Wipeout Recreated With an RC Car 90
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."
Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)
Needs booster pads though.
And where are all the weapons?
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Since the view is via camera, weapons might as well be overimposed on it, in "augmented reality" style (with proper random effects on speed / direction of the hit vehicle; perhaps also some electromagnet underneath it firing from a big capacitor...). Of course, that starts to bring you "back" towards software...
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I guess you could ask these guys to do a car/hovercraft version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSv2ca-IECc [youtube.com]
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Or better, instead of having a physical effect, have "weapons" have a software effect on the car closest to them, AKA car sends a signal to the closest car that it has been hit and the "hit" car's software decide how to randomly deal with it, be it taking over control and smashing into a wall, slowed speed, etc...
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Meh.
Magnets in the track + Hall effect sensor in the car (or the opposite arrangement) = boost.
RFID? Why bother?
(Kids, these days...)
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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.
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That still leaves the issue of the weapons...
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This is looking good - Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
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.
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Now with the RFID idea that someone had before, you have the option of even more different types of triggers (slow-down pad?), as well as the option of reconfiguring what pads do what. I think that's why the original poster mentioned RFID rather than a less flexible, but simpler, technology.
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1 magnet = Speed boost
2 magnets in close proximity = Weapons release
More magnets = new choices.
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Put a magnet on the car, and the reed switches under the track.
This keeps the car simple, which may be important since currently it's not modified except to support a camera. Wire up a group of reed switches in parallel for boost, another group in parallel for weapons, another group for something else.
Wire is cheap.
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Ah I get it. Intolerant Muslims with mod points that do not like my sig.
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Naah.
With switches in the track, here's how boost would work:
Have the car run a maximum throttle of, say, 80 percent (limited by the Arduino which is already installed at the control side of things), until boost is activated. Then, up the maximum throttle to 100 for a predetermined period of time after hitting boost. The car needs no smarts for this.
Track ammo and weapons at the control side, too, again using the existing control hardware. Then, use a wireless trigger to fire the weapon. When out of amm
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Your method is mostly sensible, but how do we know when to reward the boosts and ammo? The car needs to be able to sense the switches in the track - and you can't have the technology in the track as we've come up with so far, as otherwise one car passing over a pad will give boosts to every car you are using.
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I don't think I've ever actually played Wipeout, so I guess I didn't realize that keeping track of more than one car would be needed. I did look at the simulator and associated video and it looks like it's only geared for one car. *shrug*
If more than one car is to be run at one time, then it'll be more difficult.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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"...
Now if only (Score:1)
Re:Now if only (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously dude....
It's wipEout
It doesn't lack any turtle shells, it lacks shields, turbo boosts, mines, shock waves, rockets or homing missiles
also the craft isn't an odd triangularish shape
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No air brakes or hovering either. The driving dynamics are completely different to wipEout. This is just a normal driving game with wipEout style graphics.
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Why bother with a Wipeout Track? (Score:2)
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The "PSOne" came out later as a smaller version of the PlayStation, once the PS2 was introduced. You obviously did not have the original one. My mom made me keep the cabinet in the garage.
-dZ.
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Double *whoosh*!
I thought the part about "My mom made me keep the cabinet in the garage" would have given it away. Silly me.
-dZ.
Make you wish you where a hard-hacker. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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)
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
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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.
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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).
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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]
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I have myself, but I've just built an N64 to USB converter. For shame :|
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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
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Great tip, avr-gcc sounds like my style!
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batteries should be on the sides (Score:2)
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.
Rollcage (Score:2)
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.
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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)..
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fun and money (Score:1)
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!
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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).
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Yes, if you're planning on doing that a lot then sticking to the simulator could be a good idea.
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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
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Hydraulics would be nice yep - it would take more planning and maintenance than just going all electric though.
Slightly reminds me of when my dad rigged up a pivoting windsurfing simulator in our back garden - good times (and very bruised shins)! Completely powered by renewable energy sources :P
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Festo Airmotion Ride http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvG5rxVeY5M&feature=related [youtube.com]
That takes me back abut 40 years (Score:3, Funny)
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
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Cool... (Score:1)
Vote story +1 awesome (Score:2)
Props to Malte for actualizing his idea into an amazingly cool working prototype!
RC helicopter next? (Score:1)
finaly, a flight sim with decent graphics..
Re:RC helicopter next? (Score:4, Informative)
You mean something like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSv2ca-IECc [youtube.com]
Life Imitating...Art (Score:5, Informative)
It's ironic - they used to make computerized games that would emulate real life. The circle is now complete...
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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.
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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)
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.
It's closer than you think. (Score:1)
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?
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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
8.7 of 10 stars. that track needs camber though! (Score:1)
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
(Yawn) That Was Easy ... (Score:2)
...let's see him try that with Homeworld
Unvirtual Reality (Score:1)
I'm savoring the irony in using physical reality to simulate a simulation.
Wipeout? by the Surfaris? (Score:3, Funny)
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DisneyQuest had something like this years ago (Score:1)
Alternate video link? (Score:1)
Turns out it might all be crap? (Score:1, Offtopic)
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 pretty sweet! (Score:2)
That's totally friggin awesome. I just wish their comment security worked, but it doesn't, so I'll post my comment here instead.
What it lacks (Score:2)