do light guns work on HDTV's? I got an HDTV CRT about a year ago and just tried Virtua Cop 2 on saturn and it was WAAAAY off. Is this just a casualty of HDTV? I do have a gun that I'd never tried before so maybe that's it. Man I hope having an HDTV doesn't screw up gun games on Nintendo Wii as I'm pretty excited about it.
Anyone have any links about this?
Light Guns and HDTV Question
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lordofduct
- Next-Gen
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I'm surprised no one has commented about this matter.
There is several different ways that light guns work and most of them WON'T work with non-CRT televisions.
The original lightgun quickly would flash the screen all black and would have coloured blocks about the screen where enemies were located. If the light gun saw a colour it knew it hit an enemy and would relay that information back to the game... this was useful for old game like Duck Hunt where all enemies were the same and required only one hit to be killed... things had to be upped for newer games though.
Soon they wanted to add zone hit recognition and variable hit percent ratios per enemy. That and they wanted more precise and accurate shots SO they invented a way where that it would scan a thin line vertically up the screen and another horizontally across the screen using the already available scanline of the CRT television... this was fast and unrecognizeable to the eye (as apposed to the original version... i.e. why the screen usually made a flash like an explosion in old games like N.A.R.C.). The light gun would then see the scan lines pass by the screen and send a signal back to the console telling it to stop the scan line... this then would allow for determinates of WHERE on the screen the gun was shot.
Games like Virtua Cop used this latter form of recognition... problems now arise. LCD and Plasma screens don't have scan lines. They are digital displays where all pixels are changed matrix style simultaniousily. As for CRT HDTV's there isn't such a large problem.
Where as in the LCD and Plasma game the light gun just WON'T work... the CRT has it's certain limitations. A CRT monitor has it's 'optimum' resolution. On top of that it has a range of resolutions that it supports... any resolutions under or above those resolutions it has to down or up scan them to that. Video Games up until recent years have always been rather low resolution meaning that our high res HDTVs have to upscan the picture. This really doesn't cause any problems with most games or TV shows... maybe a small very minor loss in quality but nothing signicant.... BUT the scan line tactic they use in light gun games can be screwed up more drastically as it depends so closely on the resolution of the TV. Placing the picture into widescreen, upscanning and projection monitors put a lot of different variables into play that the original program isn't putting into account causing the accuracy to be off.
Most games usually have a configuration/optimization program in the options menu to configure the gun. It usually makes you aim and shoot the gun in the center and 4 corners of the screen to optimize the program to your specific screen. Newer games though on consoles like the Wii being released in the age of high resolution widescreen capable televisions SHOULD keep this in mind and will take it into more account then older games (that and they are displayed at much higher resolutions then old consoles). So you shouldn't have a worry with the Wii.
As for your problem with Virtua Cop... I haven't played it in awhile, but I could swear it had an optimization screen to configure the gun to your television. Just go into options and check it out.
There is several different ways that light guns work and most of them WON'T work with non-CRT televisions.
The original lightgun quickly would flash the screen all black and would have coloured blocks about the screen where enemies were located. If the light gun saw a colour it knew it hit an enemy and would relay that information back to the game... this was useful for old game like Duck Hunt where all enemies were the same and required only one hit to be killed... things had to be upped for newer games though.
Soon they wanted to add zone hit recognition and variable hit percent ratios per enemy. That and they wanted more precise and accurate shots SO they invented a way where that it would scan a thin line vertically up the screen and another horizontally across the screen using the already available scanline of the CRT television... this was fast and unrecognizeable to the eye (as apposed to the original version... i.e. why the screen usually made a flash like an explosion in old games like N.A.R.C.). The light gun would then see the scan lines pass by the screen and send a signal back to the console telling it to stop the scan line... this then would allow for determinates of WHERE on the screen the gun was shot.
Games like Virtua Cop used this latter form of recognition... problems now arise. LCD and Plasma screens don't have scan lines. They are digital displays where all pixels are changed matrix style simultaniousily. As for CRT HDTV's there isn't such a large problem.
