An Idea for a shooting sports game that's between airsoft and air guns.

[qyuubi786]

Hello Airsofters,

 

So I first got into airsoft when I was around 13 and I used to love it. So when I became 20 I got my first airgun (Crosman 1377) and now that's what I call accuracy! So when I started using my airsoft guns again (now I'm not satisfied any more). Not even a airsoft rifle could match the 1377's accuracy.

 

So today I saw this video on YouTube where three guys where comparing airsoft AK47's. And they said they are very accurate. The spin up/hop up has it's advantage of travelling large distances. But if there is wind coming from the left or right. That BB is going to go off target big time.

Now a pellet from a airgun spins because of the rifiling. Which more or less drills through the air turbulence. Which reduces the effect the wind has on the pellet.

 

I was watching one of Jeremy Clarkson's documentaries on guns. One of the first ideas of a rifled barrel flashed into my mind. There was a projectile that was pre-shaped to fit the rifling of the barrel.

 

It got me thinking. If they used that same technology for the BB's (it wont need to be a BB any more) it would improve accuracy. Because each plastic projectile is pre-designed to follow the rifling of the barrel. You wont need to clean the barrel, no plastic is shredded off like the copper or lead on a airgun or a firearm respectively. I would feel a lot more satisfied to load these projectiles.

 

Plus making these rifling should be easier than a firearms or airguns since you don't have a blast from the gun powder or high pressure air behind the projectile, plus the projectile is pre-shaped. Rifling Aluminium should be easy. And the projectile being plastic should be easy to.

 

And if all the rifled barrels are made of aluminium. Even firing a .22 bullet will destroy the aluminium barrel (the gun would probably blow up in the shooters hand). So that deals with anyone thinking of doing something stupid.

 

The best part about this idea is that you don't need a new gun. You just need to change two parts on your gun. The Barrel and the magazine. So the same piston that fires a normal BB through a smooth bore barrel. Fires a projectile through a rifled barrel will be more accurate and can be used in skirmishing. The experience of real combat is one step closer. No more BB's shaking while your running, while your position is given away. The amount of ammo is more realistic to a real firearm (instead of 200BB's for an AK47. Sounds a bit unrealistic when you think about it).

 

What do you think?

[Ian_Gere]

No good, mate. You need hop up to make a BB travel the distance it does. The only way to get the distances we want to skirmish at, where camo has an effect and sneaking around is a viable tactical option, without hop up would be to increase FPS. Personally I would be happy to play with the same power they use in the USA, but it seems I'm in the minority... Regardless, even at 450FPS, if the BB doesn't have at least some backspin, it will drop much earlier than we are used to.

 

The effect of rifling isn't "drilling" through turbulence, it is stabilising the bullet in flight. All of the microscopic differences in bullet shape, surface texture, and density of composition affect the trajectory equally from every angle perpendicular to the direction of movement, and, in the same way as when a gyroscope resists being tilted, a spinning bullet resists the angle it is fired at, at which it leaves the muzzle relative to an imaginary straight line through the sights to the target, being altered. However air turbulence, or any movement of air, will still push against the side of the bullet producing deflection.

 

The reason this works so well for bullets is that they are in flight for very small amounts of time and they are much denser than BB's. It takes more force to deflect a heavier object, but the force can only be applied to the surface area presented... you get me? A 5.56mm bullet presents maybe 3 times the surface area on its side as a BB does, but, being denser, it still needs to be pushed sideways by a many times faster wind, or have the same windage affect it for a lot longer, to be deflected as much as a hypothetical BB.

 

Also if you want to make BB's fit a rifled barrel, they're going to end up bullet shaped, because that's the best shape for... bullets! So the hop unit feed tube would have to be changed also.

[sp00n]

bb are quite hard unlike say the lead of a pellet, they also shatter rather than splatter, also a pellet can only go one way round (as the curtain deforms to create the seal) where as a bb can go anyway.

 

there is twist barrels available though ...

 

what you would need to do is completely redesign the bb make it more "antibiotic tablet" shaped ... which is unlikely to happen

 

nice though though mate

[qyuubi786]

I did say the plastic projectile or bullet is pre-shaped to the rifiling. So it can be hard. The bullet doesn't have to be shaped like a pellet. As you've stated the tablet would be a sensible shape but probably a bit shorter.

bb are quite hard unlike say the lead of a pellet, they also shatter rather than splatter, also a pellet can only go one way round (as the curtain deforms to create the seal) where as a bb can go anyway.

