Would a Terminator need or for that matter want a gun with a laser pointer? It's a machine programmed to kill, if anything his aim should be good enough that it doesn't need the laser. The laser might even be a hinderance because it could tip off your target that you're aiming at them. And it did know about the laser aimer, because he mentioned it to the store owner.
sharePersonally I think it was a fairly new gun at the time that James Cameron and the others wanted to advertise in their movie. But you are right. The laser pointer is kind of pointless for a killing machine. Like I said I think using that specific gun was just product placement more than anything else.
shareI don't think he necessarily needed the laser sight. He was just asking for everything he saw behind the counter, up until the point where he asked for the plasma rifle to which the guy replied, "just what you see pal."
It would be different if he asked for the laser sight separately then put it on, but as it stands he was just asking for what he saw,
Probably not, but there's an argument that a properly sighted laser target pointer makes him more effective and requires less effort, just like for people.
Presumably the Terminator's eyes aren't some kind of bug eye, capable of multiple fields of view and focal lengths simultaneously. Using iron sights would shrink its field of view to gain an accurate sight picture, a small but legitimate tactical limitation.
This is all nitpicking, of course, as his vision is probably good enough to track and correct for desired point of impact in real time.
It's a computer. It can track things. It can project vectors to its targets. It can calculate bullet impact points and even take wind resistance and velocity into account, curvature caused by gravity, every darn thing. Otherwise, it's not a very good computer.
Therefore, it would instantly (in our thinking) know the exact impact point of any bullet it can fire from any gun it is holding at any point, every single millisecond of time, constantly and consistently, and it would be accurate information. If it moves its gun hand ever so slightly, a new calculation would instantly tell the new impact point. So it can point at anything and know with perfect precision where the bullets will hit before even pulling the trigger.
It really doesn't need any laser sights.
I think the explanation is that 'it was cool, new tech' at the time, and someone wanted to showcase it in the movie for 'futuristic' effect or something, who knows. It's demonstrated and showcased in the movie like they're trying to SELL us those damn things... it's pretty friggin' ridiculous.
Not that the terminator ever seemed to worry about being detected, it just shot a hail of bullets to every single surrounding target every time it started shooting, so if there's a red dot on the target or not, wouldn't really have mattered.
But even though the terminator can make near instantaneous ballistic calculations, it still has to mechanically aim the gun by aligning the metal sights.
I’m just thinking that even the terminator would be faster and more accurate to a degree if it had a less complicated aiming process.
Better to be safe than sorry.
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