Yes, it’s called trigonometry. Mby you’ve heard of it before?
www.calculator.net
Care to poke at why that is? I would think the time in the air affects trajectory more than horizontal distance traveled. Why does vertical travel not affect trajectory?
It does. With a 50° downward shot angle the horizontal distance would be 86 yards, but line of sight would be ~112 yards and time of flight would need to be accounted and solved for. That's why there's an arrow velocity input in the software of the Sig Kilo archery mode. No different than a ballistic solution for a rifle.
The typical method of angle compensation used in rangefinders is simple trigonometry based on line of sight distance (the hypotenuse of the triangle) and angle. The laser provides LOS distance and a built-in inclinometer provides the angle. Using those two numbers, the rangefinder calculates and displays the horizontal distance (i.e., the angle-compensated distance). This method works well enough in most situations, but it is subject to some amount of error because it doesn't account for the effect of increased air resistance (due to longer flight path) when taking an angled shot vs. a horizontal shot. There are some newer, more sophisticated rangefinders (Leupold Full Draw, Sig Kilo) that claim they account for this discrepancy and provide a more accurate angle-compensated range.
Basically with the short ranges in archery the affects of the air resistance don't amount to much or not enough to matter. It will start to show up eventually at the extremes but those extreme shots rarely if ever show up in real life. It's been way too long since we all tested this that I honestly don't remember where the discrepancies started or where they started to matter. They did show but I concluded that I'll never take a shot at those extremes so I flushed it memory wise. I'm not sure I have those notes anymore. They might be tucked away in an archery file somewhere.
Parallax caused by the distance between the peep sight and arrow can also be a factor with very short and steep shots.
If you want to get very deep in the weeds it’s not exactly the same up and down but in reality it doesn’t matter one bit archery or rifle distances and angles. It’s so small in our world you’d never see it.