 

there is twist barrels available though ...

 

what you would need to do is completely redesign the bb make it more "antibiotic tablet" shaped ... which is unlikely to happen

 

nice though though mate

[qyuubi786]

I thought you just adjust for elevation and the bullet flies straight and you use your milldots and yardage to work out distances of your targets (hmm this is trouble for handguns especially for revolvers. BB's are out of the question for this project, rifling is useless on something that is round. Ok fair enough about the weight. I might have to make some custom plastic ammo that basically follows my Airguns barrel rifiling and then for shooting tests at different distances, wind speeds etc. The hop up shouldn't be necessary if the bullet is antibiotics tablet shaped.

No good, mate. You need hop up to make a BB travel the distance it does. The only way to get the distances we want to skirmish at, where camo has an effect and sneaking around is a viable tactical option, without hop up would be to increase FPS. Personally I would be happy to play with the same power they use in the USA, but it seems I'm in the minority... Regardless, even at 450FPS, if the BB doesn't have at least some backspin, it will drop much earlier than we are used to.

 

The effect of rifling isn't "drilling" through turbulence, it is stabilising the bullet in flight. All of the microscopic differences in bullet shape, surface texture, and density of composition affect the trajectory equally from every angle perpendicular to the direction of movement, and, in the same way as when a gyroscope resists being tilted, a spinning bullet resists the angle it is fired at, at which it leaves the muzzle relative to an imaginary straight line through the sights to the target, being altered. However air turbulence, or any movement of air, will still push against the side of the bullet producing deflection.

 

The reason this works so well for bullets is that they are in flight for very small amounts of time and they are much denser than BB's. It takes more force to deflect a heavier object, but the force can only be applied to the surface area presented... you get me? A 5.56mm bullet presents maybe 3 times the surface area on its side as a BB does, but, being denser, it still needs to be pushed sideways by a many times faster wind, or have the same windage affect it for a lot longer, to be deflected as much as a hypothetical BB.

 

Also if you want to make BB's fit a rifled barrel, they're going to end up bullet shaped, because that's the best shape for... bullets! So the hop unit feed tube would have to be changed also.

[two_zero]

Crosman 1377 ... now that's what I call accuracy!

Guess you haven't used a lot of airguns then..

 

 

heres the thing thou:

[Ian_Gere]

I thought you just adjust for elevation and the bullet flies straight and you use your milldots and yardage to work out distances of your targets (hmm this is trouble for handguns especially for revolvers. BB's are out of the question for this project, rifling is useless on something that is round. Ok fair enough about the weight. I might have to make some custom plastic ammo that basically follows my Airguns barrel rifiling and then for shooting tests at different distances, wind speeds etc. The hop up shouldn't be necessary if the bullet is antibiotics tablet shaped.

No, the actual trajectory of a bullet is not only the familiar ballistic curve, up a little from the muzzle and then dropping down to the target, but a curve to one side or the other also. It doesn't matter what shape you make a light plastic projectile*, it will not travel as far as a BB with backspin made from the same plastic and fired at the same velocity. The backspin creates lift by generating unequal turbulence above and below the BB. Any plastic pellet without such lift cannot possibly do better. So yeah, you might be able to produce ammo that is more accurate, but it will be no use for skirmishing because it could well be outranged by a £20 springer with fixed hop.

 

You might want to look up how Tanio Koba twist barrels work. They are rifled but they do not impart spin to the BB, instead a vortex of air surrounding the BB in the barrel reduces the width of the cone of possible angles at which the BB can leave the muzzle. The BB retains the backspin imparted by the hop unit, so it retains range, and gains accuracy.

 

* Unless the projectile is subtly wing shaped, but of course that would be no use in a rifled barrel.

[qyuubi786]

All I'm saying is the 1377 is a accurate pistol (compared to a airsoft). I'm sure there are a lot more better air pistols out there. I'm not trying to win a Olympic medal out here. Yes you are correct, I shot three air pistols excluding the 1377. I'm not super rich. I can't just go buy 10 guns or something. I have to think realistically. Besides since I was 20 I got the 1377 and a second hand break barrel German pistol. I'm now 21, so would it be realistic to buy another 5 to 7 guns of Olympic standard accuracy in two years to two and a half years?

