell you they have a “favorites” function. But if you are doing lots of comparisons, you’d have to have dozens and dozens of favorites, which defeats the purpose. And what if I don’t want to repeatedly recall something, I just want to check 2-3 times and forget it? A simple “recently used” will be HUGE in terms of low friction.

But I think by far the biggest failure of these apps is in the targeting function. Many will calculate group size and such. But they are next to useless for target interpretation. The apps could *easily* be made to superimpose on any group a circle or ellipse if probability based on that group. Why can’t I take a photo of a group, place the reference markers and impacts, and have the app place a circle or ellipse of 50% or 90% or 95% probability around it to represent the statistical value of that group? Group size alone is like ES alone for speed: useless. Because you do not know in a 100rd string if the “extreme” shits will fall within the first 5, the 5th group of five or at shots #3 and #66.

This software could do powerful things if the developers had an inkling.

 

[Longtrain]

I have used a number of them, now I use BulletDropPlus, kinda simple, but I have found comeups very accurate.

 

[SGK]

There are definitely issues with Ballistic that make me scratch my head. Other apps, too.

For example, why is there no “recently used” selection? How hard would it be to keep me from having to scroll forever or dive the layers of menus?

The developers will tell you they have a “favorites” function. But if you are doing lots of comparisons, you’d have to have dozens and dozens of favorites, which defeats the purpose. And what if I don’t want to repeatedly recall something, I just want to check 2-3 times and forget it? A simple “recently used” will be HUGE in terms of low friction.

But I think by far the biggest failure of these apps is in the targeting function. Many will calculate group size and such. But they are next to useless for target interpretation. The apps could *easily* be made to superimpose on any group a circle or ellipse if probability based on that group. Why can’t I take a photo of a group, place the reference markers and impacts, and have the app place a circle or ellipse of 50% or 90% or 95% probability around it to represent the statistical value of that group? Group size alone is like ES alone for speed: useless. Because you do not know in a 100rd string if the “extreme” shits will fall within the first 5, the 5th group of five or at shots #3 and #66.

This software could do powerful things if the developers had an inkling.

There's a big difference between lacking certain functionality (which one could debate the necessity of) and bugs which mean the app simply outputs incorrect results.

[That said, I mentioned something similar to your suggestion to Adam re his Shotmarker. Some of us understand statistical confidence intervals with respect to velocity data and their implications for estimating underlying behaviors and determine statistical difference - or not - between sample strings. Something similar could be done by Shotmarker to calculate each shot's impact error from the mid point of a group and from that string of deviations we could calculate just how much confidence we can have, statistically speaking, in underlying (as opposed to sample string) group size.]

 

[Hohn]

There's a big difference between lacking certain functionality (which one could debate the necessity of) and bugs which mean the app simply outputs incorrect results.

[That said, I mentioned something similar to your suggestion to Adam re his Shotmarker. Some of us understand statistical confidence intervals with respect to velocity data and their implications for estimating underlying behaviors and determine statistical difference - or not - between sample strings. Something similar could be done by Shotmarker to calculate each shot's impact error from the mid point of a group and from that string of deviations we could calculate just how much confidence we can have, statistically speaking, in underlying (as opposed to sample string) group size.]

The simplest way I can I express my idea is that I should see a 95% confidence interval ellipse (or whatever alpha level defined by the user) and see it shrink as I add shots to the group (i.e. larger sample size reducing uncertainty). The ability to account for sampling error and small sample sizes has been known to mathematics for 100 years. Having this absent from an app is a real head-scratcher for me.

And it should be very easy to composite multiple groups together since internally the apps is just converting each impact marker to a 2D XY coordinate relative to the POA. There's no reason each should should have to be linked to a single photo. The photo only exists to calibrate the XY. Once that's done, the coordinates should be saved as serialized shots in a database.

A well-engineered app should be able to show you a composite of every shot you've over captured if you want to set it up that way, and and show the true accuracy with a sample size of hundreds or even thousands.

 

[SGK]

Sure. Maybe.

But I'd be happy to have Ballistic AE work correctly for the functionality it already has in it before the developer expands it. I don't use Ballistic AE for its group analysis.

 

[ppknut]

While not strictly a ballistics program, I have found this app to be useful for plotting shots:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/targetview/id899764983