In terms of helmet technologies, skiers are just way ahead of us airsofters and we are nowhere closer to what they use, since mainly most of our attention are to military helmets. But with the way companies are designing ski helmets like the Forcite Alpine Smart Helmet, the airsoft industry, as well as the companies involved in designing integrated soldier systems, should pay attention to their innovations.
Since many of us nowadays are using full face and head protection, we might as well have helmets with full face protection crammed with some technologies in to them. The Forcite Alpine Smart Helmet, is one example of a high-tech helmet that has some features that many an airsofter would want.
Many of us go to the airsoft field now having an action camera attached to our helmets. The Forcite Helmet already comes with an integrated 1080p HD action camera with a 160 degree wide angle lens that is capable of recording at 128 frames per second! Footages taken at 128fps give us a lot of options for slow-motion editing which many airsoft channels would love to have as a feature for their video clips. What's more? It comes with optical image stabilisation which is capture smoother footages.
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The Forcite Alpine Smart Helmet doesn't stop there. It has integrated communications with a built-in mic that uses Bluetooh and Wifi to communicate with other skiers who are wearing the same helmet and makes it ideal for small unit communications. With its smartphone app, the helmet can then use hands-free communications with its built-in speakers and mic. Altitude and GPS coordinates can also be sent to emergency services.
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Since it has built-in speakers you can easily listen to your music playlist that you have in your smartphone and you can easily control the volume from the helmet with the big buttons. Speaking of big buttons, you can operate the action camera with the big button on the side. The buttons are big for easier operation with gloves, which we also use for protection in airsoft. Also button-operated is a fog lamp which you can switch on in low light conditions or poor visibility.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Of course, all these features are nice, but what is most important is the head protection system that the Forcite Alpine provides, with skiers going down slope at high speeds.
Overall, the features are in our wishlist of what a high-tech airsoft/tactical helmet should be. The Forcite Alpine Smart Helmet is not on the market yet, with pre-orders to be announced soon. How much would it cost? I hope it's not something that would make want to sell two high-end airsoft guns just to get one of these.