Tiny RC Tanks That Fight

Daniel Rutter writes "I've just reviewed a couple of Konami's Combat DigiQs - tiny little remote controlled tanks that can shoot each other. You can stage a two-, three- or four-tank battle, every tank for himself or in teams of two, on a coffee table. They rock."

Comments

3D Scorched Earth

[Daetrin]

The 3d ones just aren't very much fun in my opinion. Maybe my brain isn't just equiped to handle the math, but i can do an okay job of estimating angles and speeds int he 2D version, and even sometimes do a semi-competent job of judging in the wind factor.

However i've had massive problems with every 3D version i've tried. Not only is my first guess almost always rather off because of the complications of the third dimension, but adjusting the shot takes a long time as well. It just takes way too long and isn't as much fun.

Of course hopefully the toy tanks wouldn't take so long to render, and it would be really easy to multi-thread and have them all shooting at once :)

ultimate coolness would be...

[newsdee]

...those tiny tanks, connected to a PC, so we can play over the Internet with our distant geek friends. :-)

Yeah of course we have videogames, but it would be much cooler to have the game happening in real-life 3D on a small table in the living room. :-)

Re:The kids will love it

[Xerithane]

HowStuffWorks has your answer, and if properly done they can look exceptionally cool. Not that I'm endorsing building a device for it, nor doing it, for education purposes only. Do not try this at home, and I'm not going into design instructions no matter how hard you beg.


http://www.howstuffworks.com/question150.htm

"I read the whole article!" - Sun Tszu

[teamhasnoi]

The turrets are not motorized, you have to manually turn them. They are fitted with a gear on the inside, which means that they *will* be motorized eventually.

Any /.ers care to take on the challenge?

"Knowledge is half the battle!" - GI JOE (he would have read the whole article, then gone off to kick Cobra Commander's ass...)

Tanks

[agrippa_cash]

For some time now I've felt that toys like this (especially the ones with the rotating turrets) could be a cool mall concession. Arcades no longer offer any appreciable advantage over home systems and my local mall has a kiddy train that goes around incircles. Put the two together with some sand and rocks and your have fun for all ages! I have to think a 5 or ten min frag session would make more than some crappy train.

Re:Tanks

[crusher-1]

lol. When I lived in San Diego (which was for 30+ yrs). They had an amusement park that had tanks that sat 2 ppl. One drove the tank and the other operated the turret. It had panels on the sides that would disable the drive for a a short time and panels on the turret that would disable the turret gun. You would score points for disabling the tanks. I remember it was an absolute blast. The gun in the turret shot tennis balls. I remember one time I got lucky and shot a ball into the barrel of the other tank (no kidding). The two of use in the turrets just looked at each other cause we could figure out just what had happened. Well, he shot back (that's how we figure out my ball went in the barrel). The gun doesn't work too well when it shoots two balls, it was air powered IIRC.

It was great fun. I'm moving back to S.D in August. I wonder if that place is still up and running?

Cheers.

But, you need AIR SUPPORT!

[puddles]

What better place to get air support for your ground troops than:

Interactive Toy Concepts

This company has everything from blimps to B2 bomber, and more.

Re:This is stolen off another site..

[robi2106]

That is an interesting site. What sort of tilt does the average reader over there have? Is it satirical use of "Jesus" or does it have a generally Christian reader base?

robi