by goosenapper » Fri Oct 16, 2015 7:32 am
I saw these in action last night on a large digital layout, and the overall feel was positive. While I remained happily tethered to the track due to my choice of using a third-party trigger controller, it was nice for the other guys to be able to stand anywhere they wanted all around the track. That alone made marshaling wrecks a lot easier and lessened the amount of times that the grabber needed to be used.
That said, when these suckers run out of juice without warning in the middle of a race, it's a major buzzkill. Only a few laps in to one of our 6 car D124 races, two of the wireless controllers both lost their charge, effectively removing those cars and drivers from the race and putting a halt to the festivities until they charged back up.
The inability to use the controller while charging is a major drawback. It would be nice to see Carrera offer a charging cable so that you can still run your car while the battery charges instead of being forced to set them as giant monuments next to the start-finish line. I own a Playstation 3, and while that game system does sport wireless controllers, it also charges them via standard USB cable, enabling you to keep playing while your controller is charging. Hey Carrera, take note of that!