What will the Future hold ?

Morning.....currently

I think airguns of today out shoot most of us, and we are now at the mercy of gravity, wind, pellet / slug weight consistency and actually scopes.
You don't need a high end PCP to get excellent results, but the more you spend does get more refinements and a smoother shooting experience.
Slugs, everyone is learning everyday. It's not an exact science as yet, and the Slug I think is directed at the Hunter who want a quick easy kill. Paper wise I think Pellets are actually more accurate - BUT they loose power down range and are more like a sail in the wind, thats where the Slug takes over.
Is there more to come, yes, people are working on innovations and without doubt in the next few years more goodies will appear. The general day to day shooter may be happy with where we are now, but the boundary pushers will always want more. Scopes, they need to be more accurate, consistent and a higher level of quality, too many times does a poor scope ruin a great rifle. I think the market is picking up on this. Especially Matt.
Matt is a genius, along with Shane and Ted ( don't tell him I said that ) - they see a spot in the market for a quality scope range and their NO1 priority is for the shooter to get better quality.
The ideal would be for a pellet barrel to shoot a slug and visa versa, which is what many are working towards. Hybrids do it, but can still be improved with a slug liner, its a tuning fest, like Formula 1, something new is always coming out.
Has the market settled on a standard, no, that is yet to come, I think because everyone is learning...but what is absolute is that it is a great time to be an air gunner ( Rick Airgun Web Media ) - and everyday is a learning curve.

"The general day to day shooter may be happy with where we are now, but the boundary pushers will always want more"
this is such a great point !
I love the sport all ways have all ways will . The issue that i have is that i am, like a lot of people, ... the HIGH end guns are out of my price range . I would give my eye teeth for an impact and would proudly show off my gummy smile from ear to ear. ( My better half on the other hand may leave me )
As you put it so well the FX is the F1 of the air gun world it is the show case of what is capable . I wish for selfish reasons that there was a way that FX could bring down the cost of the manufacture RnD and make the gun affordable for the masses BUT this may lead to a quantity V quality issue .
In South Africa as in a lot of other countries the import cost, taxs, exchange rates make things so expensive that most people just can not afford such an amazing air rifle .
and again i say it you get what you pay for. and am feverishly saving what little i can to buy the setup of my dreams .

Just been looking at the spec for the latest Daystate offering, the Delta Wolf with a but full of electronics, built in chrono etc. Seems the future is going to be automatic ranging, AI target identification, remote control trigger and a drone dog to collect the kills

I look at things a little differently, if you buy a high end rifle you have the joy of owning something very special and can enjoy shooting it so much more, and after all the rifle is going to retain it's value, you haven't dumped the money overboard. Life is too short to deprive yourself of the joy a fine rifle brings. If you haven't got the money, sell some stuff and or save up for it.

"can of worms" is the saying for this topic.

I currently own four air rifles. An Air Arms Tx 200 HC, an Air Arms S510, an FX Impact Mk2 and an SMK TH78D.
It is not my intention to deliberately upset or annoy any one, but the snobbery that goes with some "high end" equipment I find a little frustrating because you do not need to spend mega bucks to get an accurate and consistent air weapon.

I have been shooting since a teenager, (I am in my 60's now) and had several air rifles given to me either because they didn't work or they just were not wanted any more but the first air rifle I bought for my self was the SMK TH78Din .22, widely recognized as a Chinese soft cheese product and running at just under 7ft/lb.

At the time, buying this air rifle really stretched my budget at £179 for rifle, 3x9 scope, pellets, gun slip and two Co2 cartridges. The metalwork was a lovely deep blue, the thumb hole stock was a high gloss rosewood colour and the cocking cycle was like filing rusty metal. However, at 15 metres I was getting three quarter inch groups.

At this point my brother got interested and bought himself a Weihrauch 97 in .22 and we would spend Saturday afternoons in his back garden at about 16 metres, him getting slightly smaller than half inch groups with 10 rounds and me getting slightly larger groups. This got me thinking if my cheap Chinese could ever match mid range German engineering.

So I joined The Chinese Airgun Forum where I learned that just by stripping it down and polishing all the moving parts I could increase the power. This I did and got it running at around 10.8 ft/lb. which had an amazing effect on the accuracy and the smoothness of the cocking cycle.

My brother had since bought himself a Weihrauch HW100 and still in his back garden I could match him shot for shot if only during the "sweet spot" just before the Co2 pressure would start to drop.

Wifey bought me an FX chrony for Christmas, so I regularly check the power on all my guns. Now the FX Impact which is an amazing piece of kit is deadly accurate and regulated gives a spread of between 10.9 and 11.5 in .177 and cost just over £1600. My AirArms S510 un-regulated gives a spread of 11,6 and 11.9 and cost half the price with a walnut stock and is just as accurate.

My point to this rambling is, you do not need to buy expensive top-notch kit to enjoy your shooting. The Impact hits bullseye at 20m time after time, The S510 does the same at half the price and both are pleasure to shoot. But I get as much pleasure regularly hitting the bullseye with the cheap Chinese Co2 rifle which has probably cost around £200 after a few replacement parts and a few hours work. There will be the shooters who say "I dont want to have to work on a rifle to make it shoot better" but not every body can afford "out of the box accuracy".

If the best you can afford doesn't do what you want it to, join a forum there will be someone on there who can show you how to make it better.

Funny thing for me is that I also do Electric Mountain Biking and standard decent Entry MTBs start at £4500, and the next level is £7000 with a larger battery and the Top end is £11K.

So in my E-MTB club I know loads of people with 7-11K MTBS and when we go for a ride we have a laugh about a group of us with £70K worth of push bikes.

So when I trip over to the PCP world I can see amazing PCPS around the £1K mark which is the Cost of a Spare Ebike Battery and 2 tires.

What I cant work out is why anyone thinks that 1K or 2K is a lot of money for a State-of-the-art Rifle.

So now I have 1 Crown and 2 Dreamlines, which still hasnt cost me as much as 1 E-MTB!

I never thought we would get scope like the 2010 Predator Movie:

I think customisation is going to get bigger. It seems like more and more people want a unique gun.