In car Elite

[xzanfr]

Not strictly oolite, but I thought some of you may be interested

I've been spending the last few weekends putting a raspberry pi in to my car. I've gone for riscos as it's quick to boot & shut down,but mainly as I've wanted to have an acorn os in my dream car since i was in primary school! Luckily my dream car is fairly cheap and I already own it, so I've built the pi in to my 1992 landrover defender! (rather than a lambo or a ferrari )



Best of all (and thanks to davespice and his article in magpi) it runs an arch 440 emulator and plays elite!



it's a bit of a nightmare to play and more for show due to the unconfigured screen resolution & middle mouse issue however the screen should be fairly easy to sort out and I've built in the facility to have a normal mouse so I'm hopeful my lunchtimes (when I get them) will be fun!

The standard risc os system works really well and I finally I have a loud enough sound system to hear megadeth above the standard land rover noise! Next up is to create my own elite-style HUD to display a revolving, wire frame defender with the fuel, shield etc bars displaying information via GPIO pins... although I'm happy enough now that it works at all!

I've put a bit more up on my website if anyone is interested : here

[Smivs]

...so I'm hopeful my lunchtimes (when I get them) will be fun!

Just make sure you avoid the temptation to play while driving! RL(tm) 'Press Space' moments are best avoided
Great idea, by the way, and a 'proper' 4x4 as well - very nice

[DaddyHoggy]

Brilliant - you definitely should share that with the Raspberry Pi team on their website of Facebook page.

There was talk in the early days of the RPi of Giles making a port using OpenGL ES which would go some way towards getting Oolite to run on a RPi (OoPi?) we live in hope.

[xzanfr]

Cheers smivs & Daddyhoggy.

Just make sure you avoid the temptation to play while driving! RL(tm) 'Press Space' moments are best avoided

.
Good point! It is for stationary use only so sitting in the work car park is fine but belting down a country lane is probably best avoided - tractors are lie a spiky Coriolis!!

There was talk in the early days of the RPi of Giles making a port using OpenGL ES which would go some way towards getting Oolite to run on a RPi (OoPi?) we live in hope.

I've read a bit about it in the Pi thread and it'll be perfect on the pi however I completely understand the huge level of work that is required to get it to work. If it does get going I'll definately stick the linux memcard in it at lunch!

Thanks again, chaps

[Gimbal Locke]

I was learning to drive when Arc Elite came out.

I quickly decided not to play right before a driving lesson, because I didn't want to be in the my-front-shield-can-easily-sustain-one-or-two-crashes-through-those-slow-ones-in-front-of-me mindset.

Just a random thought, brought up by association when seeing this cool project. Also nice to see Risc OS alive and well.

[Wolfwood]

Very nice! Next step must be a projector that projects the game screen to the windshield...

[xzanfr]

Cheers Gimbal Locke & wolfwood - Currently I'm chucking handfuls of tin foil out of the window as an ECM and have the mrs armed with a peashooter for missiles however I'm planning on working on a cobra body kit - Bit of a pain in the arse parking due to the width, but handy for loading tons of cargo in the back at the supermarket.

[DaddyHoggy]

For years I had a gimmicky toy "Smartie Zapper" a bright orange disc that had buttons that looked like smarties and each button played a variety of SF type sounds - all very Elite like when I look back - but it was a sealed unit - the batteries eventually died and I broke it trying to get it apart - it would be perfect for you now!