Feasible Paintball Advancements?

[FooTemps]

Gopher, about the shut down device... I think it should be mask integrated. I figured out some controls that would be fairly safe and easy to use.

Basically, there is a list of the players on the HUD. The ref uses a mouse scrolling wheel type button to scroll through the player list. Once he selects the player he presses a button to trigger the shut down. These controls would be on the mask and safe from fire somewhere.

[FallNAngel]

The only problem with that is that the ref MUST be sure of who he's shutting down. Selecting the wrong person for even a second could really damage a team. Also, unless refs are assigned teams (which I wouldn't recommend), there could potentially be 20 people on that list making it even a bit more hazardous. IMO, it would be better off with just a remote "point-and-click" type IR device.

[FooTemps]

http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91303

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Telemetrics system (sorry about the stinkin half arrow)

Live telemetrics would be a very nice thing for out of game coaching and training. It'd also be very good for announcers who lose track of players, they could look at the telemetics and see the players

[jinxed]

I've actually been using a GPS-receiver on my gun since 1996.
Not for ballistics, but its extremely usefull for big games/scenerios that I play once a year.
I program all the forts and paths, as well as good sniping/ambush spots, and recycle areas.



But I agree that the biggest place for improvement is safety. With electros, its now WICKED easy to cheat. (ie Lasoya and Bob Long).
The solution is to either completely ban all electros, or adapt some sort of tagging system to actively monitor BPS, FPS, bounce, etc.
Then, maybe use paintballs with a special fill that special camers, mounted around the field, can scan and detect when a player is hit.

Nick
NE Devil Dogs

[DonkeyKong]

for the paint activated jerseys they would have to make balls that didn't spatter at all otherwise the jerseys would always be set of from spatter and so forth.

i think hoppers and feed systems have alot to advance on

trigger technology still has alot more room to expand with sensitivy, trigger pull length and overall adjustability(even though the e-mag trigger is pretty damb close)

and efficiency can still be better

[Vegeta]

HUD's will be the biggest advancement in paintball. They will add to paintball what radios and radar added to the military.

Everyone so far has mentioned LCD's.. However translucent LCD's (like in calculators) do not have the resolution nor the color capability to display high res maps and tactical information and still permit semi-transparentness. To use LCD's would mean impairing vision.

What WILL make HUD technology in paintball a seucess is OLED technology. OLED stands for Organic Light Emmiting Display. OLED screens will come in many shapes and sizes, from large 60" HDTV's to small 2.5 inch displays now being used in digital cameras and car stereos. They offer millions of colors and, the best part, the can be made onto FLEXIBLE paperthin transparent materials. The organic materials produce their own light when a current is supplied to them, unlike color LCD's which require backlighting. The OLED screens can be shaped to any form, and can be bent and twisted even while in operation. They use TFT active and passive matrix technology, plus possible new matrix technology in the future wich will reduce the power and size needer for controller circuits currently used.

The OLED screen could easily be made onto your entire mask lens. Transparency is acheived by not supplying as much voltage to certain/all pixels therefore they will not put off as much light, leaving them semi-transparent, or by using a checkered transparency pattern where each other pixel is turned off, leaving it transparent, so you get 50% trasparency or more depending on display contrast and brightness. Both processes are done on the software side therefore the display can always be used as a opaque display for reviewing data after a game.

Soem thigns that ould be put onto a screen would be:
-map of field
-position of friendlies
-know positions of enimies
-GPS data
-shot counter
-tank pressure
-BPS settings
-gun status
-temperature
-game timer
-men left on the field
-elimination alerts
-game status
-clock
-external camera streams (gun mounted camera for seeing around bunkers maybe?)

Possibilities are near endless.

Now to power the screen and add content, 3rd party software could be written at a price, but a cheaper alternative would be to use untra-small, consumer availible PC parts.

There are companies who manufacture small, untra compact, full featured motherboard that will fit in a shirt pocket. These boards have X55 (X86 emulated) fanless integrated processors that handle what an entire chipset does on a normal PC. They run anywhere from 400 to 800 mhz, plenty enough to display text and images. They have a VGA output, minijack audio output and input, IDE connetors for hard drives, Paralell and Serial ports, RJ-45 for Ethernet, and USB. They can run normal X86 applications, including normal operating systems like Windows. This would making writing third party software to manade input and output a breeze.

An entire module to drive the OLED screen would be no larger than a 150 round pod, and could be made to fit into your harness. Some are made with PCMCIA slots onbaord to provide the option of a 802.11 a/b/g card for wireless transmission of data.

It is all possible now. and this all oculd be done, even though OLED screens are still in development, it could be done with a normal thin LCD like that of a Palm Pilot strapped to your arm.


People just must take the initiative to do these things. It is possible by using today's technology. Why not do it now?

[Miscue]

If you have no game, I don't see how a HUD will help.

I suppose you could do the VirtualGameBoy thing in the dead box...

[magnj]

Im sayin that we are gonna have backpack type things ( probably smaller. It will have 2 halves. ! side with a tank the other with paint. The paint will have sometype of forced feed system and you will just have 2 Remote like tubes to your pistol sized gun.

