50 Caliber Revolution

[jitsuwarrior]

Personally I will be intrigued to see how the mechanics and air flow work together.

I know the British army adapt their 5.56mm rifle to shoot .22 for cadets, however it increases the wear and tear on the weapon.

I am wondering will this be the same? I know the techs will have already looked into this, after all you are only looking at a few inserts to reduce barrel size and hopper feed neck, but it is the air flow that intrigues me, will it be a simple change of a regulator or is the whole technology changing?

I will watch and shoot.

 

[Mactoshdog]

Dont know if this would be good business sense but maybe marker manufacturers could just design a new main body for there particular marker and it would just a case of removing the old and fitting the new sized main body....

Personally i'm in favour of the change,its about time the paintballs got smaller and more accurate

it makes perfect sens, if there trying to reduce the cost, they arnt going to be doing a very good job if they force everyone to buy new equipment. i simply dont have the cash to replace my stuff.

 

[Biscuit]

the people that will make or break this, are the site owners ,not you or i,as we are only small fry in the market,if the rental sites see facts and figures that help them improve there profit margins then they will switch if they don,t they won,tso guys no matter what we say it,s the likes of delta force and skirmish that will push this forward,so all you can do is wait and see

 

[Robbo]

You can't beat physics. You might temporarily obscure physics with some very nice press releases, but physics will ultimately win. That should be pretty obvious from even a casual glance at the history of paintball products.

Edit: I suppose I really should have read the release in more detail, as I just discovered this gem:



There must be some pretty darned revolutionary technology that is going to change how a sphere travels through air...

Chris, it's no good applying traditional ballistic functions to a paintball because those equations, as you know, apply to a solid, homogeneous fill and not a liquid fill.

If you have a set of functions that accurately describe the effect of a liquid fill on its ballistic function then I'm all ears mate...problem is, you ain't and I know you ain't ...and until you do, you can't quote physics at anyone.

PS Chris, try and develop the mathematics to describe the effect of a non-solid, non-homogeneous fill for a paintball on its ballistic properties ....that should keep you happy for a few years.
And when you done that, all you gotta do then is develop the mathematics to accurately describe and predict the 'wobble' a paintball experiences and how that affects its ballistic properties.

There is an obvious function that will no doubt describe the interaction between the two (Wobble and non-solid/non-homogeneous fill) but I'd hate to even begin trying to imagine the list of variables in that function.

But that's not even the worst of it..... you may have identified the list of all variables but then to get an accurate prediction in ballistic terms, you will have had to apply appropriate values to those variables otherwise you might as well go pi$s on yer shoes coz you ain't gonna be able to predict sh!te otherwise.

 

[SJS]

So Robbo, how will this be brought in?
Would just the big major tournaments start using .50 Cal straight off (when the development gets finished of course).
Also, do you think that some feilds may allow one team (who can't afford the new markers) to be shooting .68 Cal whilst the other team (who is loaded and can afford new markers) shoots the new 0.50 Cal paint to their advantage.
I can see some problems with this, but hopefully it will work out good.

Like others have said I hope that the manufacturers(SP?) bring out some form of sleve system to make older markers compatable with 0.50 Cal.

P.S Sorry for any grammer/spelling mistakes, I'm no good with english.

Cheers,

Sj

 

[Chicago]

Also, do you think that some feilds may allow one team (who can't afford the new markers) to be shooting .68 Cal whilst the other team (who is loaded and can afford new markers) shoots the new 0.50 Cal paint to their advantage.

What advantage?

If I have the choice of shooting .68 paint or .50 paint, and I feel like winning, I'll be shooting .68. Four times the mass of .50 paint at only double the cross-sectional area means it slows down half as fast, is more resistant to changes in direction (read: more accurate), is fired at a speed closer to the impact speed (less bounces), has a more fragile shell (less bounces), etc, etc.

In a competitive environment, no one is going to switch to .50 cal unless they are forcefully prohibited from using .68 paint.

 

[nickphillipps]

Dude, instead of just completly flaming this, why dont we all just wait and see?
You could be right, in which case good for you.
But if somehow they have improved it then your just gonna look a tad stupid.

No disrespect to you, i just think its wise to either keep quiet and let it fail or keep quiet and not look stupid when the replace .68 with .50

 

[Andygoth]

Different calibres have been around for ages. I used to have a revolver in .50 cal.

It only makes a difference really for woodball and big games, especially Milsim as magazines work better with smaller calibres. The calibre change will not make any difference to the performance on supair as you don't shoot far enough and will make it even less watchable as a spectator sport.

As has been mentioned .68 became popular because old school .50 balls didn't break and hurt like hell. They weren't really anymore accurate because they were restricted to the same FPS as other guns, if you think you will be able to dial up your guns with smaller balls then you are mistaken. There are several guns available at .50 and .43 calibres already but the over 300fps versions are not available for sale to the public even in the US.

The most accurate out there are the .43 guns like the Rap4 METS running at 400fps, as used for military and police training. You can actually target shoot with those things but they won't sell you one.

The .50 will only take off if the players buy into it, just say 'I'm not buying one' and the whole idea will fail.

Oh and don't forget you'll need a new hopper (rotors won't deal with .50) and a new mask lense to go with your new gun.

 

[Buddha 3]

Chicago is 100% right!

Unless ofcourse they have developed a new type of shell and a new type of (heavier) fill, then he is 100% wrong.

I love how people flame new things without even having seen the items being discussed.

Come on Chris, for somebody that has shown to be able to think out of the box, you are very rigid in your thinking here. There's just too much you don't know to be able to jump to conclusions like you do here. Like I said, assuming that the only thing they do is shrink the ball, you are absolutely right. If they managed to make a smaller ball which has more or less the same weight as a .68, you are absolutely wrong. That ball would suffer less drag with the same momentum (assuming it's fired at the same speed) and thus would travel further.

I'm not saying they have cracked this, I'm not saying they haven't. I'm just saying that some people look like they are potentially putting a foot in their mouths.

 

[Robbo]

Chris is a shining example of appearing stupid when in reality he's an extremely smart guy who says stupid things, or to be more accurate, he says ignorant things as Jay suggested ...contingent upon a couple of things such as a heavier fill etc

Richmond has overseen the development and production of these paintballs, which by the way, are being manufactured by Procaps.
A heavy fill has already been developed which will satisfy the claims for an increased flight distance.

The fact there are claims of a more accurate ball can be easily understood when we look at the ball's ballistic properties.
It has a significantly reduced surface area (which of course is the property of a squared function) and as such, will be less prone to wind turbulence.

There is of course a reduced mass (which is the property of a cubed function) and thereby this ball will exhibit a reduced inertial value; now, I haven't personally done the mathematics associated with this inertial reduction but I would guess the reduced surface area has more of an effect than the reduced inertial property in terms of resisting a deflective force (wind).

The reduced inertia obviously means the ball is more prone to turbulence but because the ball has a diameter of .5 as against .68 which is a 26% reduction in diameter but when it comes to surface area, (my maths is rusty but I think this is OK) the smaller bore paint has a surface area of .78 sq inch whereas the .68 has nearly double that at 1.45 sq inch.

And so, even though we have a 26% reduction in diameter, this actually gives us half the surface area of a .68 caliber ball with a .5 dia ball because the surface area is determined by a squared function (4.pi.r squared).

I hope this explains some of the things that are being mentioned in this, and other threads.

And one other thing; because Richmond has increased the density of the paint, thus giving us a heavier ball, this also increases the inertial value which has a two fold effect, it increases the ball's accuracy and distance shot when compared to a .5 calibre ball of a lesser weighted (less dense) fill.