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Modding Laser Tag Gear?
digitalsushi writes "With summer here again our thoughts turn to the outdoors, and for two years, my peers and I have tried to find plans online for augmenting our laser tag gear to make it more realistic. We're not engineers, but also figured it can't be that hard to do something with some kind of infrared laser to decrease the beam width. What other sorts of inexpensive things could be added to our gear to make it more interesting? We're using the popular Laser Challenge V2 kits, but any brand at all would be interesting."
You sir are, obviously, not a Slashdot reader :)
Please mod your Tron suit for Laser tag.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Upgrading to the real thing?
;)
Paintball?
Exploding blood packs. And lots of them.
Apply modules that translate sounds into amplified waves of destruction!
Now, to find a word or phrase which has power....
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Have you ever considered airsoft as an alternative? The guns are expensive but they should still be cheaper then getting realistic laser tag gear and a lot more fun. Airsoft uses air to launch small 6mm plastic BBs and they are designed to look like the real thing. Most guns that are sold in stores like Walmart are very cheaply made and not worth your money. I would recommend getting an AEG (Automatic Electric Gun) from Asia (airsoftshop.com, wgcshop.com) but if you prefer to buy from the US I would recommend combatdepot.com. Airsoft can be dangerous so if you play make sure you are wearing proper eye protection (at least ANSI 87.1). Also be sure to inform any neighbors you have as well as the police that you are having an airsoft game. You do not want the police comming to your house and opening fire on everyone they see.
Maybe you should add frickin sharks to your lasers.
A bunch of college kids we knew were addicted to playing "Laser Quest, and tried encouraging us (paintball fans) to play.
:)
What a joke.
There's no real incentive not to get shot, besides the lack of points. With paintball you know when you've been hit, because it hurts like hell. Laser Quest's hits resulted in your vest buzzing and your gun not working for a few seconds.
Plus there was no running or ducking in the arena.
Suggestions of wiring eletrodes to the vest to zap players were met with blank stares and hostility. I still think that's the way to go... modify them from "laser tag" to "pain gun tag"
Your laser gun needs a laser targeting system.
1) Cut old laser gun exactly in half (longitudinally)
2) Discard both halves
3) Replace with this.
Nobody'll be the wiser!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Grab a cheap stungun/cattleprod from the next gunshow, rig it to the relay that activates when the light sensor is tagged. Attach leeds from the stungun to the wearee's body.
Viola, now whenever you get tagged not only are you embarrassed but your jiggling and peeing yourself as well. Fun for the whole family.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
The "Laser Challenge" sets have a bomb that is ordinarily set off with a toggle switch - one direction for slow fuse, another for long fuse. It's a fairly simple hack to rip out the switch and substitute with an SCR and an IR photoresistor to allow remote detonation of the short fuse option. Then you can set minefields and set them off from a safe distance - Laser Geneva Conventions be damned!
Seriously, It's tough to find TV shows that aren't increasingly showing more violence, nudity, etc... Although, Bush is cracking down.
Hmmm.
Here's a mod i just thought of. Go about your daily business. Provide each player with a locator and a gun. Rig the locators to let you know when an opponent (also with a locator) is within a certain range (ie. 50 yds.). Begin panicked drawing of gun and be the first to find and kill the opponent. You must carry the gear at all times, and you must play regardless of your location, say in a classroom or at a wedding. This might be sweet as a campus-wide game. Even better if you don't know who the opponents are!
My peers and I have tried to find plans online for augmenting our laser tag gear to make it more realistic.
Don't waste time augmenting to make it realistic, just use real guns! Besides, the Stormtroopers showed us that real laser guns are awfully hard to aim.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
1) Sensors on the gun, that if triggered, disable it for a few seconds.
2) Somehow, build a bunch of smaller sensors, and by this I mean alot. If every person has to wear coveralls that have a few hundred sensors on them, it's alot harder to cheat and just cover yours with your hand.
