Futuristic Airsoft?

AGB_Ghost

Seeing as how military standards are rising non stop with new inventions of new types of optics and weaponry and other advances do you think airsoft will be getting these advances also, I have seen retailers in america bringing out NVG scopes and apparently Infrared scopes (but i think thats a bit of bull) but I was just wondering if any of you guys think airsoft will get bigger in terms of gadgets and military based items, japan have robots now apparently


http://www.popularairsoft.com/let-robots-do-airsoft-shooting


sorry if this thread seems dumb im just curious

thermo

if there is a percived demand for them the rif manufacturers will produce them. as for NVG scopes (gun mounted) it is my understanding here in ireland they are "componant parts there of a firearm", and so are illegal for airsoft.

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thermo

AGB_Ghost wrote: »

I was on evike and they were selling NVG scopes bare cost for 300 euro which i thought was a bit steep, they could lack in quality and some forms of NVG's are infact illegal here also.


http://www.airsoftpost.com/product_info.php?products_id=26692

hand held NVE is ok just not gun mounted.

NakedDex

Here's how airsoft works.

If the military have it, we want it. (M4's, AK's, etc)
If the military have it, and it's unusual, we want it. (FN F2000 and Vektor CR-21)
If the military don't have it, but might have it, we want it. (Kriss Vector)
If the military don't have it, but did have it, we want it. (Lee Enfield No. 4)
If the military don't have it, but will have it, we want it. (Bushmaster ACR)
If the military don't have it, but it was in a movie, we want it. (M41A Pulse Rifle and Morita Mk1)
If the military don't have it, but it was in a game, we want it. (Cheytac M200)
If the military don't have it, but it is/was in development, we want it. (H&K OICW and G11)
If it doesn't even exist yet, we want it. (Korobov TKB-022)


In other words, we'll pretty much buy anything once it's gun-shaped or related.

Stercus Accidit

The best thing to happen or develop will be new models of guns, and further development of GBB and EBB rifles along the lines of the PTWs.

UAV's and all that will be fairly rare I'd imagine but the primary equipment will evolve.

Stonewolf

What comes out in airsoft form is generally what is in demand from airsofters, thus the glut of GBB Meh4s as the first movements into the mass market for GBBs.

In terms of what's coming up RS-wise, military procurement is slow and tends to run in cycles. A service rifle lasts about 25-30 years (at which point it becomes simpler and cheaper to just buy a new one) or until you arbitrarily throw it away. We can see this with the 7.62 and 5.56 NATO guns, the M14 only really lasted a decade in service before being replaced with the M16 because the Americans realised that actually their European allies were right. Meanwhile said allies (unhappy at having a slightly shorter 30-06 foisted on them) kept thier 7.62s until the end of the cycle and started adopting 5.56mm guns in the 70s and 80s (90s in the case of Germany).

So really, if you want to know what's coming up that's new look at when countries last procured a service weapon and if they're coming to the end of the cycle what they might be looking at to replace it. Of course, there are massive political issues involved also (see: XM8, German Re-Unification, EM2). It is interesting to note that studies have shown modern battlefield weapons exceed the ability of most soldiers to shoot them and therefore advances in hit probability are now less important than advances in ergonomics, reliability and weight. The real advances in battlefield technology nowadays are in personal electronics but these tend to be based on large scale and specific training and are of course, very expensive.

As far as the future of airsoft is concerned:
Nightvision is destined to be a niche item as unless there is a massive (and I really do mean massive) drop in price and some changes in law (US law restricts sale and export of high-gen items) we wont see it becoming really common. In the near term drops in the cost of manufacturing low-gen items may see more widespread use for spotting in the limited number of night games that are run (just don't expect it to be any good for navigation).

Personal electronics (which includes comms, C&C equipment etc ...) may see some growing usage but the systems currently displayed are fairly simplistic and poor. I mentioned above that military systems are very expensive, there are reasons why, they tend to be heavily ruggedised for a start, your iPhone isn't. Military electronic systems are also subjected to rigorous software testing which (being a software engineer) I doubt a commercial solution would be. They're also heavily centralised and rely on rear-echelon hardware which isn't too practical for airsoft. It's conceivable though that a decent, resource light, ruggedised, distributed, well tested and functional system will be developed but it won't be cheap and will likely be of dubious value especially given human factors.

The real advances in airsoft (at least in the next few years) will be continued improvements in reliability and quality of GBB units with a growth in choice and reduction in costs as production scale increases. In terms of what advances I'd like to see in this field I feel that (with reasonable justification) the companies making these guns concentrate on markets where a) green gas performs adequately and b) chronograph readings are not a regular fact of play. I would like to see further support of CO2 as a regular working gas rather than a good headline feature nobody will use. I'd also like to see more support for chronographing in terms of ease of NPAS and hop-unit adjustment (check out the hop-up adjust on the WE M14 for instance).

We may also see further improvements in accuracy technology. Those TK-twist barrels although not really any use for autofiring guns represent an attempt to further the cause of airsoft technology in this respect. Although at the end of the day it's still a cheap, light plastic ball bouncing down an overcalibre smoothbore there is evidence that reducing the tolerances (more consistent ammunition used with a tighter bore) increases accuracy. It has also been shown that hop-up design and materials also has a profound effect on accuracy. Efforts like the twist barrels of course show that there may still be potential for a "eureka" technology that revolutionises the field.

Overall I would expect materials, manufacturing and QC to improve with consequent reliability and durability gains (and also aesthetic of course).

Inari

I expect, like Stonewolf, that the main advances will be in the GBBR market. The number of variants is slowly growing, and with that the realism brigade (i.e. the trend-setters of Airsoft) will be throwing piles of money at them. And lets face it, throw piles of money in a direction & more people look & go there.

Great post Stonewolf, was a nice read

Stonewolf

Inari wrote: »

Great post Stonewolf, was a nice read

Thanks, what I forgot to say is that we're probably looking at a branching out of GBBrs in the short term and a couple of years down the line once the market is a bit more mature and the mfrs believe they've made good strides in technology and quality the early M4 product will probably be dropped in favour of a new generation of the core product (for that is what M4s are whether you like it or not).

TheDoc

Consistent, good performing GBB rifles and affordable PTW style guns is where I hope things go.

I'm all about performance, I want a gun that lets me get kills, I'm not so much about the realism etc, so for me, I'd love to see some high performance rifles.

Inari

@Doc: I'd be half and half. I mean, I like the middleground of performance & realism. They're a balance, too much of one results in not enough of the other. For example, NBB pistols - they outperform GBBS in everything except trigger pull, but they are nowhere near as fun.

Real-Cap mags are just too far a step for me with GBBs at the mo - and it's more economic reasons; I couldn't afford to get it skirmishable i.e. rifle, relevant upgrades, CO2 mags (cause it's ireland) - all adds up to too much

NakedDex

Real-caps are necessary in GBB rifles. They're not designed to high-light the ultra-realism of GBB rifles, or because said rifles may cater more toward milsim players. Rather, they're included with GBB rifles because there's sod all room in the magazine casing to hold the gas tank/two CO2 capsules and an increased amount of ammo. In a lot of systems, the amount of room provided for gas is only just enough to fire off the mag contents as it is.

The only alternative that allows for anything other than real/low caps is external rigs really.