There are no excuses or explanations to be made.
Its not about getting caught, its about cheating when playing in multiplayer games with othersĮither you Cheat or you dont Dont. If you cannot recognise that difference, you should not play multiplayer games with others. >This gives you a advantage and is of course cheating. It -is- of course cheating if YOU have a crosshair (for whatever reason) in BF3 hardcore mode, as there is NOT supposed to be one. There are those who cheat, and those that do not. Using a monitors OSD to display a crosshair will NOT get you banned, as the crosshair is not modifying the game code at all. What the OP is talking about is NOT cheating. If used, a cheating ban would be warranted
This is fine for single player games, but doing -anything- that gives you an advantage and is not available to other players in Multiplayer games is considered blatant and intentional cheating and should never be done. Use of external software to run a crosshair is of course, cheating if running a game that does not have one (like BF3 hardcore mode)