3) Have a wearable computer that interprets the sensor data. Not sure how to have it affect gameplay, but it seems you could tell the difference between a "kill" and a "flesh wound".
4) If you have an arena of sorts, have sensors on the outdoor lights for night play. Would be cool to "shoot them out".
5) Have lots of little 4" x 4" mirrors up in odd places, for bank shots.
6) Have everyone wear GPS. Send the output to a modified quake server... let people from around the world watch the virtual version of the game.
IR and RF based...! http://www.oscmar.com (click on products)
Wow, how offtopic.
Since we are showing anecdotal eveidence. I was also raised in a house with similar rules. No Bow either.
I now play paintball, enjoy guns and play violent video games.
*shrug*
Feel free to keep congratulating yourself though.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
But as a side note, Laser Challenge V2 makes you wear the receiver on your chest, and its an easy thing to cover the receiver with your arms as you shoot at your opponents. You almost need multiple receivers which can monitor hits from all directions, but who wants to buy multiple Laser Challenge V2 setups for one person.
Paintball turns your entire body into receivers. If you crank down the velocity of your markers, you increase the number of people than can stand ( pain threshold ) to get tagged by a paintball. Remember, safety first ( googles and cups? for our male /.ers ).
Seeing a laser tag story allowed me to reminisce a little. I didn't even remember I had a laser tag system until I read the post. Then I remember why I forgot about it in the first place - paintball.
What was lacking from the laser tag game was a reason to stay out of the way of the laser. No consequence to standing right out in the open, and as a kid, our games usually turned less fun after someone threw themselves into the line of fire for no reason.
Enter paintball a few years later. I, for one, am not jumping out in front of a flying paintball. The consequence (and initial sting) keeps the game fun. I don't think I stand alone in this.
Given the opportunity to play either, 99 times out of 100 I'm going to overlook laser tag without question.
At one time I thought that the new laser tag things were so cool. Finally an answer to the stick-guns we usually ran around with. When I found out that I could thwart my opponents firing by turning my back, it wasn't quite the answer we were looking for. Turn your back to a paintball, you're just going to sting in a different place.
I'm always a fan of modding things, but I can't see the point here when perfectly viable alternatives exist.
Yeah, but what if their option is just to make it more fun? I say: Batteries + leyden jars + an electromagnetic switch triggered by a hit. Make those hits count!
What I'd love to see is an Ender's Game type of thing in which the clothes freeze up in the areas they're hit in, but that would probably be too difficult.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
not sure if this helps, but you could try http://www.lasertag.de/
wud
Set your phasers to STUN!
We used to play laser tag at night in a nearby graveyard. We'd duck behind gravestones, which was always fun. Also, we had a rule that you're not allowed to shoot unless your chest plate was visible to whoever you were shooting at. Also, lasers bouncing off of glossy gravestones made things interesting.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
I prefer the concept from Ender's Game, with the suits that freeze up when hit.
Not more than you need, just more than you want
Paintball -- the most fun you can have with your pants on.
Seriously (OK, MORE seriously), you can paintball in many more environments than you can lasertag (plus you avoid the toxic complications of Zombie Smoke), and the (small but undeniable) pain of taking a hit is a far better motivator to stealthy movement and quick reactions than a bit of light.
Cheers,
Rob
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
Well, if it makes you feel any better, when I have kids, I'm going to teach them as much about violence as I can. Extensive martial arts training, stuff like that.
Hey, maybe my kids and your kids can get together and play, and my kids can beat up your kids! Wouldnt that be fun!?
Ok, just kidding. I do fully plan on teaching any/all kids I have as much about self-defense as I possibly can, and that will include extensive training with guns, knives, and "common items" which can be used as weapons in a pinch. I also will be teaching them, from the beginning, the seriousness of what they are learning. There is nothing wrong with letting your kids know how to handle themselves when push comes to shove, just make sure they understand the responsibility that goes with their knowledge.
