From what I understand under certain conditions your FP sight will be off from the true position of the ship you our aiming at and the true position is indicated on the mini map. It is an obvious flaw that you can find very little information on. It has nothing to do with dispersion or sigma. I aim for one ship and my salvo hits a completely different ship to the port or starboard of the ship I am aiming at. I see it most when I have two or more ships from the enemy team sailing broadside at medium to close range moving very close together with each enemy ship being stacked port and starboard from each other. It is a flaw in the aiming system for WOW. I seen the same video and in fact after 12K plus game have experienced the same issue posed in his video many times in game. OP sorry no one really understood your observation and question. With the lock-on setting the distance, the game has the third number to work with, and this number has an intuitive reference for the player: the enemy's ship distance. Think of the green line in the last image, that's basically the line at which the center of your screen is pointing your shots to go with only 2 numbers the game has to figure out at which point of that line you actually want your shots to pass through in its curved trajectory. Without the lock-on setting the distance, the game would have only 2 numbers to use for the aim, lacking the third one. The lock-on is meant to let you have a good aim in a 2D perspective, despite having to hit a target in a 3D environment. That allows for a more precise vertical aim on the ship. The lock mechanism simply ensures the aiming dispersion ellipsoid is fixed at the target's distance, instead of the distance of the point at the center of your screen. SubOctavian mentioned it in old dispersion commentary.

Aim assist mods for world of warships