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Hardware Hacking PlayStation (Games) Sony Toys Games Build

Wipeout Recreated With an RC Car 90

Posted by Soulskill from the eagerly-awaiting-his-xwing-project dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you've owned any of Sony's PlayStation consoles then there's a good chance you've also played one of the Wipeout games. It's a high-speed racing game that helped make the PSOne popular, and it's now been recreated using a remote control car. The project is the idea of Malte Jehmlich. He decided to create a track out of cardboard reminiscent of the Wipeout tracks. He then hooked up a wireless camera to a remote control car, and modified the controller to be an arcade cabinet with a wheel and forward/reverse selector."
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Wipeout Recreated With an RC Car More

Wipeout Recreated With an RC Car

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  • Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Kireas ( 1784888 )
    Alright, that's awesome.

    Needs booster pads though.

    And where are all the weapons?

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chrontius ( 654879 ) on Thursday August 05, 2010 @03:35AM (#33147564)
      Well, with the Arduino, some RFID tags, and a reader on the car, I'm sure you could slap a governor on the throttle to limit it to 80% most of the time, but mash things to 100% for a second and a half after flying past a "boost" tag.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by adolf ( 21054 )

        Meh.

        Magnets in the track + Hall effect sensor in the car (or the opposite arrangement) = boost.

        RFID? Why bother?

        (Kids, these days...)

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Way too high-tech. A simple reed switch probably does the trick.
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_switch

          Model trains use them, for example.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Kireas ( 1784888 )
            Anyone up for re-doing this project with reed-switch boostpads then?
            That still leaves the issue of the weapons...
            • I thought maybe a water cannon with a small cannister of water on the cars - driving over a weapon trigger would give you the ability to fire one blast of the cannon (maybe you can store these up for a cumulative longer blast). Some waterproofing on the cars and track and it would be pretty awesome driving around with a water cannon to blast your opponents into walls, etc (with the bonus that spills would make the track more treacherous so you'd have to time your attack so as to not mess up your own racing
              • You'd need a way to differentiate between boost pads and weapon triggers though. If a reed switch is for the boost...

                How about a high-power LED for the weapon triggers, and a LDR on the base of the cars? That way when you drive over the trigger, you get a 'shot' of water.
                You'd also get a free shot if you flipped over or something too, to get you back into play.
      • Reverse--

        Put the RFID on the car, and the reader in the track. Minimize baggage on the car. Great idea for a lot of game-like options.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by sznupi ( 719324 )

      Where is...almost everything?

      Don't get me wrong, it looks like a fun project; but not really close to Wipeout - the vehicles there are, more or less, something between high speed hovercrafts and aircraft flying in ground effect / ekranoplans. I don't really see translating that to a small RC wheeled vehicle....

      Similarly with control - not only I don't remember many examples of PS1 in cabinets; most importantly, a steering wheel wasn't the Wipeout controller - that title goes to Negcon.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guignol ( 159087 )
        I don' t know why you are "flamebaited"
        I completelly agree with you, this is a very cool project, I am disapointed that they tag it 'wipeout', why not 'mario kart' ? that would be closer even
        But I don' mean to uncool the project, this is awesome, I just don't get the wipeout tag (the track 'inspiration' just doesn not cut it)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sznupi ( 719324 )

          Somebody with PMS was apparently closely watching replies, for some time after the story went live - quite a few of "dissenting" posts of such type were similarly quickly downmodded / meh, whatever.

          A bit funny considering that the creators themselves don't describe it as "Wipeout-like", IIRC they mentioned only similarity (due to practical factors) in the general look of the track. Wipeut Recreated seems to come from "journalists"...

  • it could fire blue, red and green turtle shells....

  • Make you wish you where a hard-hacker. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tei ( 520358 ) on Thursday August 05, 2010 @04:05AM (#33147646) Journal

    These hard hacks are awesome. Make you wish you where able to build stuff like that. I am sorta limited to soft-hacks, that is fun, but nothing like this :-/ But everyone his own.

    Another reason for why this is interesting, is that its sorta a videogame withouth the computer part (lets ignore all the CPU involved). You can built computers withouth electricity, using gears or hidraulics... you can built computers with anything that let you create logical triggers OR / AND / OR. And seems you can built videogames with pre-computer-technology era stuff. Imagine creating a videogame using 50's era technology :-) You place a dude in the studio with a joystick (this is simple tech), you broadcast the joystick signal to a van that has ben wired to be radiocontroled by this radio signal (I guest with 50's technology you can do that) and put a broadcast TV image in that van (is that possible with 50's era technology?).

    This type of thinking is interesting for people like me, that like to think computers are not electronic machines, but logical machines that ...well... we normally built with electricity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sznupi ( 719324 )

      Things you envision wouldn't be exactly video games though...

      Here, some created using 50's technology:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two [wikipedia.org]
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OXO [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There are some incredible early flight simulators that used analogue computers, and huge model landscapes that are 'flown' over by a video camera.
      Here is an article about one from 1958:
      http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/06/19/giant-analog-flight-simulator/

      These have always interested me, as they are realistic simulators, and so had to react like a real plane would. They could change engines by plugging in a different board, or move the centre of gravity of the plane, introduce faults with the plane, or eve

    • Ha, it's kind of like the inverse of those LBP games where they built mechanical computers in-game to perform programming functions outwith the game's design.

