#Buy anki drive starter kit update
#Buy anki drive starter kit full
#Buy anki drive starter kit android

It's a fun illusion, making it easy to imagine little people inside, frantically trying to evade your fire.

#Buy anki drive starter kit full

There is a full single-player campaign in the app, and the 'cars' often talk to you through your smart device and the flashing lights on the car itself.

The secret is in the software, which is part of what makes the set feel so magical in practice. Each car is actually a character, and can be leveled up for new abilities and weapons. The starter set comes with two cars, and extras will run you $50 each. What used to be a chore with similar toys in the past has become part of the enjoyment of this set.Īnd this is all before you add the cars. Putting everything together, and experimenting with track designs, is in fact part of the play experience. The Anki Overdrive set allows you to put together a flexible track that can be stored again in under five minutes. These may seem like small details, but the classic slot car sets I grew up with were often tricky to put together, and could take hours to set up and take down. Perhaps more importantly, teardown is just a simple, and everything is packed away nicely to keep away from younger kids or pets. The box the starter pack comes in also holds every aspect of the hardware, and you can set up the track in a minute or two once you know what you're doing. The track pieces are bendable, which means they can be placed on nearly any surface and even deal with slight inclines or bumps. By connecting the pieces with magnets there are no fiddly mechanical bits to wear out or get stuck together. The technology is impressive, but it's the smaller details that stand out.

#Buy anki drive starter kit update

It's also possible to release a software update that would remove this limit.' 'In the currently shipped software the limit is 64 pieces,' Palatucci said, 'which is an enormous track, and allows for thousands and thousands of possible track configurations. The size of the track is limited only by software, in fact. There are other accessories and interesting pieces you can add to your track to increase the amount you can customize the play area. Two extra straight pieces will cost you $20, while the 'Launch' kit that allows you to add a jump is $30. You can build eight versions of the track in the starter set, but you can also buy add-on packs that allow you to do more almost like physical DLC. Most of the software on the cars is dedicated to decoding these positions and controlling the basic driving behaviors of the car.' 'The human eye cannot see these markings because we use a special printing process, but each car has an infrared camera that allow it to decode this information. 'There are unique markings on each track piece that identify the type of the piece and allow the cars to determine their locations,' Mark Palatucci, the co-founder and chief product officer of Anki, explained. The technology is part of the fun, and it's fascinating to watch in action: The cars go around the turns and you can watch their sensors build a virtual image of the track on your phone. The cars have to do a quick test lap of the track to figure out its configuration before each race, and after that they always stay on the track, although you can change 'lanes' by tilting your phone left or right. The pieces lock together via strong magnets, which makes track creation and destruction a fun, and refreshingly simple, task. That allows you to create eight different track configurations, and changing the track layout is as easy as pulling the pieces apart and clicking them back together in a different order. Overdrive is an updated version of the platform, and the $150 starter kit now comes with a modular track made up of four straight pieces and four turns. Not the least of which was that price, but the original track also came printed on a single sheet of vinyl. There were a few shortcomings with the product, however. It was a neat idea: Marry smart devices with slot car racing and layer on video game-style mechanics for something that felt brand new. What is going on?Īnki Overdrive is a sequel to the Anki Drive platform that came out in 2014 for $200. But what you get is a rather amazing mixture of classic play and video games.

#Buy anki drive starter kit android

The 'game' I'm playing is a mix of classic slot cars and Mario Kart, and the starter kit costs a rather steep $150 and requires the use of two iOS or Android devices to pilot the cars. I hit the button on my phone to fire my tractor beam, and the other car slows down until it's in range of my main weapon, and I fire, causing the second car to stop completely. The toy car on the plastic track is talking to me, explaining the mechanics of the game.