Guess you haven't used a lot of airguns then..

 

 

heres the thing thou:

[qyuubi786]

Ok it was worth a try. I should have done more research.

No, the actual trajectory of a bullet is not only the familiar ballistic curve, up a little from the muzzle and then dropping down to the target, but a curve to one side or the other also. It doesn't matter what shape you make a light plastic projectile*, it will not travel as far as a BB with backspin made from the same plastic and fired at the same velocity. The backspin creates lift by generating unequal turbulence above and below the BB. Any plastic pellet without such lift cannot possibly do better. So yeah, you might be able to produce ammo that is more accurate, but it will be no use for skirmishing because it could well be outranged by a £20 springer with fixed hop.

 

You might want to look up how Tanio Koba twist barrels work. They are rifled but they do not impart spin to the BB, instead a vortex of air surrounding the BB in the barrel reduces the width of the cone of possible angles at which the BB can leave the muzzle. The BB retains the backspin imparted by the hop unit, so it retains range, and gains accuracy.

 

* Unless the projectile is subtly wing shaped, but of course that would be no use in a rifled barrel.

[two_zero]

All I'm saying is the 1377 is a accurate pistol (compared to a airsoft). I'm sure there are a lot more better air pistols out there. I'm not trying to win a Olympic medal out here. Yes you are correct, I shot three air pistols excluding the 1377. I'm not super rich. I can't just go buy 10 guns or something. I have to think realistically. Besides since I was 20 I got the 1377 and a second hand break barrel German pistol. I'm now 21, so would it be realistic to buy another 5 to 7 guns of Olympic standard accuracy in two years to two and a half years?

. . .

[Airsoft-Ed]

^^^

 

Whut?

 

Are you Craig's replacement or something? Haha.

 

Basically, if you want rifled projectiles you're going to have to up the fps by about 4 times what it is now to get anything like the same range. I don't really fancy being shot at 1200fps, we might as well just use air rifles then. You're not the first person to have thought about this, I came from air rifles into airsoft and thought the accuracy was shockingly terrible, but there's no way around it.

 

Hop up is basically anti-gravity. It fights gravity to keep the shots aloft for longer, with no hop, the shots will drop at about 15m, regardless of fps. Spherical objects are very very bad for accuracy, they are unstable, air coming at them from the front can send them in any direction, so when gravity is let in on the equation, it pulls the shot down and the air acting on the front of the BB just acts on it further. With hop completely off on just about any gun, even at 500fps, you'll only fire about 15m.

If you add hop, that same 500fps gun can then shoot up to about 110m, if it's properly tuned.

If you fire a bullet straight forwards, parallel to the ground, and drop one from the same height at the same time, they'll both hit the ground at the same time, except the one that got fired from the gun will be about 150m away (if it's a pistol anyway) - rifling doesn't alter the effect of gravity on the projectile at all.

 

Changing the shape of the projectiles in a way that gives them more range is impossible, short of giving them wings and an engine and making them anything other than BBs would require the entire barrel, hop unit, feeding tube and magazine to be totally remodelled. Speedloaders will no longer be usable, mags will have to be hand loaded one shot at a time, there'll be no high caps (a good thing imo) but ultimately, it just wouldn't work.

If the shots were rifled to match the barrel, what if the shot entered the barrel at the wrong rotation? The grooves would just meet the edges of the interlocking grooves of the barrel and you'd just get an epic jam every time it happened.

 

Nice thought. But it would've been done a llloooooooooonnnnnnngggg time ago if it were workable.

[qyuubi786]

^^^

 

Whut?

 

Are you Craig's replacement or something? Haha.

 

Basically, if you want rifled projectiles you're going to have to up the fps by about 4 times what it is now to get anything like the same range. I don't really fancy being shot at 1200fps, we might as well just use air rifles then. You're not the first person to have thought about this, I came from air rifles into airsoft and thought the accuracy was shockingly terrible, but there's no way around it.