But maybe that's just me. I always resented my parents for being overly protective in that regard, and not giving me the opportunity to learn how to defend myself - a problem I took upon myself to rectify.
you synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix?
Ive seen it work before. You could probably generate a 6MW beam!
Chris.
I ask for a car and I get a computer. How's about that for being born under a bad
I was an employee for two years when I was in high school, and I have heard many of the same complaints before. The fact is, LQ is not the same as paintball by any stretch of the imagination. It's a much simpler game, and that is so kids of ALL ages can play. I would not expect anyone over 15 or 16 to really enjoy LQ, it's the little ones that get a kick out of it. To respond to a few of your points:
The incentive to not getting shot is points
Well, the ONLY goal of the game to win, and winning is based on points... So losing points is bad, therefore one should avoid being hit
No running or ducking
Again, this is a game for kids AND teens. Imagine a fourteen year old running top speed with his hard plastic laser out front, and turning a corner. Smack into the head of an eight year old. Switch that to an eight year old running full speed, smack into the crotch of an adult. It hurts. Trust me. As for ducking, it's a dark maze, and we want to avoid injuries as much as possible. You may think it's lame, but again, this is not a hardcore game.
Electrodes on the vest
Again, see above points. We wouldn't have too many birthday parties coming back if all the kids were bawling their eyes out because of electrical shocks, whether they hurt or not.
The fact is, LQ and Paintball have thier own audiences, and you should be aware of that before slamming the game. If you want something fast paced, mature, and semi-dangerous, then play paintball. If you want to take 30 ten year olds to a birthday party game that all of them can enjoy safely, go to LaserQuest. These points of course also apply to the original posted question.
As a final point, if you want to win at LaserQuest, then move slowly, and stay quiet. Sound is the single most important factor in that game. You may note the hardcore players covering the speaker on their gun...
Hmm... actually, do you think this would work?
For each joint, do the following:
Take a small-diameter piece of pipe, and wrap it with heating coil. Seal off one end. Wrap around the pipe with insulation to prevent burns, but not so much that heat won't be able to escape. Fill most of the inside of the pipe with sauter, leaving just enough room for a large diameter nail to be inserted. Insert the nail, which should be long enough to not be completely enclosed when fully inserted. Seal off the opening enough to prevent sauter from leaking when melted. Weld the nail's outside end to a hinge, which is in tern welded structure that can be fitted firmly around one side of the body's joint. Do the same with the pipe. Further insulate the whole thing.
Repeat with each joint, and for tougher joints, use several.
Then, modify the laser tag system so that when it's been started, it activates the heating system for all joint limiters. When a hit is detected, the heating coil is shut off for a joint. In seconds, the limiter should become stuck. At the end of a game, they could be reactivated, heating back up and thawing the joint, or simply removed by removing the parts that wrap firmly around the sides of your joints.
Would this work, or not? And more importantly, would it be a lawsuit waiting to happen?
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
There is just a little difference. The real M16 shoots 5.56mm lead slugs at a velocity of about 950m/s. Airsoft guns shoot 6mm plastic pellets at a velcotiy of around 30-100m/sec depending on gun type. Now not only should it be apparant that the gun won't even shoot 300m, it should be equally apparant that it is far less accurate. He isn't talking about the accuracy of the shooter, rather the accuracy of the gun. For a real fiream, this is nothing special. It should be essentially dead on at 20m. For a plastic BB gun, that's a little different.
Back when I was in college, and Laser Tag was relatively new, some smart-aleck wag figured out that it was nothing more than a glorified remote control.
He got a programmable remote (a real one, that read another remote's signal, then duplicated it), put the Laser Tag signal into it, and voila! He had the Laser Tag equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun. He could take out several players at once with it. And often did.
We used to play some lasertag in highschool. My personal favorite hack used a magnifying glass and a poster tube to make a long-range sniper-style rifle.
CONSTRUCTION: basically, i took the IR LED and lens off the old gun. securely insert the proper size magnifying glass lens into one end the the poster tube. Insert a plastic cup that fit inside the other end of tube, but can slide forward and backward in the tube.
