Honest opinions about topgun II for lcd tv use?

[shateredsoul]

Hi Eveyrone,

So I have seen a lot of new information regarding the use of the lightguns (including that new board that came out for diy projects). My question is...is there really anything horribly bad about the topgun 2? Here's the link http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-1i-49-en-70-16s7-40-1.html#reviews.

I mean, can a normal user really tell the difference between this and say the one being sold and the ultimark aimtrack? From the videos I've seen it looks like the topgun 2 works just fine (and it has recoil, always a plus).

I've seen negative and positive reviews, can anyone share their personal experience? or a friend's experience?

[shateredsoul]

I am using an lcd tv and also would like to be able to reload by shooting off screen (maybe this is the difference?)

[DJ_Izumi]

The TopGuns are cheaply constructed ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---, there's that to considder.

[shateredsoul]

So it's more an issue of quality of the gun, rather than accuracy?

[shateredsoul]

anyone else?

[Rossman]

Some guys on the hyperspin forums say that they're really good, they have recoil build in, and act like a normal light gun should act... When the aimtrack came out, I really didn't understand why I would choose a DIY when the topgun 2 looks so much better. Gotta love the recoil. Buying two soon.

[Hewskie]

Haven't tried the aimtrack, but I am VERY happy with my Topgun 2s. I'm running 2 of them on my mame cab and they work great. Two things though, the recoil is a little cheesy, I leave it off most of the time. And they are made of plastic and feel a little flimsy, but I'm not hardcore lightgun enthusiast so it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I've dropped them plenty of times and they're still holding up fine.

Make sure you do your research before making a purchase though, it took me a few hours to get them up and running because the driver situation is pretty wonkey at best. Overall, I'm very happy with them and my friends and I love playing point blank or area 51 with some cool looking guns.

Hewskie

[shateredsoul]

That's sort of what I figured, because they seemd to work fine on the videos I found on youtube and have great reviews.  Unfortunately I just found out they don't work on 64bit systems D:

There are a few ppl selling the ultimarc ones on the hyperspin board, but it's about 250 for a paire of rebuilt guncons.  Don't get me wrong, they look really nice (the ones I saw were painted and looked very nice).. I just can't afford 250 (compared to about 110 for two of these).

Oh well, guess i'll have to wait until ultimarc releases their one prebuilt light guns

[Necro]

Shattered...I have a 64-bit system as well and was wondering about getting one or two light guns as well.  Where did you find your info on the guns?  (aside from here)

[Rossman]

Shattered...I have a 64-bit system as well and was wondering about getting one or two light guns as well.  Where did you find your info on the guns?  (aside from here)

64 bit drivers can be found on their webpage: http://www.hkems.com/m_main.htm
or the link here: http://www.hkems.com/download%20-%20TopGun2.htm
Forum here: http://hkems.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=291&page=1

Pick two up while they're still available!  

[shateredsoul]

awesome! Would a review of my experience be helpful, or has this been done (I imagine it has, but I couldn't find very many reviews)

[Rossman]

awesome! Would a review of my experience be helpful, or has this been done (I imagine it has, but I couldn't find very many reviews)

Do it! 

[shateredsoul]

Great! I'm really excited, my brother is going to come up from Southern California (and i'm in Northern Calif) next weekend (so the 13th), so hopefully they'll be here by then so we can set them up and try them out.

I did have a question about some shooter pc games though, does anyone know if you need to leave the disk in to play most of these games?

House of the dead 1,2,3 and virtua cop 1 and 2

I can't think of anymore shooters for pc, the rest will have to be on mame

-Shatered

[shateredsoul]

Shattered...I have a 64-bit system as well and was wondering about getting one or two light guns as well.  Where did you find your info on the guns?  (aside from here)

Hey Necro

I can't remember exactly where I got my info, i just remember hearing people say that they were spotty or didn't work too well but come to think of it maybe I was reading reviews of the first version of the topgun? I think I found some info on the hyperspin boards.  I ordered 2, i'll let you know how they turn out and hopefully have a video of them in action (there's some on youtube already).  If you search "ems topgun II" on youtube you'll see someone playing house of the dead 2 on an lcd computer screens. It' called topgun II review.. not sure why, the guy doesn't say a word. From the video it looks like he had no issues with aiming and wherever he pointed he shot. 

