New body armour promises to transform fighting sports | Hacker News Reader

New body armour promises to transform fighting sports

economist.com

110 pointsedward55 comments

Having done some SCA heavy, those open inner thighs make me twitch (armpits too, but less could be done about that).

One thing SCA has figured out that the sports industry seems to have failed to is how helms work. It turns out the best way to extend the reduce the impact of hits to the head is NOT cushioning or crumpling to extend impulse but rather just having a lot of mass to move. I've been smashed over the head at full force (with a full wieght sword) while wearing full helm and been more harmed by the gong-like ringing than the impact itself.

If you have not had a chance to try or watch SCA heavy, It is essentially full contact re-enactment (slightly less formalized than HEMA) and only using blunt (but full weight) weapons.

I had the same cringe-like response to the thighs. And if their weapons wrap at all (and that image indicates that they will, with a vengeance), they'll regret not armoring the backs of their legs.

SCA ? It is not in the article and it is hard to google.

Society for Creative Anachronism, www.sca.org

See also the Armored Combat League, http://www.aclknights.com and Battle of the Nations, http://botn.info/en/ for armored combat sports. BTW, the SCA is having its 50-year anniversary next week.

> watch SCA heavy

Holy shit, these guys don't fuck around https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RiQR60-5gs

I've only dabbled in SCA heavy — it takes a pretty big time commitment and I got really busy with my consultancy. It's a great time and a good way to get exercise. If you stick with it and train consistency, you'll be in good shape.

Most of the sport — at least where I am — is focused on 1:1 battles, but these large field battles are really fun to participate in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj_3vYo2gF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9tkAV4nDCo

IMO nothing compares with longsword fighting. By comparison, SCA looks like a bunch of big guys wailing on each other in the middle of a scrum. Longsword fighting has a much more competitive environment with well defined technique and strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhbcntqyiSo

"...bunch of big guys wailing on each other..."

Add in death and dismemberment and you have what war actually probably looked like for thousands of years - pure, unadulterated mayhem.

Fair enough. I'd imagine the guys fighting had a lot more fitness and probably weren't struggling with obesity though.

There was something on HN a year or two ago that said that gladiators tended to be on the fat side. On the other hand, given the distances marched, I doubt the hoplites and legionaries had much excess fat.

That's just fencing with a heavy object.

Actual sword fighting had a mix of stiles to deal with different armor types. But, maintaining balance was critical and bouncing like that a waste of energy and a good way to end up on the ground and hacked to pieces. They also often held the blade for leverage.

I like this dramatic videos from Russian Vyborg castle, I wonder if they still organize these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOCBOs6EzLk

"Holy shit, these guys don't fuck around"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4tdkrYIRFg

(fast forward to 1:58, perhaps ...)

I don't think it is a matter of not understanding how armor works. It is more a matter of the energy and precision required for martial arts. I've done some SCA fighting, but mostly spent 20 years practicing kung fu, and they are completely different worlds.

A small amount of video from the test event:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/78468512/Weaponis...

The umpire carries a shield and a hand axe!

There's also a few other videos on a YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/UnifiedWeaponsMaster/videos

The designers and advertisers have gone full mental on this site:

http://i.imgur.com/1mJPxyK.png

This is after I dismissed the “click this to add this to your reading list” popover.

Why you should use adblock:

http://imgur.com/vKOQXOc

Extremely sound advice.

I like the idea of using real-time cgi to render shiny suits of armour and the consequence of "hits". As grim as watching decapitation might be, I expect the ratings would be huge.

I immediately thought of the recent Mortal Kombat games - the "X-ray" moves work like what you describe.

You could even have different feeds rendering different levels of gore, and the viewers could pick which they wanted.

> As grim as watching decapitation might be, I expect the ratings would be huge.

I don't recommend watching it. Someone I know posted an ISIS (or similar) video on Facebook, which popped up into my feed while I was doing something on the other monitor, and it auto-played. By the time I realized that it wasn't fake (it wasn't a clean, axe-lop decapitation, but rather done via sawing away with what appeared to be a camp knife) and it literally froze me, then left me quite out of myself.

I consider myself fairly stoic, and entirely un-squeamish, but that bothered me in a way that I didn't realize anything could. For your own sanity, I recommend avoiding it where possible.

Imagine what it's like for the poor people that moderate those posts.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

To be fair, CGI decapitation is a totally different story. Even really grisly "well-done" deaths aren't that disturbing to many people when they're not real.

Maybe it calculates the fractures and other injuries, but if the goal is realism, as a wounded figther is likely to be less efficient, they should also find a way of hampering movement for the wounded parts.

Like in enders game. The suit froze that part of the body. Which Ender used to effect.

