Hardware
Quasar vests have gone through a number of revisions (Mark I to VII). The original system used a strap based vest, metal housed front and back sensor areas and a hand-held pistol. The back sensor contained the battery, the front sensor contained the CPU and speaker. The pistol was small and contained few parts.
A major revision was the Mark IIIB system which moved most of the electronics into a larger (quite heavy) two handled gun. The speaker, battery, display and CPU were all moved to the gun, leaving the front and back as sensor only areas. The strap based vest was retained.
Prior to the international launch of Quasar as Q-ZAR the vests were redesigned again (Mark IV). The gun shape was retained, however it was remoulded in a lighter plastic greatly reducing the weight of the gun. In addition the strap based vest was dropped in favour of brightly colored plastic body Armour style vests.
Two systems were developed for Q-ZAR as its next generation system. Neither of these systems made it to production, the first is believed to be due to Q-ZAR defaulting on a payment. The second system, IQ, was in development when the company collapsed, by all accounts it was horrendously bug-ridden.
After the collapse of Q-Zar, Quasar Manufacturing withdraw remaining Q-Zar available stocks from United States market, keeping up basic components production, in order to give support to open European sites. In 2005 Quasar UK renamed themselves Quasar Manufacturing and launched Quasar Elite (Mark VI), which used a smaller gun and body armour to accommodate younger players. In addition Quasar Elite changed the green equipment to blue to assist those with colour blindness. The new version even dropped the elasticated side straps in favour of seat-belt style straps with buckles as these were found to be more durable.
In 2009 Quasar Manufacturing started projecting Quasar Elite Wireless Equipment (Mark VII), ready at the end of 2011. The new system finally gave up infra-red Unit-Gun connection, adopting more advanced radio frequency linking.
Read more about this topic: Q-Zar
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