ALIGNMENT: using a penlight, stuck through the opening in the plastic cup, determine the focal length of the setup. In a dark room, you can project an image of the lightsource onto a wall by adjusting the distance from the cup to the lens. find the proper locationa and mark it.
FINAL ASSEMBLY: put the LED from the gun into the cup at the end of the tube. remove all excess cardboard of the tube. Firmly attach to the gun. (we used duct tape).Go out and test!
RESULTS: basically this allows you to focus the beam more tightly. the downside is that you have less cross sectional area to the beam. this makes things harder to hit. the upside is that you have a more concentrated beam. this means it travels father. In side-by-side tests with fresh batteries, the modified gun shot fully 3 times further, but you had to be DAMN accurate.
get a good optics book (or even a general physics text) for more on the lens setup.
No kidding.
I was having problems with the police back in the 1980's. I can't even imagine what would happen now.
One instance I know of was when a couple of kids in our "Assassin" group put on ski masks and had a shoot-out in a local mall. One of the shop owners called in the police, thinking we had just "killed" one of the other members of the group. The police were actually clueful enough to track down who the game admin was (a close friend of mine), and quitely had the game shut down without making it onto the evening news.
Routinely we would have "shootouts" during the break between classes at school. Somehow I doubt that even a Supersoaker would get clearance today, because of similarities as a "weapon", or worse yet, it could have some sort of "biological" agent. I prefered a small cap gun that fired off rubber bullets. I know that would have been confiscated today by most police liason officiers, even before you got into the building. I even remember "concealing" the gun in an old book that we bought in a thrift store, by glueing the pages together and cutting out a hole in the pages for the shape of the gun. We left a few pages unglued so it could even be "read" if you were forced into using it as a book.
Still, it is a fun game, and under a more controlled environment it still might be fun.
Back in the day when LazerTag was really popular, someone sold a "GI Joe" knockoff that was compatible with the LazerTag gear. The only down-side was that the "GI Joe" receptor didn't count to 5 like LazerTag receptors (minor mod required.) And the whole thing looked fugly.
So, I went to Radio Shack and picked up a plastic kit casing, and re-housed the modded board in the new casing. It was just a plain black box with a round receptor window, but it did the job.
The really cool mod was the gun. I took it apart and put it in a water gun housing that looked exactly like an M4A1 carbine. (You may think of it as a "short M16.) Yes, it really looked like that! It was even the real size and everything. I instantly became the cool guy at LazerTag parties, although I had to keep the gun out of sight until after dark. (And we only played in empty fields owned by people we knew.) Other guys painted their LazerTag rifles to look cool (camo was popular) but I had a freaking M4!
My M4 had a decent range, but I didn't try to keep the beam tight. As a result, it acted like a high-power shotgun. Great for open fields, not so great when I followed one guy into a barn. :-(
I'm in the National Guard and I've played with the MILES gear before. I hate it. Mostly because mine never works right... Then again, they might be doing that to me on purpose... Come to think of it, they do make me wear that big red bullseye and walk in front of the group everywhere we go... Hey!
It's called the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, or MILES. It's been in use in the army since the 80's. They even make sensors for tanks and Humvees, as well as individual soldiers. The laser transmitter attaches to the barrel of an actual M-16, and is activated by the sound from the firing of blanks, so you approximate the noise and weapon kickback you would with firing an actual round.
Some links (the second with pictures):
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/miles.htm
http://www.peostri.army.mil/PRODUCTS/MILES/
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
I have two children and my wife feels pretty much the same way you do about guns and children.
My own view is a little more realistic. We live in a world where violence, whether we like it or not, is a reality. While I have never owned an actual projectile weapon (what purpose would it serve in suburbia other than to get into trouble shooting holes in things?) I did however have plenty of toy guns growing up. Later, I fired weapons (M-16s) while in the Air Force.