I did hear that it may be a pain with bigger screens.. that is if you're screen is bigger than 50", you can buy add on bars if you have a tv/monitor that big.

Check this post again in about a week and a half and hopefully I can have a review up.  I just hope it's not a pain to add the second gun.

I have also read (from user reviews on playasia) that in many cases they just plugged them in and they worked, but it may be different for a 64bit system.  We'll see.

[Hewskie]

They definitely weren't plug and play for me. It took a lot of fiddling with drivers and the mame.ini and trying to actually get Player 1 assigned to Gun1 and Player2 to Gun 2 took a while for me. But your experience may be different. Either way, congrats on your purchase, I've been very happy with mine, I hope you will be too

Hewskie

[Necro]

In-tah-resting.

So...here's the $1million dollar question.  Would these work with a mirror cab. and if so, where do I install the LEDS...by the monitor (reflected) or behind the mirror?  Dun dun DUN....

(I could only use MAME'd games, given, but....still...I'd like this)

[shateredsoul]

They definitely weren't plug and play for me. It took a lot of fiddling with drivers and the mame.ini and trying to actually get Player 1 assigned to Gun1 and Player2 to Gun 2 took a while for me. But your experience may be different. Either way, congrats on your purchase, I've been very happy with mine, I hope you will be too

Hewskie

If I have issues would you mind if I messaged you with some questions? I don't think mine will be plug n' play either, because of the 64 bit issue you have to go through a few extra steps.  and about the mirror cab, no idea.  I'm just going to use them on a lcd tv, and stick them to the side.  I'm just hoping they blend in with the black monitor. I'll let you guys know.  I also contemplated buying the bigger  bars and putting them on top and on the bottom (I figure there's less likely to be a dead spot on the screen if the bars go all the way). Of course these are guesses, but I gue'ss we'll see.

-Shatered

[shateredsoul]

I just got my two topgun IIs,  I'll hook them up in about a week and get back to you guys with my opinion.  So far, the cheaps don't seem as cheaply constructed as some people made it out to seem. Not any cheaper than the guncon (which many people are using with the aimtrack.

I guess the biggest difference in the end will be how well I can set it up

[Popcorrin]

I've had both the original topgun and the topgun II.  While I had a few problems with the original, I have been very happy with the Topgun II. 
They seem to work very well.   The tracking is responsive and accurate.  You just need to make sure you stay far enough away from the screen so your gun can see all the leds.
They can take time to set up and that has more to do with mame that with the topguns.

Also, since they are a mouse device, sometimes they can swith order on boot up.

Overall though, I think they are as good as anything else out there on the market.

[shateredsoul]

I've had both the original topgun and the topgun II.  While I had a few problems with the original, I have been very happy with the Topgun II. 
They seem to work very well.   The tracking is responsive and accurate.  You just need to make sure you stay far enough away from the screen so your gun can see all the leds.
They can take time to set up and that has more to do with mame that with the topguns.

Also, since they are a mouse device, sometimes they can swith order on boot up.

Overall though, I think they are as good as anything else out there on the market.

Thanks for yoru feedback popcorrin! Any advice for setting it up with mame? A thread you used maybe?

[Popcorrin]

Thanks for yoru feedback popcorrin! Any advice for setting it up with mame? A thread you used maybe?

I never did find a good thread or guide to setting it up with mame.  Just took some trial and error. 
I had a trackball and 2 lightguns and the most frustrating part was the mouse devices reordering themselves.  You would get everything set up and then after a reboot it wouldn't work.  Keeping everything plugged into the same usb ports helps but it doesn't eliminate the issue.

I searched for a utility that would let you number your mouse devices but as far as I know it doesn't exist.  I did find one for joysticks but nothing for mice.

Anyway, if you have questions as you try to set them up, post them here and I will try to help.

[ark_ader]

It works for my PC/Xbox solution.

A pain to set up but once you have it working it is fine.

You do need standing room distance from the LCD/Projector/CRT.

[shateredsoul]

So I finally had a chance to set up my topgun lightguns.  I didn't have as much time as I would like to test out the equilibration so keep that in mind.