    • These hard hacks are awesome. Make you wish you where able to build stuff like that. I am sorta limited to soft-hacks, that is fun, but nothing like this :-/ But everyone his own.

      Strap a phone to the top of a remote control car and do a Skype video call with it (or even better, get some app that can do local video calls for improved latency).

    • He uses the Arduino circuit board, an open-source programmable electronics platform. It's how your code can interact IRL! I've been thinking about getting one myself, that's how you step from software hacking to hardware hacking :) http://www.arduino.cc/ [arduino.cc]

      • I have myself, but I've just built an N64 to USB converter. For shame :|

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

        The great thing about this is that when the Arduino development environment gets too limited, you can unlock even more power from the hardware by just using avr-gcc and ditching all those abstraction layers.

        Also, it's a lot easier to port an AVR-GCC based design to an alternate AVR chip (for example, shrinking a basic design to an ATTiny25/45/85, which is an 8-pin chip that can run at 16 MHz off of an internal RC oscillator, no external components required!)

        I use Arduino hardware (well, Arduino-clone, speci

    • Remote controlled Deathrace 2000 [youtube.com]!

  • Seems like the thing would be prone flip over with the batteries mounted so high like that. Even if the width of the car was increased by mounting them on the sides that would probably help.

    • Combine the flip problem with the fact that in wipeout you are floating in some kind of hover craft the obvious solution to any hardcore PS1 fan would be to emulate Rollcage [wikipedia.org] instead. when the car flips you could easily swap the steering by using a ball bearing and a tube with contacts in, or somesuch.

      • That game was amazing, though I only had the demo of it. To simulate it properly the car would need to go seriously fast though and have some kind of aerodynamic device that could help it stick to walls/ceilings, and also reorient itself when the car flipped (but not while simply upside down on a roof)..

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by delinear ( 991444 )
        Seems like this [youtube.com] would be pretty awesome for the Wipeout project - they'd need a bigger track but it looks far less prone to flipping and like you could actually throw it around corners much faster without it leaving the track.
  • If you take this as the proof of concept I think there is a proper business to be had.

    Better tracks with some camber. Better cars. Better camera. Better cabinet to sit in. Better car to cabinet feed back. Force feed back wheel & chair tilt.

    Just made coin-op games interesting again. Well done. I want one!

    • Better tracks with some camber. Better cars. Better camera. Better cabinet to sit in. Better car to cabinet feed back. Force feed back wheel & chair tilt.

      There are already several versions of this, with names like "road rallies", "go karting", and "track days".

      Not that I don't think this is cool, but if you have enough money to build all of that, you have enough money to pursue the real options, which are a lot more fun than sitting in one of those arcades with the stupid tilting seats (besides, if you're going to add tilt you need to tilt the whole thing - when I go over a bump in my car it doesn't change the position of the seat in relation to the pedals).

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TheLink ( 130905 )
        0-60? It's the 60-0 in 0.1 sec where you really feel the difference between real life and simulation :).

      • Not that I don't think this is cool, but if you have enough money to build all of that, you have enough money to pursue the real options, which are a lot more fun than sitting in one of those arcades with the stupid tilting seats (besides, if you're going to add tilt you need to tilt the whole thing - when I go over a bump in my car it doesn't change the position of the seat in relation to the pedals).

        Not only that, but have you ever seen the Trip 2 motion simulator around which the Wipeout arcade game was designed? Pure fucking amateur hour. The whole cage you sit in pivots at the bottom way below your seat, when it should really be the other way around because it's a fucking hover racing simulator, the only time a low pivot makes sense is on a motorcycle and they don't do motorized motorcycle games because when you high-sided it would throw you the hell off of the machine. Anyway, the machine is HORRIB

  • That takes me back abut 40 years (Score:3, Funny)

    by Liambp ( 1565081 ) on Thursday August 05, 2010 @06:19AM (#33148110)

    Yes this is awesome but before you youngsters get too uppity about it I remember a time when all arcade games were basically like this. You actually controlled a little toy car or a little submarine or whatever. Mind you in those pre-microprocessor days the games were laughably crude compared to Jehmlich's masterpiece but us old timers gotta grab every chance we get to adopt a condescending air of "seen it all before"ness

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dj245 ( 732906 )
      If you ever visit San Francisco, don't miss the Musee Mechanique [museemecaniquesf.com]. They have dozens of such mechanical arcade machines. Some are really ingenious.
  • Really cool!

  • Props to Malte for actualizing his idea into an amazingly cool working prototype!

  • imagine this thing with RC helicopter!
    finaly, a flight sim with decent graphics..

  • Life Imitating...Art (Score:5, Informative)

    by smitty777 ( 1612557 ) on Thursday August 05, 2010 @07:03AM (#33148276) Journal

    It's ironic - they used to make computerized games that would emulate real life. The circle is now complete...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mgblst ( 80109 )

      It is not ironic at all. It is coincidental at most.

