More accurate / more range

[Watcher]

Tyger did a vid of hitting a 6" target at 50feet and he averaged 2/3 shots.

My yard from patio to fence is just under 100 feet and I can get a decent 1 foot circle at that range with all of my guns.

So, you could argue that at 200 feet I can get a 2 foot circle. But, conditions apply such as wind and such. If it is calm, I can be fairly accurate at that range.

A man's chest is about 2 feet across, so that is a fairly good approximation.

However, 150 feet is about the max range you can shoot without having to arc the gun.

So, since you have to arc the paintball then 200 feet becomes a 250+ foot flight path (I'm not going to do the math of semi-cirlce circumference...). This makes it much easier for the ball to be deflected by air conditions. It doesn't make it less accurate out of the barrel, just more subjective.

So it depends on how you look at it, but I think it is more of an art than a science. I can be accurate at extended range, IF the conditions are right.


Same with a sniper rifle. A mile long shot isn't impossible, but more things effect the bullet.
At 200 yards you worry about windage and drop. At 1760 yards you worry about multiple windages, drop, spin-drift (like a curve-ball. The bullet IS spinning...), and even the Coriolis effect!

Again, it is more af an art than a science...

[rawbutter]

Those of you claiming over 100ft should go ahead and provide some video proof of said feats. If you have to hand select paint or whatever voodoo you have to do, then go for it, just as long as we can verify that the distance and velocity are true. With digital cameras/cell phones and youtube, this should be no problem. No fair using First Strikes. Personally, I think some of your estimates of scale are completely uncalibrated.

I don't have video, but I spent my whole childhood swimming competitively in 25-yard pools, which are 75 feet long, so I have a good idea when it comes to range. Therefore, when I say I shot someone at 100 feet, I know what I'm talking about.

Using my classic automag with a 16" boomstick and a red-dot scope, I have repeatedly made kill shots at 100+ feet. There have been many times playing woodsball where I've lobbed/skimmed shots just over the top of a plywood bunker and hit the guy hiding behind it because he wasn't thinking of the downward angle a paintball would have at that range. I've one-balled plenty of kids hanging out in towers (and not hiding) who didn't duck when I shot because they thought it was impossible to get hit at that range.

Now at 200 feet...... I don't think I could ever make a shot like that except for extreme luck. At that range, I could probably hit a man standing alone in a field, but if he's in cover in the woods, forget about it. I can't see a hopper or facemask sticking out from a tree at that range.

If I'm using my pneumag, it's a whole different ballgame. I never one-ball people because I don't have to. I just send five or six shots downrange and let accuracy by volume take over.

[athomas]

Watcher, you hit the nail on the head. Also, I'll bet that if you hand pick your balls for roundness and size and try your target again, you will increase your consistency.

Also, the arc for 200 ft isn't as bad as one might think. It is an arc, but I don't think it is one that gives an extra 50 ft of distance. Any shot from a paintball gun is an arc. We just know how to compensate for that arc based on experience. When I used to use a red dot site, I had 2 spots that the ball passed through. The first was at about 20 ft out as the ball went up in its arc. The next spot was at about 100 ft out when the ball came back through it. Outside those distances was my own compensation. However, I still relied on the consistency of my setup and its ability to deliver my ball in a straight line to go through those same points every time.

[Watcher]

I don't have video, but I spent my whole childhood swimming competitively in 25-yard pools, which are 75 feet long, so I have a good idea when it comes to range. Therefore, when I say I shot someone at 100 feet, I know what I'm talking about.

I hate to say it, but judging 100 feet and judging 200+ is a lot different.

I know people who can get short distances dead on, but falter at 100+. I also know people who can say 300 yards and be dead right, but can't say 10 or 15 feet in front of them!


Until you sit there and range find youn can't really say what range looks like.

I've sat there with a mil-dot scope on my rifle and common sizing charts and sat for hours looking at how objects diminish with distance. I can be a very good judge of range, but I still fail sometimes. It is all about experience with ranging things...


