hillbilly said:
I'll be the "Eclipse" bit is going to be a catchy little marketing slogan that their "new" rifle scopes will completely eclipse the other rifle scopes.
Obviously, it's working, as we are actually talking about their marketing.
hillbilly
And yet at the same time, it wasn't working in the sense that the catchy slogan didn't seem to instill and good faith, amazement, or wishing to buy the new product. In fact for many of us, the catchy slogan sounded like a crap slight of hand magician's trick.
So the the giant front optic with the bite out of it is the great new innovation? The term of eclipse doesn't fit. Sure, part of the optic would be covered up, if it was there, but it isn't there. Even if it was there, it would be a very minor partial eclipse.
I think they meant to use the term "clipped" not "eclipsed."
Me, I think it looks like the scope the Cookie Monster would use as in stereotypical fashion, it has a bite out of it.
So what is the big deal? You get a larger optic that can be mounted lower, or closer to the bore so as to have less parallax problems. That is fairly nifty, but not hugely amazing, not enough so for the likely high cost. Plus, since they are using a non-round optic, you won't be able to add generic or photographic filters in front of the front optic to protect the front optic and to change your sighting options as desired. You won't find any nifty flip-up front lens caps and unless they sell buttloads, you probably won't either. Trijicon ACOGs have been around for a while, but they don't have these options for the ACOGs either and they are being widely used in the military and sold quite a bit in civilian markets.
Heck, take a look in the picture. The front lens already is spotted and there is dust inside the housing infront of the lens. A clear filter would have been nice to keep the front lens pristine (as filters can be replaced fairly easily with round lenses), but that ain't going to happen with the cookie monster bitten objective.
I wonder how much distortion is introduced and how they have compensated for it.