FPS Camera+weapon setup?

Hello. I'm just wondering How true AAA classed games setup the camera and Weapons in FPS games.

I have a few Question's.

1.)Does the weapon and player model get rendered by the main camera? - Does the actual player model 'Poke' through the main camera, or do I have an animated model of hand and have only the player camera render them?

1. Do weapon's have Raycast to point to the cross hair?- I find the weapon has to point at different angles to archive different distances, This however is not the case on AAA games like Halo. How I thought about doing it- was making the Weapon Appear just for show, and have a ray cast, come from the screen where the Crosshair's are positioned. This way, I could achieve different distances without changing the angle of the weapon.