I want to start off by saying that Tagferret (aka Brian) is a great guy and we really appreciate his going to all this trouble.Pros:
*Range good (as Lazerbait says, hard to tell with no real sight).
*Looks cool.
*Game options are great, being able to log in at game end and share hit scores so everyone gets a readout of how many times you hit or were hit by other players is great. Timers in each gun mean that even if you are way out, you know when a game is over.
Cons:
*Handle too small - I have smallish hands and the handle feels cramped. One of the guys in the T'Mar is over 6 feet and has huge hands, I doubt he could fit 3 fingers inside the grip.
*Printing on buttons - cast in plastic, same color had to be held at just the right angle to read.
*Lack of a sight! Having only some nearly invisible bumps on the left side of the gun is -not- enough. The sight rail on top of the gun is partly blocked by the screen, David ended up duct taping his lighted point sight onto the barrels.
*No setup box. There should be a controller available just to set everything up. Something with more keys on it to make setup easier.
*Too many buttons on the gun. I felt like I was playing an arcade fighting game. Plus if you hit any button, the gun turns on, so if you put it in the trunk or take it on a trip it will run the batteries down.
*Bad buttons- uses remote control-type rubber keypad and carbon contacts. The downside? If any water gets under them, the only fix is to tear the gun apart and carefully dry the keypads off. It is merely water resistant. It was dripping a bit while we were playing, and at least one gun had a partial water short in the buttons as it kept turning itself back on.
*Too many noises. How do you hide when your gun suddenly says "Danger!" because an opponent is near? The noise that indicated that I've been hit or that I've hit someone else were very similar.
*No muzzle flash. I like a muzzle flash.
*Noise of firing should be directed to the person you are shooting at.
I do not believe in playing in stealth modes- I don't like all noises and lights off. In real life, even a silenced gun makes a noise, and there is a noise from a bullet going by.
*I really can't express strongly enough how much I hated the sensor placement. Many, many times I had clear shots at people and could not hit them, simply because I was on their left or because the were standing behind a bush and had not raised their gun yet. Or if they simply turned and ran away, I could not hit them. Many times I watched someone hold their gun behind a tree and lean way out to look around. Or if they simply aimed a bit high, they could still hit me but I had to hold my gun higher as the sensor was blocked by their barrel.
*Hitting someone from behind was impossible unless someone was already firing at someone else, -and- you were on much higher ground. The LCD screen sticks way up and blocks about 60 to 90 degrees of the sensor from the rear. If they were just carrying their gun in the natural position of barrel down, the only way to hit them was 1. they have to be in the open so no low brush blocks it and 2. you have to be in about a 120 degree arc on their forward right side. Often I'd see players carrying their gun in front of them with the barrel angled up, in which case you had about 30 degree arc on their left and right.
*I think there should be an LED that blinks on the hit sensor. At distance, it was impossible to tell if any hits were landing because at even 20 feet I could not hear their gun, and at longer distances although you can still hit them, you can no longer receive the hit confirmation.
*I rarely got a lock-on signal, or hit confirmation, yet when we all logged our hits in, I had hit others dozens of times. But I tend to stay back, and shoot-and-duck.
*Auto Power Off- this was a real problem. It automatically shuts the gun off after 60 seconds after the last press of any button. Tagferret says it can't be disabled, but it was shutting games off in hosted games. IE, you get tagged out 10 minutes into a 15 or 20 minute game, and while you are waiting for everyone else to come back, your gun shuts itself off and loses all the info stored on it. At least one person said it shut his gun of -during- gameplay, as he'd been hiding for more than 60 seconds.
*The color of the red gun. The guns in one box are one red, one green. By law, the barrels must be orange. However, on the red gun the plastic containing the LCD and buttons was also orange, as was the butt of the handle. The result was that it has about 4 times the amount of bright orange as the green gun.
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OK, so it could take some hacking and chopping. Buy two guns, tear apart the orange one to make its sensor into a head sensor (not a back sensor). Build or buy a site that will fit on the short, rather ungainly sight rail, or hack and chop to move the buttons and LCD back and down. Buy yet another set and use the orange gun as a dedicated host connected to a PIC with an LCD screen and keyboard to allow faster setup of games. Allow saved reprogrammable game settings. Hack and chop the plastic handle to extend it. Cut out that ground wire as suggested by Tagferret. Hack in a small PIC that will atomatically hit something like the ammo button every 50 seconds so the gun won't autoshutoff. Connect a protected switch to turn off the batteries the old fashioned way to prevent batteries being run down.
My opinion? Easier to help David with FXonics or Jim with his system.
Maybe by next Bremerbattle we'll be testing out some of my sensor heads.
