What's going on with PB Nation??

[Trbo323]

Oh man, this is going to take a hot minute to read. For anyone else who needs it, Billy Gardner shows up in post 718 with a very thoughtfully titled post, "reality"

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[Ecapnation]

Same thing that's been going on with paintball over the last like 15 years a steady decline in users.

[The Hobbit]

-The 97-page thread starts here, and really doesn't get rolling 'til several pages in when Billy Gardner shows up (BGardner) and starts trying to "explain" Smart Parts "technology" and their patents.

Tom, as "AGD", shows up on page 48.

I poked my head in there too, but BG, for some odd reason, was not all that forthcoming with actual facts.

Doc.

Thanks, now I’m gonna spend way too much time reading ancient shit posts lol.

Though between then and now I do wonder what their engineering capabilities really are. However many iterations of the ion they made and recycling the sft shocker in the luxe for how long. Culminating in them finally making a derivative of PEs gamma, there does not seem to be a drive for innovation in the last 15 years. I do consider that a shame as I always liked the products they made but enough of a derailment.

[Euphie]

Same thing that's been going on with paintball over the last like 15 years a steady decline in users.

I don't actually think that is true, 2020 certainly saw a surge in participation but, at least locally it is stronger now than it was in 2019. It is tiny compared to the 2000s but, as of late it seems like it has gained some size, though I think inflation might put a stop to that growth.

[DocsMachine]

Though between then and now I do wonder what their engineering capabilities really are. However many iterations of the ion they made and recycling the sft shocker in the luxe for how long. Culminating in them finally making a derivative of PEs gamma, there does not seem to be a drive for innovation in the last 15 years.

-Regardless of SP, this was essentially inevitable.

In any industry, there's an initial wave of innovation, as different makers try different approaches, and eventually, the better designs rise to the top, so to speak.

The prime example is automotive propulsion. In the early days, people tried steam, kerosene, electric, 'coal gas' and 'benzine'. There were two-stroke, four-stroke, six stroke and eight-stroke engines, to say nothing of the proto-diesels and "hot bulb" engines. In a museum, I saw a three-piston engine, where the end two exhausted into the larger middle one, to extract a little more HP out of the hot gas.

Today, by far the most popular engine is a gasoline-fueled, poppet-valved Otto-cycle 4-stroke.

Paintball went through the same thing; blow forwards, blow-backs, pneumatic cocking, poppet valves, dump chambers, rammers, stacked tubes, triple tubes- to say nothing of the odd ones like the Nova, Epic, Alien or Thumper.

The odd ones have fallen out of favor and mostly fallen by the wayside. The most popular format I can see these days is the inline spooler. Everybody has one- because it works, it's reliable, it can be made pretty gas efficient, it makes for a compact marker, etc.

No, you can argue it's not "innovation"- in the sense of trying to come up with an all-new design- but it's very much refinement of existing technology. Just as we've seen in cars, trucks, electric vehicles, computers, motorcycles, you name it.

Doc.

[The Hobbit]

I realize what your saying though you bring up some engine tech I’d never heard of 6/8 stroke engines, benzine ( I assume similar to a standard gas engine just using benzine as a fuel?).

Maybe I didn’t quite say what I was thinking. Which is it seems that since the inception of the ion, smart parts has made little real technical improvement.

The luxe brought some ease of maintenance upgrades but was just a shocker that talked. Then the enmey, imho, was innovative in being a full pneumatic mech. Aside from that, I don’t get the feeling they’ve put much effort into design work the past decade.

Their work seems low effort to me since they came back as GoG/Dlx/SP, leading me to wonder if they have any significant engineering dept. Their stuff seems like “we know how to do this so let’s throw some new skin on it”.

I don’t know if I made my point better or just had a rambling stream on consciousness that makes no sense still.

[Paintslinger16]

Pretty convinced old Bill was under the influence of something reading his rambling posting's a lot of them after midnight.
I never really liked PBN always preferred the forum format, and I was early user over there, I know it was below 200 users when I signed up, user 162 when I looked it up.

[DocsMachine]

I will do searches for information and I almost always get PBN or reddit threads to show up but NEVER facebook posts....

-Facebook intentionally makes their site effectively unsearchable by outside applications. They want to you to have to register with FB in order to find anything.

But, what that means- and again, this is intentional- is that all that data is locked up in FB. And even within FB it's largely uncategorized and unfindable. I'm told somebody was posting scans of old magazines- but for somebody without an FB account and unfamiliar with their operation, those scans might as well not exist. (And, I'm given to understand, since they're just in a typical FB photo gallery, they're poorly categorized and unlisted.)

Doc.

[Trbo323]

Damn, made it to pay 859 so far. Somehow I'm not surprised Billy basically sees Henry Ford as a role model. Innovation up front followed by stagnation and some pretty bad ethics.

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[Hp_lovecraft]

I never really liked PBN always preferred the forum format, and I was early user over there, I know it was below 200 users when I signed up, user 162 when I looked it up.

I didn’t join until 2002. How do you find that user number?

[Paintslinger16]

Go to your user name in profile and look at the end number, in the actual address bar

[Chuck E Ducky]

PBN was made up of young hostel kids. So when BookFace took over it died. You can’t even post a picture on there without a 3rd party photo share link. BookFace killed it.

[Chappy]

Mcb only survived because we’re troglodytes that don’t upgrade technology. Long live pump guns and paintball forums!!!

[Chuck E Ducky]

Forum is only as good as the company you keep.

[Jordan]

All those Freak-compatible Sheridans being built would indicate otherwise.... 😉

[jvisconti97]

Facebook groups and Reddit absolutely wiped out forums from the internet. There are a few OG forums still kicking but a vast majority have gone away and its a real bummer. You used to be able to google anything and somewhere in the bowels of some forum there would be a post about it commented on by a bunch of other hyper-niche nerds (and I say nerd in the most endearing fashion) giving their two cents and it was glorious. Have a question about the best 10-key calculator for your desk? I'm sure there was a dedicated forum for it where dozens of 10-key nerds would discuss the minute details and differences between two seemingly identical calculators lmao. Those days are long gone, sadly.

[Cdn_Cuda]

I believe it’s a slow and drawn out death.

[cockerpunk]

This thread was a massive shit show. Bill showed how hard-headed he is, and that honestly should have killed his company on the spot. Obviously at this point in time smart Parts was pretty big, but the hate for them was starting to gain traction.

I think my favorite thing he said was that people were only mad at him because teams using his products were beating them in tournaments... or maybe it was all the shade he threw out about tom kayne not being a good engineer(turns out he only had a highschool education; I forgot about this.) He shows up in post 1005, for those of us who aren't displaying the same amount of posts per page as your are

the thread that launched my internet fame.

what a weird person billy was.

whats funny is that thread also matured me to realize that most men in power, are actually total morons. this has remained true in whatever sport/hobby/job/etc ive ever been involved with. and when you point this out them, they have meltdowns. we are seeing this of course happen on a national scale on a near daily basis (elon, trump, etc).

this thread was the start of that lifelong lesson for me.

[Paintslinger16]

the thread that launched my internet fame.

what a weird person billy was.

Seconded and a douche bag, back in 88/89 when you could walk on at Wolfs Lair and play teams like the AA’s we all came away with what a ass he was, not really the others back then, but he definitely stuck out as a dick.