Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Always wondered: why do paintball guns look like they belong to Spaceman Spiff, while Airsoft (another paintball-style sport using plastic BBs) rifles are models of real military weapons? Is this a reflection of the psychology of the participants, or a necessity due to the different ammo requirements?

View on HN

You've basically answered your question. It is possible to get rifle themed paintball guns (the rifle from "Aliens" is popular), but they don't add much except weight. Since the ball are delicate, the ammo has to be top loaded to fall into the chamber. It's basically a combination of physics and practicality. If you're going to run and sprint for a couple miles, weight becomes the enemy.

Airsoft has running; weight is still an issue there. I don't see that as an important difference

From what I understand (Paintball player, never airsoft) people who want to play airsoft are usually lumped into the category of "milsim" where it's tactical and basically recreating police/military tactical maneuvers. "Paintball" which you mean as speedball, is a much faster paced and flashier game in the sense that style is definitely a factor in the decisions being made because the field of play is wide open:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4jXOhH_oiU

BB's are mostly propelled by a pocket of air from the chamber and typically backspun via hop-up, while i'd say most paintball markers are launched by a physical bolt slamming into the paintball and driven out of the barrel normally (with the exception of tippmann's flatline barrel)

Psychology and this whole milsim thing aside, some of the tech driving the airsoft/paintball 'guns' reflect their country of origin.

In asia, access to HPA/co2 tanks isn't has widespread as North america, hence a lot of the gas guns are powered via common consumer sources like propane and duster gas.

Airsoft guns that use a MCU (most built on top of MOSFET units) has only recently appeared in airsoft, while pretty much every electronic paintball gun has been the case since the 90's (mostly due to solenoid control), which is also a huge factor to the design.

> most paintball markers are launched by a physical bolt slamming into the paintball

This would destroy the paintball. The bolt loads the ball into the chamber, but actually moves backwards when fired to load another ball. The ball itself is propelled down the barrel by compressed nitro or CO2.

http://www.deadlywind.com/paintball-animation

Reply on news.ycombinator.com