[BenG]

I have a GS-14 heres a breakdown:

its defiantly not a photonis tube, by any means. In a direct comparison with a D300 SHP the GS-14 was able to "see" a target in the same level of darkness as the SHP, the SNR is decent for what you pay and the image is relatively refined, optics have minimal fish bowling, and in this aspect the GS-14 was superior to the D300.

The housing is excellent but does require the use of a proprietary arm... the good news is the proprietary arm is of good quality and is much better then the US GI J-arm.

Its not gen 3 and its not a Photonis gen 2, its your average gen 2. Its defiantly usable for airsoft and you could be perfectly happy with it,that said there are obviously superior options, but its night vision, you get what you pay for. If you have any specific questions about it or would like pictures I am more then happy to help.

as far as there gen 3 offerings, I glanced through a GSCI pvs-14 at a game in BC a few years ago and put it side by side with my friends OMNI VI tube, and it was very similar, HOWEVER this was at the beginning of the night and any differences in SNR, gain and photo sensitivity would not have been obvious at this point. I did notice the resolution was slightly less, my guess is if i were to have compared them at the end of the night the omni VI would have blown it out of the water

as far as comparing your average (excluding photonis) gen 2 to gen 3 it really is no contest simply because gen 3 uses galium arsenide in the photocathode which has a peak sensitivity in roughly the 930nm range and gen 2 peaks at blue light. What this means is, at night when most of the available light is starlight which is in that 900nm range the gen 3 is much much more efficient at magnifying the light simply because of its architecture.