Strange that they didn't mention the indiegogo campaign they have going on. 54% funded. Sadly, the only part of the armour as a perk is a prototype helmet at $25k. Campaign here https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/unified-weapons-master/#/

I was expecting this to be D3O gel armor. It's a new material that is gel-like and flexible but turns rock hard on impact. It is used in motorcycle protectors as well as industrial and defense applications.

I'm waiting to get equestrian protective vests from this material but I've only found some very expensive competition jackets. The motorcycle protectors don't have adequate protection to the sides for when you've fallen and get hit by hooves.

http://www.d3o.com

So like football, you can gird your loins so that your loins can be exploded by even harder impact. This is insanity.

The only way to make "fighting sports" safe is to ban hits to damage-prone areas of the body. But the organizing body's in those sports are unwilling to go far enough - apparently we want, nay, _need_ to see blood, spit, injury and yes, death in our "fighting sports".

Interesting,19 kilos is still fairly significant weight to be carrying around. It'll have a material impact on the way a person fights.

The weight is spread around the body, though. But yes, certainly it will affect featherweights.

19 kilos is ~42 lbs. That much weight will have significant impact on the stamina and agility of any fighter in any combat sport at any weight class...

Yes, but they only do 90s anyway, because it already gets too hot.

It is hardly impressive. Mediaval armour had about the same weight:

> A complete suit of plate armour made from well-tempered steel would weigh around 15–25 kg(33-55 pounds).[2] The wearer remained highly agile and could jump, run and otherwise move freely as the weight of the armour was spread evenly throughout the body.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour

But the issue there is the joints, right? As far as I know, they were either exposed completely, like at the shoulder, or not flexible enough for fast-paced combat.

Yes, I believe the joints were usually weak points. Swords-people used a technique known as half-handing, where they'd keep one hand on the hilt, and use the other hand to grip near the tip of the blade. That allowed them to use the sword more like a dagger, which gave better accuracy for maneuvering into the joint, while also giving them greater leverage with the hilt-hand.

I was surprised that you can grip a blade with your bare hand, but apparently it's safe with a firm enough grip.

*half-swording

You are not gripping the blade bear-handed: you would usually be wearing some kind of glove.

Half-swording can and was performed bare-handed as well.

If I'm not mistaken plate armour wasn't all that great against blunt weapons though, since it probably does not distribute the impact very well. Whereas I'd suspect this kevlar armour to basically swallow those punches over a larger area, no?

Really nice article here, btw: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm

No personal armor (so far) is good against blunt trauma. The reason for that is conservation of momentum. Blunt weapons often rely on large amount of momentum. Only thing you can do is to make the armor bouncy. So you can try to turn it into elastic collision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_collision

But then again they often added small spikes and rough surfaces to the tips of such weapons, to turn it into inelastic collision. http://www.medievalcollectibles.com/images/Product/large/AH-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inelastic_collision

The bad shit for the weapon is that it's very difficult to change the direction of war-hammer mid course. So it's easier to block.

Kevlar makes armor of similar effectiveness lighter. But there is nothing fundamentally better than old plate armors. It's still just distributing force to larger area. With penetrating weapons this is potentially very effective, as there is relatively little momentum and energy. The idea is to have very high local pressure at the tip of the weapon and this normally cuts deep into flesh.

historic plate, chain and other armors (including helmets) had significant padding, layers of it, underneath. This both stops arrows, spikes from reaching the skin and cushions spreads impact out.

Impact weapons were rare when hvy armors were in use. OTOH, heavy chopping polearms/swords (to get through joints in armor), and anything to knock plate wearer on ground (to then poke them in between armored bits) were developed and become more popular as heavier armors came about.

> Impact weapons were rare when hvy armors were in use

No they weren't. Cheap and cheerful mauls and war hammers were very popular on mediaeval battlefields - the archers at Agincourt used them as secondary weapons against knights for instance.

And of course it is easy to turn a two-handed sword into an impact weapon as well - turn it around and use a pommel strike.

So morning star would be the weapon of choice there I suppose. Sword may win "by points" but with morning star you'd have a solid chance of actually neutralizing opponent.

Flanged mace should be pretty decent too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(weapon)#European_Middle_...

Historically, the weapon of choice for defeating plate armour was the pollaxe.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollaxe - Fiore's azza: http://scholasaintgeorge.org/training_docs/Basic%20Poleaxe%2...

I wonder how soon until this develops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Park

Why is there no "buy now"-button? I want this. For reasons.

I wonder which will win first to allow for intense sports like this: a 100% safe armor/guard or a solidly realistic VR version of the same thing?

Quite interesting that the words "new body armour" brings "sport" associated before other stuff...

Thats some heavy armor. Big guys are going the to advantaged to this.

Cool, kind of a blend between gaming and real sports

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