Amazingly enough, though I've never been sat down and explained the nature and dangers of guns, my exposure to such things (including the main topic of laser tag guns) hasn't yielded a psychotic lunatic nor even a mild gun fanatic. To be honest I'm with the crowd that was able to figure out what a gun was on his own (kids really aren't stupid if you give them half a chance) and will take them one way or the other. A weapon in the hands of someone with no morales is a bad thing. A weapon in the hands of a responsible person is a good thing. A toy in the hands of anyone is still just a toy.
I suppose the question is, do you fear weapons or do you fear your children can't make correct decisions on their own?
Does no one remeber PHOTON? Damn that game was so cool...
Violence is to be avoided. My children will be taught to walk away if possible. They will be taught to RUN away if walking away is not possible. And if running away is not possible then I feel sorry for the bully that picks on them. Provided they are well-adjusted members of society, the people best prepared to deal with violent situations are the LEAST likely to find themselves in one.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
With a sophisticated laser tag system, you get real time stats, game rules enforced by the equipment itself, etc. etc.
Paintball _is_ fun, but it's a different type of gameplay.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
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MILES uses real weapons with blank rounds. The MILES laser transmitter clamps into the barrel, so if you do manage to load a live round, you destroy the transmitter and the weapon, but not your target. The "bang" of the blank round triggers the laser transmitter. So you have to lug ammo
and magazines around. All the real-world problems of jams and misfires occur, too.
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If you're hit, it beeps. Loudly. Continously. And you can't turn it off. Only a referee can turn it off.
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If you're hit, you're dead. You're carried off to the "dead" pen. Often, becoming "dead" means an extra 20-mile march or some similar unpleasant detail.
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In the newer versions, beams are coded, and you can tell who hit whom. Soldiers who miss too much get sent to the rifle range for extra training.
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Scores affect your real-life Army career. Why send losers to war?
The latest generation gear uses GPS and data links so that indirect fire weapons can be simulated. But you probably don't need that.In the Air Force we where using "MILES" gear
.. just like paintball
a commercial industrial strength laser tag, and
after some rather rugged encounters...dropped
weapons, banging around...etc
The strength of the beams got out of hand and
when shot with them, the intensity was such as to
create quarter sized bruises
but with infrared spectrum light beams you can't see. Good way to lose an eye and the range was
way beyond any paint gun.....hehehe
I have played both Laser Tag (Q-zar) and Paintball and I enjoy both, but I don't think you can simply compare the two on the basis of what incentive there is not to get hit.
The variety of gameplay possibilities the realtime scoring and rules management system in laser tag games offer, make the experience completely different from Paint Ball.
If you want an incentive not to get hit in laser tag, then I suggest a game of Q-Zar Eliminator. When you get tagged, you loose one of your preset amount of "lives", and when you have lost all of them you are simply out of the game. You loose. You can steal lives from other players if you shoot accurately enough, a game rule which would be completely unenforcable in Paint Ball. You have to watch your ass, if the arena is well designed and set with the right ambient sounds and lighting, this can be a truely nerve wrecking experience. I have never experienced the same amount of suspence in any game of Paint Ball I have played.
If the reason you prefer Paint Ball is that it hurts when you get hit (which supposedly would give you an incentive not to get hit), then I must question your understanding of the game.
Paint Ball is NOT about not getting hit. Paint Ball is about winning the game. To win the game you sometimes have to make sacrifices and take casualties. Get the flag and take it to the goal. If one of your team survives and accomplishes this, the victory is yours. Paint Ball is not a war simulation. I have seen plenty of trained military personel get their asses thouroughly spanked by more sports oriented teams, because they don't understand that it isn't a problem if you take a couple of casualties on you way to the goal. In Paint Ball pain is temporary, honor is forever, and there are no points for second place.
What you are looking to use is something called a "corner cube" or "retro reflector". It has the property of sending the incident light back in exactly the direction it came from. So your attacker would very effectively shoot himself. You might be able to use some of that retro-reflecting tape that some runners/cyclists use to be more easily seen during dawn/dusk. It is not as efficient as a good quality corner cube, but it doesn't cost several hundred dollars either.
