TOURNAMENT
Historically the paintball industry has released
new products at only a handful of places:
early-on it was the International Amateur Open
near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and more recently, some companies have chosen to debut new
equipment at the Paintball Extravaganza dealer
trade show. However, the entire paintball world
knows the place to be to see the hottest new
equipment in the game is the Paintball Sports
Promotions World Cup, hosted since the nineties in Florida near Orlando. 2013 saw companies big and small converge on Fantasy of
Flight between Tampa and Orlando, Florida to
vend both existing and a large amount of new
product, in fact more significant new products
than have been seen in several years, adding
to the excitement of an already record-breaking
World Cup experience!
Goggles
The most important part of a safe day of paintball, whether at a first-timer’s birthday party
at the local field or at the World Cup on the
professional level, is a quality pair of goggles.
Not just one, not even two, in-fact not even
three, but four companies chose the World Cup
to show off new goggle systems. Two compa-
80
nies, Virtue and HK, chose the World Cup to
launch new goggle systems aimed at the upper
echelon of the game, while both Valken and
Tippmann released more affordable but still
feature-rich thermal systems.
Virtue Vio
Virtue Paintball, after enjoying an extremely
successful rollout of their Spire loader and
Clock chronograph, hit the World Cup hard
with their newest product, the Vio goggle. An
attractive, small, light, sleek goggle system
with more color options than any other goggle
currently available, the Vio’s best feature is
how easily it breaks down for customization
or cleaning. Extremely simple to tear down
to swap out or clean masks, lenses, foam
and ears, the Virtue Vio is very well designed
and should allow players to accessorize their
facemask/goggle system to suit their personal
tastes, favorite colors or to match their team
colors. To say we were impressed with the Vio
(Versatile Innovative Optic) system is a massive
understatement and once these officially hit the
market, they could easily make as big a splash
as their Spire loader did on its release. Look for
more information online at www.VirtuePB.com.
PAINTBAL