
A question that lots of Counter Strike: Global Offensive players and I myself once asked is “Does changing in-game crosshair affect your gameplay and aiming skills?”. In my opinion, the answer is Yes, at least I can feel it.

Back then in CS 1.6, there were only three crosshair options available: Small, Medium, and Large. And you had to choose one of them. As a former CS 1.6 player, I used to play with Large. For me, I felt like it was much easier to spray with a large crosshair, while I could still maintain the accuracy when tapping with guns like AK-47. So I did try to replicate that crosshair to CS:GO crosshair when I made the switch.

At first it was ok, because I could play with what I was used to. However, later I soon realized a problem. The problem was the new hitbox in CS:GO (okay, there might be other problems like the interp commands) it is much smaller than CS 1.6 and your shots need to be much much more accurate. After tweaking and trying a lot of things, I decided to get a new crosshair. Then I took a look at what professional players are using. What I noticed is, most of them use small size, small gap crosshairs. Even one of my favourite player since 1.6 time, the living legend NIP f0rest changed his crosshair from Large to something like Small! So this must be something.

So I gave it a try. Not a big change I thought, the only thing I was afraid is how would it affect my spray control skill.

For the first few days I found it was quite hard to aim because the new crosshair really did something to my brain, something weird. Needed more time to get 100 headshots on the map aim_botz than before, like 2 minutes compared to 1 and 45 secs. Despite that, I started playing better in MM & PUGs games with lots of improvements. The spray control part is a bit different but I can adapt to it easily. (Note: I wrote a post showing guns spray patterns and how to control the recoil here)

Small changes in size & gap of the crosshair make a big difference. I’m now happy that I changed.

If you also want to change your crosshair, my tip is to try the settings of you favourite player first, then alter it. I know it is preference but you still need some basics, and a professional player’s crosshair is a good start. If you already found your favourite one but still want some change, try to make minor adjustments only. Like changing size with cl_crosshairsize, changing gap with cl_crosshairgap, or make an outlined crosshair, and so on. Type cl_crosshair in console and use Tab on your keyboard, you will find all the settings you want. Tweak it! Just remember to backup your current Counter Strike: Global Offensive config somewhere in case you need to restore later.

There is nothing like the best crosshair so just try something you feel comfortable with and make minor changes if needed.

Here I list a few websites and resources that you can use to try different crosshair settings:

http://tools.dathost.net -> CS:GO crosshair generator

http://csgocrosshairs.com/teams -> CS:GO professional crosshair collections -> This is a good resource but I think it is not updated frequently. Still good to see common crosshair settings among pro players.

The best way IMO is to use this map: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=308490450 . Crashz did a great work and I recommend this workshop map for everyone. Full of pro players settings, everything is super easy to tweak, updated frequently, and most importantly you can see the actual changes for in-game crosshair right away!

Just one thing to remember, CS:GO crosshair looks different with different resolutions! So if you try a pro player’s crosshair settings but it doesn’t look like what you see on his stream, take a look at your resolution. If this happens, just alter the settings with all the crosshair commands.

After you get your desired crosshair, make a config file with these commands listed below (by crashz), exec it, and backup all your crosshair settings shown in the console. Now you’re good to go.

clear

echo “********************************************************************************”;

echo “/YOUR CURRENT CROSSHAIR SETTINGS: /(just copy paste into your cfg/////by. crashz”;

echo “********************************************************************************”;

echo

echo

echo

echo

developer 2

con_filter_enable 1

con_filter_text cl_crosshair

host_writeconfig //

con_filter_text cl_fix

host_writeconfig //

developer 0

con_filter_enable 0