Microsoft's Silverlight Helps Winchester Sell Silver Bullets

Here’s a bizarre use for Microsoft’s “Flash-killer” Silverlight—a ballistics calculator. Yes, Silverlight is being used to build an application that lets shooting and hunting enthusiasts “customize shooting conditions” while comparing Winchester-made bullets.

Winchester’s Ballistics Calculator lets gun users choose their type of ammunition and then compare up to five different bullet types with charts and graphs. You can enter specific conditions like wind speed and outside temperature, maximum range, direction, speed and height. The application will then display charts and graphs that visually lay out the point of impact, drop and trajectory of each type of bullet.

According to Microsoft, Winchester chose Silverlight because it is a “cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in” that allowed the ballistics maker to create an app that doesn’t have to be downloaded (but you have to download Silverlight).

Silverlight 3 launched this past summer, with the hopes of making inroads against its main competitor Adobe Flash. It looks like Microsoft is going after gun enthusiasts first.