question about usb light-guns

[ac_90]

i made my own arcade cabinet and i was looking into getting a usb light gun so i could plug it in and play some shooters. but i'm pretty much a huge noob to how that technology works or how i would even set it up.

anyone have any recommendations as far as the best light gun? also, i know old console light guns don't work on new tv's most of the time...so does it matter if i'm gonna be plugging it into a laptop with a flat screen lcd?

finally, how exactly do they work? does the computer think it's a mouse pointer or something? if so, how do you configure the mame roms that are light-gun games to work with mouse clicking?

thanks a lot

[nova1313]

If you are using it on a flat screen laptop or tv you are going to need to get a lightgun that works with that. I recommend the LCD Topgun it is usb. Play-asia was the cheapest place that sold them (that I found).

The LCD light guns use a sensor bar much like the Wii does. I know they work in windows but I've only used them in linux. With the drivers on linux they appear as a mouse. On windows I'm not sure. In mame I configured them like I would any other controller. I have to use an external calibration program for them. This is the same on windows (I know for sure).

[nickfil]

I don't know about the best gun...

Light guns won't work on any flat screen tech without an IR censor bar. It is why time crisis 4 comes with a bunch of shit to attach to the television, and why the wii light gun games don't come with anything (wii console already has ir sensors)

older tv sets don't need it. I knew the reason a while ago... but.. it is something like it measures the X and Y axis when you fire? That gets screwed up with HD high resolution sets. Something like that... but not that... exactly.

I'm packed with hearsay.

If you are making a cab and using an old tv or an arcade monitor, you probably don't need to worry about sensors. If you are using an lcd computer monitor, you do.

Easy way to build a cab is to just gut a computer, monitor, and a couple of usb sticks and build around that. Throw a drawer under the sticks that rolls out with a keyboard and mouse. Though, if it boots to windows it might break the illusion.

It gets harder if you want to make it more genuine with coin slots and legit arcade screens.

[Niode]

A quick search of the forum with "how light gun work" gave me this topic.

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... t+gun+work

It's so simple you too could do it.

[ac_90]

i wasn't really concerned with how light guns actually worked...i was more concerned with how the computer would recognize any kind of gun peripheral and how to go about configuring it with mame and emulation of other consoles that 'used' light guns in the past but are now being emulated on a flat laptop screen

[Niode]

Well I know that LCD topgun translates the XY it receives from the IR emitters into coordinates for mouse movements (basically same process that a Mouse works anyway). Where you pull the trigger is where the mouse points. So any MAME games that work with mouse as lightgun should work with the LCD top gun.

If you end up doing this, you should put a little holster on the side to hold the gun just like on real arcade cabs with lightguns. That would be awesome.

[Ivo]

older tv sets don't need it. I knew the reason a while ago... but.. it is something like it measures the X and Y axis when you fire? That gets screwed up with HD high resolution sets. Something like that... but not that... exactly.

Older light guns:

games programmed with them in mind "flashed" the screen in white whenever you pull the trigger. The gun has a photo-diode (it converts light received into an electric signal). The game programmed for it is very quickly progressing the white from one corner to the other (although you can usually notice the white flashing), and the time delay between the trigger press and the gun getting the signal enables the gun to know where the photo-diode was pointing at. Rather clever, IMO.

The new screens do not use the same refresh rate (and probably the light they emit isn't quite the same amount etc.) so the method doesn't work anymore.

As far as I know this is a fairly accurate explanation, but I welcome anyone that knows more about it

[Pulsar_t]

#7 is a spambot.

[Ivo]

#7 is a spambot.

I really felt like replying "I totally am not" joking about my long-winded (but genuine) post, but I think people would just think I did not know how to count instead of understanding I was just making a (crap) joke

Ivo.