I guess my point is, one man's 200 feet may not equal another man's 200 feet.
To me, a 200 foot shot is pretty ballpark. To me, a 250+ shot is where it gets into accuracy by volume and luck...

[Lohman446]

Ball on ball out of a smooth bore marker firing round projectiles at 100 yards would be doing something. Considering most people can't do it offhand with smoothbore muskets (or for that matter from a vice) which don't have the issues related to lack of weight / size ratio.

[athomas]

Yeah, 100 yards would be a long lob. There wouldn't be much forward momentum left at that range.

[GoatBoy]

Of course. In the absence of science, everything must be art.

This is what I mean by uncalibrated. No method, no diligence, no rigor.

As some of us in the computing world like to say, the best benchmark is actual work, i.e. the real thing. When I mention youtube, I'm not talking about a convenient place to host a still photo of paint on a target. How obtuse can you be? Is this a contest? You win. And apparently, there's NO WAY you guys could possibly just make a simple video to show what you are referring to. NOPE, NO POSSIBLE WAY. NONE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjPxA4fjK-U

Yep. NO POSSIBLE WAY. THE RESOLUTION IS TOO POOR, ESPECIALLY WITH LOW LIGHT.

Oh can't forget the video that Watcher himself referred to:

http://webdog.specialopspaintball.com/video/tipclip/WDR30hi.wmv

(I think that was it.)

Yep. NO WAY CAN A VIDEO BE AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO DEMONSTRATE AN IDEA.

Alrighty then. Moving right along.

Here's the thing. You ACTUALLY HAVE TO GO OUT AND MEASURE THINGS. I know it's hard to believe, but once you start doing it, you realize how wrong you are, or at least how wrong other people are.

In the absence of that, we have to defer to some of you guys' "experience". Like swimming in a 75 foot pool. As if that's analogous to shooting across a 100+ foot paintball field. Hey, I ride an elevator about 100 feet each way every day, so I must be a pretty good judge of distance. You all should listen to me. Right? WRONG.


Here are some other things to think about. At 100 feet, the velocity of a paintball appears to drop to 150fps, according to the data on Tiberius Arms. That right there is a bad sign. Even if you do get the paint on target, your chances of breaking go way down. Speaking of Tiberius data, they show a maximum spread at 100 feet to be like 30". I *think* the punkworks tests showed something similar, like 2 feet or so. Trivia: a paintball tank is way smaller than a 2 foot circle. (And your marker probably isn't affixed to a bench.)

Your options are:

1. Hit a hard point, like a tank or mask. However, these hard targets are smaller -- well below the accuracy of your gun at that range. This means you have to spray more paint at the target.
2. Hit the soft points repeatedly with more paint. This means you have to spray more paint at the target.

I'm not sure if OP meant to leave this so open ended, but "effective" is undefined.

If you think spraying a huge volume of paint at someone hoping to get an elimination is "effective", then sure, start shooting at 100+ feet.


But there's more to this than just talking about groupings you probably can't even make in the first place.


You hope that the target that you are aiming at will still be there when the paint arrives. But that isn't always the case. In fact, the further you are from your target, the more likely it is that they will have enough time to pull behind their bunker after hearing your marker. So fat lot of good lobbing paint at a target that isn't even there by the time it arrives is doing you. Unless you're playing with a bunch of newbs or shooting people in the back or something. Hell, I wouldn't even bother shooting someone in the BACK at 100 feet, because if I missed or it bounced, they would then be alerted to my presence. I would close the distance to guarantee the elimination. (In fact, I'd say that's probably a good litmus test scenario for what you believe to be "effective".) So, what distance would I prefer to close to?

After studying my own patterns for a while, I noticed that the majority of my personal eliminations happened within a certain distance. I actually kept note of the eliminations and measured the field positions of myself and the target. It's not really that hard considering I'm predominantly a snap shooter, and there are only so many bunkers on a field (and even less 'comfortable' bunkers). Hint: easiest way to check this is to use Google earth if your field actually shows up there. Mine does. Easy as pie. I wasn't kidding about actual measurements.

