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

And now for English

[Isosonys]

http://www.konami.co.jp/th/micro_ir/combat/english /index.html

Re:And now for English

[Cirrius]

Actually that would be:

without the space in the title

Re:And now for English

[Xerithane]

"Please enjoy yourself using this manual. And please utilize."

God Bless Engrish!

WmD

[Anonymous Coward]

weapons of minute destruction?

Re:WmD

[blitzoid]

I hope these things don't get taken away due to a Small Arms Ban

The kids will love it

[Radi-0-head]

A playground sandbox, a few quarts of 10w40, and you've got your very own miniature Iraq to "liberate"!

Re:The kids will love it

[N0decam]

They'll also need a traditional green army man standing on a tiny pedestal that they can hook the tank up to with dental floss to "topple" the regieme.

If the tanks were a little bigger, they could pretend that the minesweeper guy is Geraldo, and drive him out of the country - finally give that minesweeper a purpose in life (other than to be melted by magnifying glasses)

Re:The kids will love it

[NeuroBoy]

Yeah Mr. Wizard did the dust explosion trick way back in the day (episode 16).

Many different substances can be explosive given the right amount of oxygen surrounding the flammable particles. It's a fairly common trick that middle school science teachers do to wake up their students. :)

Re:The kids will love it

[sdo1]

Yea, the kids will love it, but here's the pisser...

If they bring it to show their friends at class, they'll probably be suspended for bringing a weapon to school.

Sorry to rain on the funniest damn comment I've read in months... but that's the sad fact of "zero tolerance".

-S

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

nah you must be confused, that was gorilla.bas :)

Realism?

[obotics]

But do you actually get killed when your tank blows up? I really find the lack of realism in games these days to be disturbing.

Re:Cool!

[blitzoid]

I'm sure if kids are reading /., they're not playing with water balloons and apples - These kids are making potato guns that can smash through a brick wall.

Cats!

[drooling-dog]

If these fire actual projectiles (as opposed to just a light beam), then I want one for my girlfriend's cats!

Re:Cats!

[Captain Large Face]

Duh! Cats have no opposable thumbs! How the HELL do you think they're going to use a remote control?!

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 :)

Re:3D Scorched Earth

[Glonoinha]

You always miss the first shot. In fact generally (Today's New Army as the standing exception) they don't even aim the first shot in real life. Just get your fire platform stable and with a good place to start from, let one rip, then figure out how far off you are, do some simple math, fire the second one (which should be MUCH closer), adjust, until you start landing shells where they are supposed to go. Then just keep pumping them down range.

You quickly get in pointed in the right direction and it becomes 2D again.

Helps to have RainMan on your team, though. Definately 38.7 degrees with 2.147 kilograms of powder. Definately. Practically 21 seconds to impact. They are definately not going to be happy when this bad boy lands on them. Definately.

Re:3D Scorched Earth

[budgenator]

There's two kinds of big gun shooting direct fire and indirect fire. Direct fire is aim by the gunner, it's what tanks do aim at the target, add in a little super-elevation to correct for the rounds free fall in flight determined by the targets range, and some defection adjustment to adjust for the round going off course from the wind and let'er rock and roll. In direct fire you want first round kills because when you fire, everybody knows where to shoot back at.

Indirect fire is what artillery does, the round goes through a high ballistic trajectory, but you want the round to travel in as low a trajectory as possible; the higher the round travels, the more likely that it will be picked up by a counter-mortar radar which can calculate the point of origin so the opposing force can shoot back at you. the FO, Forward Observer see's the traget, and tells the FDC, Fire Direction Computer, the approximate grid co-ordinates of the traget, his direction to the target, and what the target is. The FDC then calculates what direction to point the guns in, what elevation to point at, and what charge to use, how much powder. the guns then aim at a two stakes in the ground and fires, usualy one round from the number two gun in the center. If the round hits with-in the burst-radious of the target, then all the guns fire, if not the FO tells the FDC how many meters to left or right, or to add or subtract, the FDC re-computes and 2 gun re-shoots. as soon as the target is hit the unit moves, and re-sets up. This is called shoot and scoot, because if you're still there, the other guys are going to reach out and touch you if they can.

Aw, screw kids!

[Fritz Benwalla]

I've solved this problem by continuing to buy toys for myself - and now I've got money!

Fact is that as a kid I don't think I would have appreciated the coolness of this. A friend of mine had one of those helicopters that flew in circles, and model rocketry stuff, and I liked it but I thought it was all part of being a kid.

Now I own a Vectron Flying Saucer and a bunch of other cool stuff, and I still play with at much as if I were a kid. But now I realized how awesome it is scientifically, and the fact that things weren't always this cool.

Somehow wanting something for thiry years makes it that much sweeter. Makes me look forward to being eighty.

-------

"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...)

Procreation & Marriage Now Justifiable

[bedouin]

I was going to put off the kids thing a few more years, but I need a justifiable reason to spend $125 on these things. So, if there's any women out there who would like to get married and have my child soon there after, and also provide me with your Visa card so I can order these tanks (for are soon to arrive child), please send me a message.

Thanks

Re:laser tag

[Catiline]

No, those are not the DigiQ tanks. I own a pair of DigiQs, and they are about half that size and quite a bit more historically accurate (the DigiQ line is modeled -- as I said, somewhat accurately -- on WWII tanks). Furthermore, the ThinkGeek tanks are hard-coded to one frequency while the DigiQ can be reprogrammed. DigiQ also have multiple battle modes, including a very fun "simulation" (where different models have different ammo payloads and reload times).

Re:Awesome!

[valkraider]

FINALLY!

"Stuff that matters."

The normal editors must be on vacation...

Re:These tanks could be an interesting choice...

[dougmc]

Another fun thing would be rc planes with guns similar to those on these tanks. Imagine a fighter duel between a P-58 Mustang and a Zero, or an Me bf 109 and a Spitfire...

When you start doing R/C planes, you soon realize that there's three things you can have --

looks just like a real (scale) plane

flies well

is relatively inexpensive and easy to make

Pick any two!

Even so, some people do do R/C combat with scale models ... but it's a lot of work making the planes and keeping them flying :)

R/C plane combat is certainly done. Some is done with infrared `guns', like this, some is done trying to cut a ribbon trailing behind the other plane, and some is done by literally trying to bump the other plane out of the sky.

In all cases, even when you're not trying to, the planes tend to collide quite often. So you need planes that are very resiliant, and that usually means that they aren't going to be scale models of anything -- instead, you concentrate on them flying reasonably well and being tough.

Re:Those aren't toys!

[Mohammed Al-Sahaf]

The American claims are lies. The brave loyal men of the Republican Guard today destroyed 500 tanks. I myself crushed over 50 with my bare feet.

RC Tanks have been around for ages

[Gurezaemon]

Radio controlled tanks are nothing new - my neighbor had one 60 years ago.

He sat inside it, a radio signal came in, and in response to that message, he shot at Germans.