About the Orion Scoring System
The Orion Scoring System is a revolutionary blend of tools, designed specifically for the shooting sports, encompassing the scoring,
match management, and result systems. Orion is unique in the world of shooting. Its functionality goes well beyond "just a scoring system."
It is built on the principal that scoring targets is just the first step. To be truly
useful, a scoring system must be flexible and provide higher levels of functionality. This philosophy is one reason why Orion
is the only scoring system in the world to include integrated online results, shot group analysis, and natively support Virtual Matches, and team leagues.
The graphic below displays the different Orion products and tools with how they work together.
Orion offers three consumer products, Orion for Clubs, Orion at Home, and Orion Online. Orion for Clubs
and Orion at Home are intended for club or individual users, respectively. With these products
users scan then score paper targets or scorecards. Once scores are known they are fed into Orion's
backend to calculate ranked results, publish results online,
or to analyze an athlete's performance using Orion's coaching tools. Orion's newest product is called "Orion Online."
Orion Online is built around the philosophy that "something else" is doing the scoring. Orion Online provides methods to input scores
from various mechanisms, including smart phones or Excel files. Once Orion Online obtains the scores they are fed
into the backend for processing and analysis.
Orion for Clubs and Orion at Home
Orion for Clubs is the most well-known version of Orion. Intended for club or team use, Orion for Clubs users scan then score paper targets or scorecards using
commodity scanners and their Windows based computer. Orion at Home is very similiar but limited for individual users.
Orion for Clubs and Orion at Home work with targets for the air rifle, air pistol, smallbore rifle, smallbore pistol, BB Gun,
and air rifle benchrest disciplines. They also support scorecards for silhouette, shotgun, high power rifle, bullseye pistol, and rimfire sporter.
Customers may use Orion to score each of these disciplines. Orion works with specially designed
paper targets and scorecards. The paper targets are similar to traditional targets, and uses one of four commodity Canon scanners.
Orion is able to score targets very accurately and quickly using an advanced image processing algorithm. Orion scorecards use fill-in-the-bubble rows to let
scorers indicate the value of each shot fired.
Orion software is licensed annually. The license fee covers continued use of the software, all updates,
support, and use of Orion's Result Center.
- Orion for Clubs is the full-featured version of Orion. Users may create Local or Virtual Matches, join other Virtual Matches,
add unlimited athletes and teams to each match, score any Orion target or scorecard, calculate results, upload scores to the Internet, and generate shot-group
analysis for each match competitor. A first year Orion for Clubs license is $498 and includes the first year registration fee for both the Orion
National Air Rifle League and the Orion National BB Gun League. The annual continuing license fee is $98 per year.
- Orion at Home is for individual users. Users may create Local Matches, join Virtual Matches, add up to 4 athletes
per match, score any Orion target, calculate results, upload scores to the Internet, and generate shot-group analysis for each match
competitor. Creating Virtual Matches and adding teams is disabled for Orion at Home users. The license fee is $58 per year.
Orion is approved by USA Shooting, the National Rifle Association, and the National Three-Position Air Rifle Council. It has been used in
competitions managed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, US Army Marksmanship Unit, Civilian Marksmanship Program, The American Legion,
and national and state 4-H Groups. It is used in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, South Africa, Japan, and Korea.
Orion Online
Orion Online is Orion's newest product. It is intended for shooting disciplines such as high power rifle where it is
not feasible to scan and score targets electronically. Instead, Orion Online relies on "something else" to score an athlete's targets
(i.e. a pit-puller or referee).
What Orion Online provides is an interface to input these scores into Orion's backend and online results system.
Users can input scores using smart phones, an online interface, or through Excel files. Orion Online is also widely used by customers
who have a different electronic scoring system, such as Sius-Ascor or MegaLink. With Orion Online these customers can compete
in Orion's Virtual Matches.
Orion Online is avaliable to all Orion for Clubs customers at no additional fee. Clubs who do not have Orion for Clubs may purchase
an Orion Online license for $58 per year.
If you are interested in using Orion Online please contact us for more information.
Orion's Backend Processing
Orion's backend is the "engine" behind Orion. Its job is to manage athletes, teams, rule books, and scores in order to generate ranked
results.
Orion's Result Center
Scoring targets is just the first step. The next step is to make these scores
available in a useful and meaningful way to athletes, teams, and spectators. This is where Orion's Result Center comes into
focus. Orion's Result Center provides higher levels of functionality to the shooter sports. Each service strives to make
shooting more spectator-friendly and appealing.
- Internet Results: Athletes, coaches, and spectators expect results available online. To accomplish this
goal, Orion has integrated online results. Every Orion-managed match can have its scores posted on the Internet. Orion
updates online results automatically, often within seconds of a target being scored. The table below shows the explosion
of Internet Results with Orion.
| Year |
Online Matches |
Number of Athletes |
| 2013 |
1300 |
36,000 |
| 2014 |
2300 |
59,000 |
| 2015 |
3700 |
74,000 |
- Virtual Matches: Orion is the only scoring system in the world to support Virtual Matches. A Virtual Match allows
two or more teams to compete against each other from geographically different locations. Orion scores the targets from each
location then uploads the results to the Result Center, where scores are seamlessly
merged into a single match.
- Team Leagues: Team Leagues is Orion's latest effort to make shooting more exciting and spectator-friendly. Orion has
recognize that for many disciplines, especially at the
local level, team results attract far greater attention than individual results. Thus, Orion is developing tools to manage team leagues
online. Orion manages two annual leagues, the Orion National Air Rifle Leauge
and the Orion National BB Gun League.
Coaching Tools
Teaching athletes to perform is arguably more important than managing competitions. Orion has
created a series of performance-oriented results. These results, such as size of group, or center of group,
are known as "shot-group analysis," and
can help coaches and athletes identify performance-oriented problems.
