A steeper entry angle widens the target, so the best shot is the one that leaves the frame

Fact

A projectile passing through a horizontal opening sees an effective opening of roughly the true width times the sine of its entry angle. Steeper arcs therefore have a genuinely wider tolerance and are the objectively better shot — this is physics, not a tuning choice.

A steeper arc is also a taller one. On a fixed camera, the trajectory with the widest scoring window is the one that exits the top of the view: measuring the apex of every scoring shot, the widest windows sat at 66-77° with apexes well above the frame, and about a quarter of all scoring shots left the view entirely.

Why it matters

The game rewards the shot the player cannot watch, which reads as a camera bug rather than as a consequence of the scoring geometry. Each obvious remedy costs something real:

• Zooming out shrinks the target and everything else with it.
• Adding a ceiling reintroduces rebounds that rescue overshoot.
• Capping launch speed does bound the arc height, but it bounds range too, and can put the longest shot out of reach even at its optimal angle.

How to apply

• Measure the apex of scoring trajectories, not just whether they scored. "Does it go in" and "can it be seen" are separate assertions.
• Prefer tracking the projectile past the edge — an indicator pinned to the frame — over constraining the physics to keep it inside.
• Before capping launch speed, check the longest shot is still reachable at its minimum-speed angle: v_min^2 = g * (dy + hypot(dx, dy)).