I sat down and calculated what exactly the maximum distance would be to shoot at a target and have the paint arrive before the target would be able to react. It was sort of a rough calculation with paint velocity, speed of sound, and human reaction data, but I believe it came out to around 40-50 feet. For worse/slower players, obviously that distance is extended a little bit. That actually corroborated my on-field experiences. You see how this works? You don't have to believe me. You can just go do the calculations yourself. If you can. Please, feel free to doublecheck the math for me. If I got the calculation wrong, I want to know about it.


Sure, I'll lob stuff from time to time at 100 feet or so. But that's more "fire for effect" than "effective".

[Watcher]

I was actually referring to this video:

http://webdog.specialopspaintball.com/video/tipclip/s2/2WDR03.wmv

A 50 feet he hit a 6" target 2 of 5 shots.

At max range, 250 feet due to ceiling restrictions, he hit 2 of 40 shots on the same 6" target.

BUT, if you look at the area around the bowl, including the 2 that hit, there were, like, 10 shots. So that is 10 of 40 in a 3 foot square or 25%.

Then, eliminate the ventilation system in the ceiling and you can double that accuracy to 50%.

50% on a man sized target at 250 feet is very accurate. Even if you don't eliminate them at that range it will sure as hell spook them.


Add in hand picking the balls and accurate long range shooting is very feasable.


Sure, short range accuracy is better, easier, more likely to break, less likely to be dodged, and more effecient per shot, BUT long range shooting is not discredited...

[athomas]

I'm definately not saying that your target is going to be there when the ball lands at its mark 200 ft downrange. All I'm saying is you can accurately make the shot consistently with the proper gear. As for the 100 ft range. In Xball we shoot past those distances all the time, shooting down the line which is 150 ft. And if the paint is fresh and round, each ball follows the same trajectory. Each person's ability to hit the target is another matter.

As for the video. It shows that it can be done, even stretching past my 200 ft range. The video was even subjective in that it didn't account for human error. What if a better shooter had been doing the test? If you want to test equipment accuracy or consistency, you still need a bench mounted gun setup to take human error out of the equation.

As for posting a video. I'll put it on my list of things to do next summer when I have the time.

[Mechanic79]

Who cares about range and accuracy. You should care if the paint breaks or doesn't break.

You can be accurate and bounce someone 25 times, especially if the target is moving.

Gear today is made with a "bounce" factor and paint quality makes the real difference.

[Army]

Do not equate any firearm performance with a paintball marker. There simply is no comparable factors other than barrel elevation.

Closed/open bolt performance is identical. Barrels only have influence in the first 6-8". The ball only touches the barrel at two narrow points on the ball (it is elliptical, not round. The ball cannot fully fill the bore and still be able to be shot out). Venturi bolts are no more accurate than a non-venturi.

HPA is no more accurate than Co2. Pumps are no more accurate than semi's. Holes drilled in the barrel can not induce any spin. The ball has no further influence from the marker after it leaves the bore. No marker shoots further than another, with ball speed being identical.

Balls do not wobble in flight like a water balloon, nor do the deform down the bore. You cannot hit the first ball in the air with the second.

Did I miss anything guys?

[Watcher]

The ball cannot fully fill the bore and still be able to be shot out.

HPA is no more accurate than Co2.

False, and semi-false.

Using balls too big for the barrel (overboring) works and in many cases, as Cockerpunk will explain, can be benefitial.

The old way of bore testing is to have only a few points of contact on the ball. However, underboring (using balls that are too small) has been shown to be more consistant than "matching" and overboring has been shown to be more consistant than "matching" and more effecient than both "matching" and underboring.

If the ball cannot fit int he bore it cannot be shot out, but if it fills the bore it can very well be shot out...


HPA doesn't make the gun more accurate, but it does make the gun more consistant and better consistancy leads to better accuracy, especially with velocity effecting ball flight angles.
For example, a ball flying 250fps will drop consideably more over a 100 foot flight than a ball travelling 300fps, so having good consistancy makes more uniform flight patterns, and that makes you more accurate.