Where as in the LCD and Plasma game the light gun just WON'T work... the CRT has it's certain limitations. A CRT monitor has it's 'optimum' resolution. On top of that it has a range of resolutions that it supports... any resolutions under or above those resolutions it has to down or up scan them to that. Video Games up until recent years have always been rather low resolution meaning that our high res HDTVs have to upscan the picture. This really doesn't cause any problems with most games or TV shows... maybe a small very minor loss in quality but nothing signicant.... BUT the scan line tactic they use in light gun games can be screwed up more drastically as it depends so closely on the resolution of the TV. Placing the picture into widescreen, upscanning and projection monitors put a lot of different variables into play that the original program isn't putting into account causing the accuracy to be off.
Most games usually have a configuration/optimization program in the options menu to configure the gun. It usually makes you aim and shoot the gun in the center and 4 corners of the screen to optimize the program to your specific screen. Newer games though on consoles like the Wii being released in the age of high resolution widescreen capable televisions SHOULD keep this in mind and will take it into more account then older games (that and they are displayed at much higher resolutions then old consoles). So you shouldn't have a worry with the Wii.
As for your problem with Virtua Cop... I haven't played it in awhile, but I could swear it had an optimization screen to configure the gun to your television. Just go into options and check it out.
light gun
I have a 27" Samsung HDTV CRT. I'm trying to use it w/ a saturn stunner. I tried Virtua Cop 2 and found the calibration screen but i can't seem to figure it out or get it to work. I also have virtua cop 1 but i haven't tried that yet.
Most newer style CRT HDTVs don't work with lightguns. The HDTVs from the last couple years all started upscaling 480i resolutions to 540p or 960i. Sony calls it Digital Reality Creation and the other manufacturers have something similar. The upscaling basically screws up the timing of the scanlines thus making the lightgun useless on it. The only HDTVs that the regular lightguns (guncon, NES, dreamcast, saturn) work on are ones that can display a straight 480i resolution without upscaling or converting the signal.
thanks
thanks for the info.
I think I'm going to buy a nice big standard def Sony Wega TV when I get a bigger apartment for some gun games, because my laserdisc collection looks like crap on HDTV too, even though i love it for HDTV, dvds, and newer games.
I think I'm going to buy a nice big standard def Sony Wega TV when I get a bigger apartment for some gun games, because my laserdisc collection looks like crap on HDTV too, even though i love it for HDTV, dvds, and newer games.
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metaleggman
- 128-bit
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- Joined: Sat Nov 04, 2006 7:21 pm
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metaleggman
- 128-bit
- Posts: 894
- Joined: Sat Nov 04, 2006 7:21 pm
Actually, I believe most CRTs upscale the 480i to an HD resolution, eg 1080i, their native resolution...At least, I believe so..Prozium wrote:Most newer style CRT HDTVs don't work with lightguns. The HDTVs from the last couple years all started upscaling 480i resolutions to 540p or 960i. Sony calls it Digital Reality Creation and the other manufacturers have something similar. The upscaling basically screws up the timing of the scanlines thus making the lightgun useless on it. The only HDTVs that the regular lightguns (guncon, NES, dreamcast, saturn) work on are ones that can display a straight 480i resolution without upscaling or converting the signal.
It's certainly a welcome option in some situations, but there's no aspect that's forcing them to do so, unlike LCD and Plasma. CRT's don't really has a "native" resolution, at least not in the same sense as the other types. CRTs can actually change resolutions, whereas the other two types are always stuck in just on resolution and must scale everything to that one resolution, because they have physically real pixels which are always set in place, and the image must always adhere to them.metaleggman wrote:Actually, I believe most CRTs upscale the 480i to an HD resolution, eg 1080i, their native resolution...At least, I believe so..
Anyways, I'm falling off topic. You guys were saying something about lightguns?
