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hrontos

Eurobricks Knights
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Everything posted by hrontos

  1. hrontos
    Yes, exactly, that's why I would buy for my kids, but probably not for me. I do not want risk making a dust collector out of it. With kids there will more users for it. 350 euro is not that bad for such toy, I have seen terrible RC cars for 120 euro. And they were really terrible - awfull plastic, suspension, weak parts. So programmable robots for 350 euro is definitely better invested money. Of course, 350 USD would be nicer, but that is the pricing policy which is quite difficult to change. If you take a look at this poll, if the Mindstorms was cheaper, 50% more people would buy it. Not 20, but 30 people. I don't know how big discount is expected, since it was not specified in the poll question, but with not more than 33% discount, the TLG income would be the same (20*350 = 7000, 30*350*67%=7035). It looks like the price is really well justified and it is not the price that stops people buying it. Or the expected price would not be reasonable for TLG (total profit for more sold units would be lower than for less sold units).
  2. hrontos
    I try to treat it as educational toy. At least for kids. Many people buy RC plane or heli and serious ones really start at more than 350EUR. And those are really just toys. Very nice hobby also, but those are really just toys. But with every toy (to make it worth the money) you have to play and Mindstorms projects probably require more time than the standard LEGO.
  3. hrontos
    Yes, number of cores and frequency matters. RAM has an influence on maximum size of model. Graphics chip is not important. I can confirm this. I use notebook and it has problems with cooling during rendering. I had to reduce maximum CPU frequency to 85%. It works also at 100%, but when I do something else and integrated graphics will start heating, it will overheat and whole machine shuts down. So due to cooling, the desktop is better. The only advantage of ntbk is the battery when there is some power interruption. But render can be restarted and continues, so it is not that important.
  4. hrontos
    It is interesting for me, but I consider it quite expensive just for me. To be more precise, I am not sure I would have a time to really use it regularily. And I do not want to buy it just to try it for a few days or weeks. But I hope my kids will have an interest in it and I will happily buy it for them (and also for me to borrow it sometimes ). We have RCX 2.0 now and I hope to "upgrade" to NXT2 or EV3 in 2-4 years.
  5. hrontos
    My eyes do not believe you, but my picture editor does. Well done, very good and probably tricky job to make it like this only by rendering.
  6. hrontos
    Yes, it is a regular heli with LEGO "weights", but it is nicely integrated and flies nicely. Some famous RC heli producer should negotiate with TLG and put some aluminium pins into their kits and LEGO logo on them to satisfy also purists.
  7. hrontos
    This video look really great. It's really interesting, that the RC unit and blades of that size can handle the 9396 body. It is not very smooth body comparing to traditional RC heli bodies and it's definitely heavier than those bodies. May be he selected some stronger motors and batteries to handle it even with 9396 sized rotors.
  8. hrontos
    Congratulations rm8, well deserved.
  9. hrontos
    Staying on the ground I would say it is not possible. Boss seems to fit into part count of original crawler and therefore also into that price range. To convert it to the enforcer few hundred extra parts are needed and so price would be higher. It is quite unusual to have more parts on the B-model. Staying with original enforcer design, we are talking about may be 800-1000+ extra parts. And this is extra 60-100 USD. And to make the quad out of it is completely different set of panels so it is again some extra parts and higher costs. But it should be and exclusive set for fans, not money maker, so surprises are allowed. I think they would not put it into top 10 if they did not intent to produce it.
  10. hrontos
    Amazing. It took me a while to recognize how big it is. And with many great details.
  11. hrontos
    Voting page is not accessible right now, so it looks like there might be some changes.
  12. hrontos
    This LEGO plane this is an amazing project with a lot of details and great ideas. You have a great patience building it for two years. But with flying this plane I would be more carefull to avoid disappointment. I would suggest to build some standard model plane first as a test. Kits are not that expensive and take only few days to build. I built some of them and it requires quite high level of precission to make it fly. Not get to air and crash after few moments, but to make it really fly. If I will not count that it has to be really sturdy construction it has to be also precise and well balanced. And this requires quite a lot of experience to calculate it for a custom model. For a first flying model you can use any RTF model or a toy. Just to try it. Or a simulator. It is not that easy as it looks, mainly because it has to fly at certain speed and you have to react quite quickly. Movements have to be precise and quite "automatic". There are some styren foam based models that are good for beginners and can survive some crashes. And you can build them also. Try them as a bit of relax from this project since you mentioned your are tired and as a source of an inspiration.
  13. hrontos
    I shared the LDD file immediately when I put the entry to the gallery and it is still downloadable, so it looks like they do not prevent it. But of course, this is in legal terms different from transferring rights. When you transfer them, this means that TLG can use the design and pictures without further explicit permission from you.
  14. hrontos
    These real life comparisons are not good. People will just start arguing. Have you ever seen police highway car with crawling capabilities? Whatfor do you need high suspension chassis on a highway? May be on the road I drive every day to my office after the winter. If you start to compare with real life vehicles, only some challenge entries make really sense as real life vehicles.
