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Wipeout Recreated With an RC Car

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."

15 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by Kireas · · Score: 2, Funny

    Alright, that's awesome.

    Needs booster pads though.

    And where are all the weapons?

    --
    To much anime is bad for the brain...desu.

    Sorry. Couldn't help it.
    1. Re:Hmm... by Chrontius · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Hmm... by adolf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Meh.

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

      RFID? Why bother?

      (Kids, these days...)

    3. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:Hmm... by sznupi · · Score: 3, 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...

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
  2. Re:Now if only by Xiph · · Score: 3, 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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    Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
  3. Make you wish you where a hard-hacker. by Tei · · Score: 3, 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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    -Woof woof woof!

  4. Re:Rollcage by delinear · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seems like this 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.

  5. That takes me back abut 40 years by Liambp · · 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

  6. Life Imitating...Art by smitty777 · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    --
    "Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
    Albert Einstein
  7. On a similar note by ledow · · Score: 3, 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.

  8. Re:This is looking good - Re:Hmm... by tom17 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How can the cars reed switch differentiate between magnets for boost and magnets for weapons? This is why he chose the LED for the weapons, so that you can differentiate between the two.

    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.

  9. Re:fun and money by TheLink · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

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  10. Re:RC helicopter next? by TheLink · · Score: 3, Informative

    You mean something like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSv2ca-IECc

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  11. Wipeout? by the Surfaris? by JonStewartMill · · Score: 2, Funny

    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?"