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/Known Dope/3 min read

Your Shooting Position Is Moving Your Point of Impact. We Measured It Across 32 AR-15 Platforms.

Bipod loading and leg preload shift your AR-15 point of impact, sometimes by over a milliradian. We turned Reloading All Day's laser-measured test footage into an interactive visualizer across 32 platforms and shooting positions.

AR-15rifle accuracypoint of impactPOI shiftbipoddata

Watch the test first

How much does your shooting position actually move your point of impact?

Most shooters never put a number on it. You know loading the bipod matters. You know rail flex is real. But how much, in measurable terms, across different platforms, in different prone positions? Almost nobody quantifies it. Reloading All Day (RAD) did, and we built a way to see it.

How RAD measured it

The method is what makes this trustworthy. RAD clamps a laser to the barrel and zeros the optic to that laser, so the reticle and the barrel start in perfect agreement. Then he applies bipod preload and leg loading the way you actually shoot, and watches the laser walk off zero on a mil grid in real time. The distance it moves is the point-of-impact shift, read directly in milliradians.

Through-the-scope view from RAD's test: a barrel-mounted laser plotted against a milliradian grid, with a picture-in-picture of the shooter loading the bipod.
The laser walks across the mil grid as the shooter loads the platform. That movement is the POI shift. Footage by Reloading All Day.

The finding

POI shift from shooting position alone isn't small, and it isn't consistent across platforms. On RAD's data, shift ranged from effectively zero on a rigid reference up past 1.6 milliradians on the most position-sensitive setup, driven by where and how the bipod loads against the handguard. Same shooter discipline, same fundamentals. The platform and the position move the round.

That's the kind of thing you can feel at distance but rarely see laid out. Now you can see it.

What we built

We took RAD's measurements and built the AR-15 POI Shift Visualizer, an interactive tool you can actually explore. It lets you:

  • Browse all 32 platforms, sorted and searchable
  • See barrel point-of-impact shift plotted on a reticle against a true zero, in milliradians
  • Step through every shooting position: prone bipod front and rear, preload variations, single-leg loading
  • Compare two platforms side by side
  • Read each call's magnitude and direction so you can see exactly where the round goes
The AR-15 POI Shift Visualizer interface: a platform selected on the left, its measured impact plotted as a green dot off the red zero on a milliradian reticle, with the offset and magnitude listed below.
The visualizer: pick a platform and position, and the measured impact moves off zero on the reticle. Data by Reloading All Day, tool by Known Dope.

It's free to explore. Open the visualizer →

Follow Reloading All Day

If you shoot AR platforms and you're not following RAD, fix that. This test is theirs, and so is the credit:

Why we built it

Known Dope is a couple of gun enthusiasts building the tools we wished we had: a place where your builds, your parts, and your range data live together. Tools like this are part of that. The community already generates good data; we make it usable. This is the first one, and there will be more.

If that sounds like something you want, get in early. We're building it in the open.

The POI Shift Visualizer is powered by Known Dope LLC. Test footage and data by Reloading All Day, used with credit. All measurements are theirs.

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