I was not a fan of pivot aiming when I first read about it on FB, and I'm not a fan now.
Having said that, apart from it being very unfamiliar in the beginning, it can't be ignored that aiming with medium to heavy use of side english, at least when the cue is roughly parallel to the table, is much easier while "pivoting" (the lazy reader may skip the rest of the post for now and inspect the images below).
The cue deflects much more to the side than it did in VP3 when using any of the other aiming methods. As the cueball curves on either aiming method when the cue is raised, and the throw of the object ball to the side when hit with side english is also identical, there's really no point (from a competitive point of view) not to use pivot mode.
The four images on the bottom of this post demonstrate the big advantage of pivot mode. The first two shots are taken with minimal speed, the last two shots with quite a lot of it. Both shots were aimed without side english to hit dead center (and before someone mentions it, I did use the lowest deflection shaft available). Using pivot (second and fourth image), the ball is potted, and the more power is applied, the more straight the shot gets. Using 'none' (e.g. the legacy vp mode), the cueball deflects heavily, naturally varying with the speed of the shot.
Only with a lot of practice is one able to compensate this deflection reliably on any shot with any speed (as it is in real life). Using pivot mode on the other hand, the deflection is close to zero and quite independent of the speed of the shot, except for very slow ones.
I know that this pivot technique is known, but I can't recall having seen many professionals on TV actually use it. I have not read about it (let alone it being recommended) in any book on snooker / billiards / pool I've had in my hands. I have not read an article about it in Billiards Digest, or having someone in the pool and billiards clubs I was a member of mention it to me.
I assume the reason for it not being commonly used is the fact that it's a lot more difficult to get right with a real cue, most evidently being the fact that you can't move your arm straight (as in parallel to the viewing direction) like on a normal shot, plus it requires 'calibrating' your cue for the right pivot spot.
On VP4 on the other hand, none of that matters. Just switch to 'pivot', and you're good to go. I don't think it's good (quite the opposite), but unless nobody is using it, most players will be forced to use it once VP4 comes online if they want to stay competitive. Maybe not so much for snooker, but at least on a pool table, where side english is required on oh so many shots.
This post is to be read as a warning. If VP4 is supposed to be realistic (and make your real game better), it's a bit weird if everyone online will use an aiming mode that they don't see used on TV and most probably don't use themselves when they have a go at a table nearby. I have no idea how to make pivot mode more challenging, and I certainly don't want the parallel aiming version to have much less deflection than they do now (thinking about it, a bit less like in VP3 wouldn't hurt ;-) ). But as it is now, pivot mode has too many advantages over the standard techniques for this issue to be ignored, at least from a realism point of view.
Fig.1. Aiming mode 'none', slow pace. The cueball gets deflected noticeably.
Fig.2. Aiming mode 'pivot', slow pace. The cueball curves slightly, but the ball still goes in.
Fig.3. Aiming mode 'none', fast pace. The cueball gets deflected even more.
Fig.4. Aiming mode 'pivot', fast pace. The cueball doesn't curve (it stops curving at much less pace than this), and the ball is hit almost dead center.
Node: I accidentally moved the mouse on the last screen-shot, resulting in a slight point of view difference than the other three images here. But for all images, I was in view-mode (key 'v'), aim and force of the shots are all the same.