      Maybe you could stop using words you don't know? Nah, impossible, how un-american.

      • Thanks for the English lesson, my friend. Unfortunately, you are wrong. The dictionary defines irony as
         

        "incongruity between what is expected to be and what actually is, or a situation or result showing such incongruity ".

        If you make the effort, I think you will see how this applies to my post

        I'm also curious as to why you assume I'm an American, and the source of your bigotry?

  • On a similar note (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Thursday August 05, 2010 @07:09AM (#33148300) Homepage

    I've *always* wanted to have the money to burn that I could create something I thought of even when I was a kid.

    Combine "laser-tag / Quasar" with a 3D FPS. If anyone ever watched Knightmare as a child, they'll know what I mean. Basically, have a "blank set" in an arena somewhere - literally just plain green boxes and walls. Stick ten people inside the arena, each with VR-style headsets with similar tracking. Their heads up display provides the 3D/texture detail over the green-screen, so it just looks like you're "inside" a Quake / Counterstrike / Whatever level. Equip players with a "gun" of some kind and then track the 3D position / heading / trigger of the gun using whatever means.

    With some simple green-screen tricks you can put the live image of your opponents into the virtual world quite easily (camera on the headset, green-screen overlay on the video game image - because the arena matches the virtual world, no need to worry about depth, wall-perception, etc.). When players shoot, they just trigger a message and then the video game decides the outcome. Dead players get their screen blanked, game over, and have to make their way out of the arena. You could even include grenades, etc. quite simply, and so long as the physical arena matches the virtual one, you can apply it to virtually any 3D game.

    You can't "jump" onto ledges, or do crawling, jumping, camping etc. unless you're capable of it in real life, but yet there's no stupid-quasar-feel to it and you can have lives, damage, shields, etc. The game doesn't have to "draw" you at all, or try to interpret how you're standing, or what bits people can see of you (damage-taking should be as simple as finding a coloured blob on an all-green arena in the direction of the gun-facing and determining if they were shot or not and working out which player they are should be quite simple), the game "feels" like you're inside it, and you can only do things that you can actually do. Campers would end up with cramp, bunny-hoppers would be exhausted, etc.

    Probably it's just me and nobody would play it but if I was a millionaire, I'd damn well build something like that in my mansion for my friends to play with.

    • You could use this technology with a different green screen set.
      http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9anuy_virtualization-gate-siggraph-2009-e_tech [dailymotion.com]

      Or even just paint the environment like a level and use augmented reality to add the weapons and effects similar to this:
      http://vimeo.com/6885648 [vimeo.com]

      Perhaps a combination of the two where the real world (green screened) acts as the game's "physics",
      and a few stock physical objects (like Nerf balls / guns) are modified digitally to become various weapons and items?

    • It's not just you. See a past post of mine [slashdot.org] on a story about AR. Thinking about it, an AR car track (with life size electric go-karts, the drivers wearing helmets (that is, the hard kind as well as the electronic kind)) might be easier to implement because movement is more restricted than running around with a laser gun. A go-kart is always the same height off the ground as its movement is more predictable than a running, ducking, rolling laser tag player.

      An indoor kart track could change its environment l

  • the track desperately needs

    camber [wikipedia.org]

    then the cart could really stick to the corners and crank some speed. this thing has heaps of potential. especially as the karts could have weapons, speed control, be modded like crazy. and the whole thing could be run o'er the good ol' net... Arr, I predict some underground gambling to be done. screw rooster fighting, this is the next big thing. my kart is going to be made from epoxy lego for sure! respect to the work and spirit of fun that has gone in there! the whareh

  • ...let's see him try that with Homeworld

  • I'm savoring the irony in using physical reality to simulate a simulation.

  • Wipeout? by the Surfaris? (Score:3, Funny)

    by JonStewartMill ( 1463117 ) <idowindows@gmail. c o m> on Thursday August 05, 2010 @09:36AM (#33149216)
    I can't be the only one who immediately thought "how did they recreate a classic 'surfer rock' song from the 60s using a radio-controlled car?"
  • Orlando FL location. It was under a transparent floor, and you remotely piloted little r/c trucks with lights and a cam from stand-up stations equipped with a steering wheel and CRT. Spectators could watch (and guide) you roaming around looking for lost treasure or whatever from above, while you drove the car. They had a lot of tech problems with the system, including some of the cars catching on fire, so I believe they eventually scrapped it. I played with it when it was working, and it was a lot of fu
  • Anyone have an alternate video link? Vimeo sucks yet again...

  • https://twitter.com/googlepubpolicy/status/20393606477 [twitter.com]

    "@NYTimes is wrong. We've not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet."

  • That's totally friggin awesome. I just wish their comment security worked, but it doesn't, so I'll post my comment here instead.

    Awesome! :)

    I'd say there's two ways to automatically deal with the flipping. The first and easiest, would be to add a small piston or something that flips the vehicle back over, either automatically (After it's been upside down for X number of seconds) or make it so the player has to hit a button.

    The second and more complex solution, would be to build a new chassis from scratch t

  • and one can easily overcome is: MULTIPLAYER!

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