To address the query posed by the lead author, a beam expander will reduce the divergence of the laser beam and "tighten up" the pattern. Again, they are not cheap, you might want to experiment using an old, cheap rifle scope on the end of your weapon as a beam expander.
Enjoy,
-- Instant Karma's gonna get you! [320848 = 2*2*2*2*11*1823]
Rifles *RIFLE* the round - it's the angular momentum of the round that delivers the majority of the long-range accuracy. With Airsoft (or paintball, for that matter), you're dealing with a basically spherical projectile, which is not rifled.
paintball
M.I.L.E.S. (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagment System, in case you were wondering) is horrible. It is awful. It is so atrocious that I can't truly capture its badness except to say that it sucks about as much as a black hole. Don't look into it. Don't consider it. Don't mention it...for gawdsake, don't even think about it.
I have been in the Army for about eight years now and I honestly cannot sum up how much I hate this system. I once told myself, "Self, I think I could be happy doing anything as long as I don't have to wear M.I.L.E.S gear." Since I told myself that I have spent significant time in swamps, deserts and everywhere in-between and I can tell you as a bone fide user that I preferred being in a hostile combat environment where I was getting shot at over wearing that crap in training.
Fortunately for you I find it very hard to believe that you would find any that works on the market, and if you did, the last thing your neighbors or police would want is you and your friends shooting real machine guns at each other with real (blank) ammo and then trying to explain that its just a game.
Stick with Laser Tag...trust me on this one.
Technology has changed drastically since the 80's when I used to play Laser Tag, Photon, etc. These days you can buy fully programmable microcontrollers (Microchip PIC16F628A) for less than $2 a pop. I'm currently in the middle of a couple different IR projects with microcontrollers, so the potentials of this type of project are fresh in my mind.
I would create the entire thing from scratch, as opposed to modding existing equipment. The circuit would be extremely simple (a PIC, a transistor, a few resistors, IR emitters and detectors, and push buttons for firing, reloading, resetting, etc).
You could either just use IR LEDs, or get emitters that already modulate at some frequency. If you also encode data on your carrier then you could enable options like friendly fire, varying weapon damage, etc.
Some ideas that come to mind:
Use FM RF transmitters to relay all data back to a central data collection point to show game progress real-time.
Use an IR transmitter modulated with a special code to reset each player. This would reduce cheating.
Similar to above, use an IR transmitter (with a different code) that can be used to heal people. This unit could be placed in a fixed location, or you could have a medic type player that only has a weak weapon.
Use virtual ammo, implemented as above. Once your weapon is out of ammo you have to pick up additional ammo, which recharges your weapon.
Just like Medics in TFC, you could allow medics to infect enemy players. If a player is infected then they constantly emit a signal that would infect their teammates. Anyone infected will gradually loose health until they die. This could be implemented with a couple weak IR transmitters directly on the player. Of course medics on your own team can heal infections.
Put a IR receiver in the weapon and not just on the player. Thus if it is possible to shoot at someone, it is possible to be shot. That has always been my biggest gripe about laser tag - people holding their gun around a corner where you can't see their sensor.
I could go on and on, but I suppose that's enough rambling for now.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Paintball is not army recruitment, any more than Cops and Robbers is police recruitment, or holding your kid up in the air and playing "Airplane" is Air Force recruitment.
Paintball is a game designed to elicit adrenalin rushes. Put a football linesman up against the opposing team, then send him onto a speedball (tournament paintball) field. It's the same feeling--you know you're going to get hit, but you're trying to avoid it, and even if you do get hit, you'll make the other guy pay for the right to hit you.