[lightning rift]

im thinkin that unless paintball gets cheaper, the only revolutionary tech upgrade that could be achieved will be on the paintball itself. as soon as companies start making football or bullet shaped paintballs, and then a company comes around that makes markers with rifled barrels and uzi type feed systems, im sure most woodballers and rec players will switch. now, as far a speedball goes, the best strategy so far requires a fast bps so u can cover people. a ballance between bps, accuracy, and cost will be hard to maintain with speedball and the like. but i trust that if any company can come up with a solution, its AGD.

[Matt_mg]

I agree with the other guy, the next big advancement to be made is in paintballs...

However I disagree on the shape issue, the ball is just too light for rifling and with the bps we currently have it'd be a pain to invent a whole new feeding system.

I give you 2 words and you guess what may be coming next: orange and backspin... now it's up to you!

[jinxed]

I don't know.

Football shaped paintballs, AND true backspin bolts came out 10 years ago, and never caught on.
Neither had benifits that outweighed the negatives.

nick

[FallNAngel]

Originally posted by Vegeta
There are companies who manufacture small, untra compact, full featured motherboard that will fit in a shirt pocket. These boards have X55 (X86 emulated) fanless integrated processors that handle what an entire chipset does on a normal PC. They run anywhere from 400 to 800 mhz, plenty enough to display text and images. They have a VGA output, minijack audio output and input, IDE connetors for hard drives, Paralell and Serial ports, RJ-45 for Ethernet, and USB. They can run normal X86 applications, including normal operating systems like Windows. This would making writing third party software to manade input and output a breeze.

Yes, but how much do these tiny motherboards cost? I have a feeling a small computer like that getting pelted with paint traveling 200+ mph isn't going to go over extremely well with it either. What if you scratch your lense? Replacing the lense which is also essentially a monitor will drastically increase cost. I could be wrong, but I doubt many players are going to pay over $100 for a new lense.

[Vegeta]

Originally posted by FallNAngel


Yes, but how much do these tiny motherboards cost? I have a feeling a small computer like that getting pelted with paint traveling 200+ mph isn't going to go over extremely well with it either. What if you scratch your lense? Replacing the lense which is also essentially a monitor will drastically increase cost. I could be wrong, but I doubt many players are going to pay over $100 for a new lense.

They cost about anywhere from 100-400$ for the motherbaord depending on size and features. THey make mini-itx mainbaord that are about 6.5 inches square taht could easily fit in a napsack. Components could easily be protected by a cheap plastic box.


As for lens issues.. the best thing is to have the lens in three peices. An outer lens that is clear protective material... a middle trasperent paperthing OLED elemnt which is the screen... and an inner thin plastic or acryllic material. This way you can replace the outer part of the lens without replacing the screen.


A setup like that of which I am proposing would cost roughly $800-$1000 if mass produced. It would involve a pack you wear containing the CPU unit and batteries, worn either as a small backpack or a belt pack, a pair of the HUD goggles, and a antenna for transmissions (wi-fi for player locations, GPS, etc) a cable would have to go from the pack to your goggles, and from the pack to your marker's board if you want to be abl to interface your angel/emag/etc to the HUD display for say, shot counter/bps.


I could easilly design the hardware and with a little help, the software to run it. It's really just a matter of money... and waiting for those OLED screens to become more availible.

[Kellen_p8nt]

I honestly beleive the next nessecary achievment/upgrade for the entire industry is going to have to come in the actual paintballs.

While everyone likes to moan and groan about paint being expensive, its reasonably cheap compared to years past.

However paintball industry leaders such as the CEO for DraXxus have said that these reasonable prices will have to go back up because most smaller companies making paint are hardly breaking even.

The simple fact is we are using a very old method to produce these paintballs that originally no one though would work. Making the paintballs is an expensive venture but the true problem lies in aquisition of the materials nessecary to make them(or at least this is my understanding from the DraXxuz guy's statement) If we could find cheaper chemicals to use in the paint that would most certainly cut costs and make our sport much more widly accepted(cus its affordable to play).

Now the process of making the paint is going to be hard to change with as many companies as we now have making pant in this old fashioned method. We need a Henry Ford of paintball to snap off some more efficient way of making these things cus I sure cant think of one.

This happened in real world munitions also. Eventually better bullets were made. WDP's Angel, Our X-mag, and fancy cockers are just 1300 dollar ways to shoot the same inefficient stuff.


BY the way a HUD does sound cool

[JonDaAzn]

i think that a hud would be wayy to distracting during play, after all, who wants flashing green letters in your eyes while you are trying to pop someone? i think the greatest advances will be in apparel, they will become more rugged, breathable, and get more bounces. most paintball jerseys today are merely reprinted motocross jerseys, and have not changed much since thier adoption, i believe the dye core jersey was a step in the right direction, but i would like to see a jersy built from the ground up for paintball, also pants need to get way more rugged, many people replace pants a couple times a year or every year, and that is way too much in my book, the smoking pants are a good example of a rugged, and breathable paintball pant, last of all are shoes, although shoes in the past have not been specialized, i would like to see shoes specifically for paintball, the problem is the wide variety of surfaces the sport is played on such as sand, carpet, dirt, grass, and sawdust. another huge advent would be the fields, as the sport becomes more popular, i think that more, smaller fields will pop up, and eventually become cheap enough to be avalible to everyone. when thinking of these ideas we must remember the principle of KISS, keep it simple, stupid