I installed my lcd topgun II on a windows 7 64 bit desktop computer.  It took a while to set up but here's a guide http://maximizedemulation.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/how-to-install-topgun-ii-drivers-on-windows-7-64bit/ Honestly, setting them up was a pain in the butt.  I couldn't figure out how to do it at first, but once it was figured out and installed everything was fine.

I set up the bars on the left and right of the television.  Calibrating seemed to be the hardest.  I followed the instructions, but it always seemed like the calibration was off when compared to where the laser was pointing and the mouse cursor on the desktop.  When I pointed the gun the pointer (the mouse pointer) would follow right behind.  According to this post http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=92986.0, this is normal and as soon as you pull the trigger it updates instantly.  I didn't get to try this as I found this post right after testing.. the lag between the pointer and laser threw me off and made it very hard to navigate so maybe turning of the laser would help.

I also noticed that I had to be pretty far from the tv, I couldn't play while sitting on the couch so I had to move behind my couch to have some accuracy (about 7 feet away!).  I do wonder though... I had the bars settup flush with the monitor, if I had them sticking out a bit and maybe tilted in.. would that help? Something to try for next time.

House of the dead 1 - Same thing, the pointer in the game would always follow behind my movements.. and it was always off by an inch.  Further calibration and testing may fix this.

Mame- setting up mame was annoying at first but after I want to mame.ini and changed lightgun from 0 to 1 and within the mame front end I enabled multiple mice, it worked fine.  Still, the aiming was a little off. Same experience as house for dead two and the desktop.

So keep that in mind

The drivers are beta drivers, so they may improve on them and may be different if you are using windows xp (since you can use the original driver)

Installing it and getting the gun recognized did take some work, but nothing impossible here or too technical

further calibration may make the gun have better aim

[Hewskie]

Great to hear you got it up and running, I have a little advice for the calibration issues. When shooting the corners of the screen, I found that it helps if you aim a half inch off the corner away from the centre of the tv. I'll try to make a diagram:

x                                                        x
  ---------------------------------------
  |                                                     |
  |                                                     |
  |                                                     |
  |                                                     |
  |                                                     |
  |                                                     |
  ---------------------------------------
x                                                         x

Doing this with trial and error really helped the accuracy on my setup.

Good luck!

Hewskie

[shateredsoul]

Thanks Hewskie, initially I just set up the sensor bars without consider which one was on the left or right

I switched them to match the pictures provided with the light guns and that helped a bit.

I'll be sure to try your trick, I took them down for now.  I'm waiting on my control panel, so maybe i'll just wait until I have the whole setup and the actual screen I will be using. It's a pain to have to take the bars down and put them back on.

I do have one question though, how did you get them to stick onto your monitor? or cab? For testing I just used electrical tape.  When I finally mount them I'd like them to be on there pretty firmly but not permanently in case I need to move them.

-shatered

[BobA]

heavy duty velcro is always a good semi permanent mounting solution.

[Hewskie]

I used little metal brackets and screwed them right to the sides of my cab, the tinted glass hides them pretty well.

Hewskie

[mwong168]

Thanks Hewskie, initially I just set up the sensor bars without consider which one was on the left or right

I just got my two TopGun II from a fellow member with no manuals or drivers.  How did you setup the sensor bars cause at first glance I noticed one of them has more LEDs then the other so which one goes left and which one goes right for the best results?  Thanks in advance.

[shateredsoul]

Thanks for the info Hewskie

mwong, the bar that has two sensors on the far sides goes on the right side of the screen. The sensor bar that has one in the middle and one on the end goes on the left with the side having no sensor towards the bottom.

Not sure if it makes sense, but here's the link to the manual

http://www.hkems.com/files/EMS%20TopGun%20II%20Manual%20(eng).pdf

[Rossman]

You have to stand really far back from the monitor? That might not work for my arcade!!!

[shateredsoul]

 Well at least I did, I heard that with calibration you can get it to work better and I did see videos of guys making it work while standing pretty close.  I haven't had time to play around with the calibration and settings since I don't have an arcade cabinet yet and have to use the living room tv to test this out. 

I bought a sensor bar with strong lights, which may work better... not sure.  I'll probably put up a more thorough review during the summer, but the ultimarc guns may work better for you.