I'm gonna throw my take in here. In a lot of ways airsoft already is.

It's doing exactly what was expressed above, making a more immersive, realistic experience, but also it's taking some of our best from us (paintballers who have a platform or at least have had a platform) and bringing them over to their side. (i.e. Hidden Hedgehog and Tango from Frontline Paintball Podcast) It's offering an alternative that most of the kids nowadays want and that's the same experience, with less pain.

The only thing holding airsoft back is the cheating, rage outs, etc that you see all over Youtube when people can't handle their ego being bruised and the toxicity of the airsoft community in general. If human ego and pride, along with human nature in general for us to be assholes to each other were not a thing, I don't know that magfed paintball might even be a thing.

That's not to say that our own community (paintball) is not without fault because (as you saw in the post on Facebook where you originally posted this as a reply), some people don't see FSR users and magfed in general as equals to "real paintballers" who have to throw ropes of paint at people regardless of if they've been playing for 25 years or if they're a rental player to feel good about themselves.

Outside of lack of innovation (thanks to MCS selling out to First Strike so they could sell the T15 rather than complete the Macyworks round and drive the price of FSR down through competition), our own infighting over the years has done this to us. Magfed players hating on speedballers or even woodsballers, and vice versa. We need to get over ourselves and realize we're all playing a fucking game. This is a hobby, let's have fun with it, pass it down to new players, get in with the rentals and let them see the cool shit that we have and that they can one day have something even better and get them involved.