 

Hop up is basically anti-gravity. It fights gravity to keep the shots aloft for longer, with no hop, the shots will drop at about 15m, regardless of fps. Spherical objects are very very bad for accuracy, they are unstable, air coming at them from the front can send them in any direction, so when gravity is let in on the equation, it pulls the shot down and the air acting on the front of the BB just acts on it further. With hop completely off on just about any gun, even at 500fps, you'll only fire about 15m.

 

If you add hop, that same 500fps gun can then shoot up to about 110m, if it's properly tuned.

 

If you fire a bullet straight forwards, parallel to the ground, and drop one from the same height at the same time, they'll both hit the ground at the same time, except the one that got fired from the gun will be about 150m away (if it's a pistol anyway) - rifling doesn't alter the effect of gravity on the projectile at all.

 

Changing the shape of the projectiles in a way that gives them more range is impossible, short of giving them wings and an engine and making them anything other than BBs would require the entire barrel, hop unit, feeding tube and magazine to be totally remodelled. Speedloaders will no longer be usable, mags will have to be hand loaded one shot at a time, there'll be no high caps (a good thing imo) but ultimately, it just wouldn't work.

 

If the shots were rifled to match the barrel, what if the shot entered the barrel at the wrong rotation? The grooves would just meet the edges of the interlocking grooves of the barrel and you'd just get an epic jam every time it happened.

 

Nice thought. But it would've been done a llloooooooooonnnnnnngggg time ago if it were workable.

Yh true. If it was possible, the real firearm speed loader would work (not as effective as a BB speed loader but the realism makes up for it). I would like to have the real gun feel of inserting the bullets in the magazine like for the glock speed loader. It was worth the shot. You do understand where I'm coming from though!

[Ian_Gere]

You can get shell ejecting airsoft rifles. I'm not sure but I think you load a single BB into each one.

[qyuubi786]

You can get shell ejecting airsoft rifles. I'm not sure but I think you load a single BB into each one.

Yh my Super 9 W700 is shell ejecting.

[Ells]

you can get a BB style thing with wings (as such) which iirc used a rifled barrel, was actually reading it about the other day, seemed to be a better idea as bb's in themselves aren't the perfect design though were uneconomical and hard to manufacter.

[qyuubi786]

you can get a BB style thing with wings (as such) which iirc used a rifled barrel, was actually reading it about the other day, seemed to be a better idea as bb's in themselves aren't the perfect design though were uneconomical and hard to manufacter.

Interesting. Where did you read about it?

[qyuubi786]

you can get a BB style thing with wings (as such) which iirc used a rifled barrel, was actually reading it about the other day, seemed to be a better idea as bb's in themselves aren't the perfect design though were uneconomical and hard to manufacter.

Is it like this?

http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/news2/1495

[Airsoft-Ed]

There was also the "blade bullets" that Asahi made for their M40 about 50 katrillion years ago, so it's a very old concept.

 

The shell ejecting guns are probably your best bet for ultimate realism, the Marushin M1911 and the TOP M4 series are both the best examples shell ejecting guns.

 

I think that BBs do the job well enough though.

If they were more accurate and longer range, the game wouldn't be the same. You need the fast mad runners and the people giving covering fire, but if you could shoot further it would go beyond the point of fun and just become impossible unless everyone was working as one cohesive unit.

I'd give anything in the world to get more range and accuracy, but if it would change the game's general conventions then there wouldn't be enough people around still playing it to enjoy it. It's just the same with first person shooters, I'd love an ultra realistic multiplayer game when it takes 1 shot to kill someone, but the market for it is too small for them to actually do it.

 

People like their high caps, being able to blast through thousands of rounds for very little money and the realistic aesthetics. Very few people take it, or even think about it being anything beyond that. So there just wouldn't be a market for it if you had to hand load your magazines individually, they had to be of real capacity and you could shoot someone with the twitch of a finger, in one shot at 60m or more.

 

I think dimpled BBs are our best bet. Hop units can provide very good accuracy and range as it is, without the fps needing to be dangerously high. It's revelations in BB design that will get us more range, everything else has been done to death and redesigning the way the guns work, feed and function would just make it another game, you wouldn't be able to call it airsoft anymore.

[Ells]

Is it like this?

http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/news2/1495

nope, there is a huge thread on airsoft mechanics forum called "Non-Spherical Rounds Community Development Thread" it is 20 odd pages long though