Paintball has gotten a bad rap. Go out and play a game. I play at Skyline Paintball; I'll gladly loan you a tournament-class gun (er, sorry, political correctness setting in, "a tournament-class marker"). You'll very quickly see that anyone who plays paintball understands better than the average kid entering an Army recruiter's office that war is hell, and there are times of utter hopelessness in a battle when you have no hope of surviving and are simply awaiting the round that will seal your fate. If that's recruiting for the Army, they'd better come up with something better, quick.
Jouster
oh come on mods, how is this not modded off topic?
Always carry chambered! If you're trying to beat the bad guy to the draw, the extra half a second it takes to rack the slide WILL cost you your life.
Glad I do not live in the USA. Seriously you guys should take a step back and see how things work anyway else in the world (not counting war zones and third world countries)
We used to do this with Miles gear in the army. Who says war can't be fun?
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Firearms ownership is a cultural legacy in the US that can't be wiped out. And in a real world where bad guys are armed regardless of the law, that legacy is actually useful to society. It permits citizens to be personally responsible for their own safety if they so choose. Additionally, and probably more importantly, it allows citizens to have the means to resist the sort of tyrants that in the past have made a large number of countries into horror shows of citizens being abused and murdered by their own governments. Law-abiding citizens who own firearms have caused nothing near the mayhem that governments have historically wrought on their own peoples. So the man who legally carries a firearm and has never harmed anyone isn't the bane of society.
Those of us in the world who have entrusted our governments with the sole power of lethal force are in far more danger than those places where good citizens are trusted to have the ability to defend themselves and their families. History is pretty clear on this.
Realistic Star Wars Blaster Battles.
The Conclusion?
The current game technology isn't there. Even WITH green lasers, (Though, that's getting somewhat closer.)
What I suggest is the following. .
Full clips of tracer rounds! Those things actually look like Star Wars blaster bolts! And looks are the first step.
Sound? Well. . . Get this: When you fire a gun, you get a lot of fast-moving hot gas, right? It makes sound. Okay. So then you have silencers, which are good at diffusing all that fast-moving hot gas so that it makes very little sound. Right? So then why not a gun modification which doesn't just kill the sound, but rather changes it? I mean, why not? That's what vocal cords do. There's a thousand different musical instruments out there which take moving air and shape it. Sure, you could probably spend millions of dollars screwing around with phonics technology trying to come up with just the right noise, but the fact of the matter is that it could be done, and once you know all the right shapes of metal tube to use, the finished product is low tech and as easy to produce as a kazoo.
So then you'd have both the looks and the sounds!
How about the feel?
Beats me. What does it feel like to get shot with a blaster round? Or a tracer round, for that matter? Probably not good. (Keeping in mind, safety isn't really much of a concern with me, particularly since I don't imagine a properly cool Star Wars blaster system is going to materialize any time soon. Wear a jacket or something and try not to aim for your friend's head.)
Anyway, I suspect the formulation of the flare could be tinkered with. --If you think about it, you'd only really need enough burn-time to last the half second or so that the projectile is airbourn, so the material could be gone the instant it hits the target. Magicians use stuff called 'Flash paper', which is chemically perfect for the job. --Makes a nice rosy blaze for a second or so while you produce your pidgeons or whatever, and then it's gone. You can light the stuff in your hands and not get burned. Neato! In fact, you could even put enough flare material in the round so that it burns for a second after it hits the target. If you formulate it just so, you could probably even get it to flare up for a moment after striking. I bet you could also make a gram of theatrical flash-powder go off on inmpact as well to make a little flash and 'poof'. (Though, I suspect that would be rather pushing the safety margine a touch!)
Anyway, for the final effect, I'd want the projectile to have a second, paintball-like component, except rather than dye, it would be filled with a black chalk dust to simulate blaster scorch marks on targets. Now, honestly. Tell me it wouldn't look just desperately cool to be able to riddle walls with realistic-looking blaster impact marks!
So. .
Sounds like a blaster, Looks like blaster fire, and everybody knows when the target has been hit.
And finally, you could wire your combat area up to play John Williams over a global sound system. .
Yes, actually, I HAVE thought about this rather too much, which just goes to show; that which influences you when you were a kid, has a tendency to stick.