  15. hrontos
    Kid or parent without experience may treat this behaviour as a kind of problem with the suspension spring and may report them to customer service as deffective. That's probably why also the original crawler has only very simple body. TLG will probably reduce the enforcer's weight to avoid that. The only question is, how much will the design stay after the reduction.
  16. hrontos
    Yes, it will be a complete set. It would be a bit complicated for average user to get both of them and build/rebuild one into another one. Moreover may be the winning design will need some slightly changed chassis, so it would be even more complicated.
  17. hrontos
    Many technic builders have similar opinion. However this model has strong "WOW" factor for kids and their parents, who are just average LEGO users and do not care that much about that. And that is the majority of target buyers. efferman presented behaviour of these high and heavy models in his video with his offroad delivery services.
  18. hrontos
    No need to feel guilty. If you did not post the info, somebody else would do it. LEGO selected the same competition model as is used for CUUSOO projects, but it probably does not work so well in such competitions. There is always some strong factor that makes people support "home" entries (created by member of a local forum or from some city, state etc.). This "team" spirit is always there. For this kind of competitions voting should be used to select top 10 or top 5 and than professional jury should come and select winners. To avoid that some entries will have strong team support and win just because of that. Otherwise it is only about better social marketing, not better design, since voting itself does not imply any obligation on the voting person. On CUUSOO there is a review process that has the final word to avoid this. And as a detail, entries should be better balanced: model with 1300+ parts cannot be in the same category as model with 2500+ parts. There should be some limits. Or estimated price info. Or something that will balance the advantage of many parts.
  19. hrontos
    This is great. I like how you use LEGO Technic to attract attention of people to things they would normaly find not so attractive.
  20. hrontos
    Hehe, very common issue. If you want to win ellections, just buy good preliminary poll results from some agency and publish it somewhere. I agree, but I also think that "WOW" factor of model is important. As you see from other threads, many fathers and moms just buy it for 6-12 years old kids and for them this "WOW" and good looking is very important. No the technic functions, leaning, speed or whatever. Just the immediate look. They want to hear "WOW" under the Christmass tree. Yes, anybody can try it and test it. I can modify it, to include official building steps, so that anybody can build it. LDD by default will generate terrible steps, but using groups I can force any custom building sequence.
  21. hrontos
    I don't know, if crazy_1993 made some local posting anywhere, I presume that his entry has much more "WOW" factor thanks to police theme, size and color scheme, so it is gaining votes based on that. Problem is, that people do not recognize that with that part count it is probably the most expensive entry and belongs to a completely different category. rm88 stated here that he made some post on some Russian forum with more than 1000 views in 6 hours. This in combination with worldwide fans of mustang style design is probably source of his votes. Problem is, that there is low chance for the voters to really buy it, since LEGOshop ships only to some countries. Voting in combination with a price info and pre-order would probably end-up as you expect - much more tight race. I hope TLG will repeat this kind of competition also this year - I consider it very nice to give fans the possibility to really produce their models. May be just a bit fine-tune the rules. EDIT: I just read the official comments. TLG Moderators are having hard time approoving all of them. The power of community is huge. I presume it will falloff in a few days and enforcer will try to catch-up.
  22. hrontos
    Thank you for your support. I really appreciate that you voted what you preffer and not as I have seen in some comment: "it has no chance to win now, so I voted for some other". It is very common that in such contests that people want to be a part of the winning team. This kind of contest is always about a support of some kind of community. Just like some CUSSOO projects supported by some fan base. I think, TLG is aware of that. It is very standard behavior and they probably expected that. If voting was linked to a pre-order, there would be much less voting people, but probably votes were more relevant from the business point of view. On the other hand, this is a PR action and profit is not that important. It is may be much more important, that many people talk about it.
  23. hrontos
    That would be a good compromise. One for those who want a crawler and preffer Boss and the Enforcer for those, who preffer great part selection this great looking model has and do not care about weight, stability or crawling capabilities. For kids as a toy enforcer is more attractive, for adult fans of crawlers probably the Boss. Funny is that the Russian community that is helping the Boss a lot, will not be able to get it since LEGOShop probably does not ship to Russia.
  24. hrontos
    I wouldn't be so sceptic. When I published the LDD to POV-Ray Converter on EB digital forum, the website had about 16-20 visitors per day. After it was published on EB frontpage, there were more than 1000 visitors in 4 hours. And EB frontpage news are copied also by other websites, so the traffic can be even higher. And if rm88 made similar post on some local forum, it can be similar traffic, but may be more oriented on the Boss. I actually find the comment made by crazy_1993 on the official website about cheating quite offending. It looks like he does not know the power of a community.
  25. hrontos
    It is not an art to make it look great with an unlimited part count. It has more than 2500 parts and that makes roughly $100 difference comparing to original 9398. I have some doubts, that it will stay as it is. That would be largest technic set ever. Price may reach almost the price of the new mindstorms set.
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