Now, if I could just think of a way to integrate all of this clumsy blaster stuff with some of those cool light sabers. .
-FL
Paintballings fun (a lot better than laser tag). However for your average player I don't think they'll play by tournement rules. I played laser tag once and the rush is just not the same. you get hit in laser tag you go beep now if you linked up an induction coil the beeper that might be more fun. However in paintballing (tournement syle) if you get hit for a start you're probably going to get a bruse then there's the thought of the other 3 or so balls that are going to hit you straight after the first. Ps if you shoot someone in the balls and the paintball doesn't break you can keep firing until they give up, however when they pick themselves of the ground they might come after you with a big stick (and never do this to a guy who is twice the size of you (I speak from experience)).
Allow me answer all of your specific questions before I elaborate.
Unreliable? Absolutely. To test out MILES gear soldiers will often resort to setting off the laser by tapping the sensor on the front of the unit (this is referred to as 'dry firing') and attempting to kill each other just to verify that their equipment works. If, after several likely unsuccessful attempts they do actually kill their buddy, he has to slink over to a referee and claim his equipment went off for no good reason and have his gear reset. Interestingly, there is a high enough incidence of the gear spontaneously going off and 'killing' players that this is utterly believable. When batteries begin to get low, then the gear often gives a 'false positive' and kills you...sort of an electronic death rattle I suppose. I have also had my equipment set off by flourescent lights and other RF emitters.
Breaks down a lot? As a unit, we are often issued at least 10% more units of MILES than we need because they expect to have at least that much of stuff fail during use. I personally think it is horrendous that the government continues to invest in a system with that kind of failure rate.
Inaccurate? Sort of. It's a laser, so it shoots straight, but mounting it onto your weapon so that straight for the laser corresponds to where you are pointing your rifle is a pain in the ass. The system comes with some mounting brackets intended to mate properly with an M-16, M-4, etc...but in practice using these alone results in a very loose attachment with the laser rattling left, right, up, down and everywhich way...and those few degrees of difference in aim at the barrel result in dozens of meters of difference for your target downrange. By its nature MILES will also never be able to accurately simulate the ballistic arc of a bullet over a long distance...not important to most people, but for training soldiers, a significant point.
How else does MILES suck, you ask. Well, I'll tell you since you're interested. Perhaps most importantly, the designer of the system is clearly not acquainted with the most basic concepts of ergonomics. The heart of the system is a metal box, roughly 8x6 inches positioned directly between your shoulder blades...interesting location when you consider the targetted user group often wears 60-80 pound rucksacks that have to press down on this godforsaken piece of crap and drive it right into your back. Moreover, when worn as designed, MILES has some critical cabling that runs across the chest harness horizontally, about 3-4 inches below your throat. Given that anyone using MILES is going to be jumping, rolling, and crawling around, can you think of a worse place to run a line that can, and often, does effectively strangle the wearer? If you can you are more creative than I am. Then there is the halo...or as I refer to it, the crown of thorns. MILES uses a conceptually interesting idea where the target can be hit in the head or the torso. It accomplishes this with the 'halo' of sensors that ring a user's head. When shot, this halo broadcasts an RF signal to the harness, which registers the kill...theoretically. To make this work (READ: suck even worse) there is another of those evil metal boxes on the halo. (This is one of the major failings of MILES...the halo doesn't really work very well without a helmet to put it on. Take the weight of a helmet, then add about a pound and a half of halo, which only mounts off-center, thus unbalancing the system, and imagine wearing it for 2 weeks to a month straight during an exercise.) This box is needed to hold batteries and the RF transmitter to communicate a hit to the harness. Now, imagine you are in, oh, say a foxhole with another soldier. One of you gets shot in the head. Your halo sends out the RF signal, and does it register with just your harness? Of course not. You're both dead, thanks to MILES.
I think that about sums up my major issues with MILES. Bottom line is that I cannot believe that f