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| An interesting take on light gun technology |
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| BadMouth:
From the "I should have thought of that" file..... I just got back from a gun/outdoor show where these guys had a booth set up: http://www.lasershot.com/index.php Basically, when you pull the trigger the gun shines a laser on the projection screen and a stationary camera looks for the bright red laser dot. What I like about this is that it doesn't matter where the gun is or what angle it is held at, the laser dot is going to be where the gun is aimed and that is where the shot will register. Seems to me like this concept should be a lot more accurate than having the camera inside the gun like the currently available IR setups. The downside is that the camera needs to be mounted away from the screen, but I'd mount one on the ceiling if it meant accurate light gun play. I talked to two different guys at the booth at different times during the day. One only knew the basics about how it worked and the other seemed to know a lot, but was reluctant to give me any details. I asked if it would work with other software or if it was being seen as a mouse on the PC. He said they were coming out with a new product for around $500 that would work with flash games and such, but it wasn't on the website yet. He seemed very confused by my questions. I explained CRT and IR guns to him and I think that just confused (or annoyed) him more. Anyways, this is BYOAC! I have a few cheap laser pointers from shwag bags and can rig them up to pulse when I pull a trigger. :) Autohotkey has a mouseclick command which will post a mouse click at whatever screen position is entered (for the system mouse anyway= only 1 player). Anyone have any thoughts about tracking software to detect the red dot and pass coordinates? Is there already something out there that converts laser pointer input to mouse input? I can see that being useful for presentations and such. EDIT: found another business card in my wallet. There were actually 2 vendors there with this setup. I'm pretty sure this one is the one that said they were coming out with the $500 setup, but it wasn't on the website yet: https://www.laser-ammo.com/ |
| Howard_Casto:
It's a clever idea, but not without some major drawbacks. First off lag. There is a reason the wiimote cuts out all but the IR spectrum and has it's own internal processor just to detect dots. Image parsing software is typically slow the higher the resolution you go. And of course low resolution means choppy movement. Secondly you have to worry about reflections/refractions. Some monitors and bezels absorb the laser light enough to make it a dot, others reflect/refract it all over the place..... especially at odd angles. You are also going to have to have some pretty fancy software to compensate for the crazy angle you'll have to put the camera in to get and whole screen in view while players are standing in front of the cabinet. Lastly you've got to worry about your eyes as laser lights aren't exactly healthy. A camera tracking a stationary dot array = wiimote. A moving dot array being track by a camera = ps move. This sort of thing is in that family. Look for webcam tracking software. There are a few examples out there but I doubt they are fast enough or of a high enough resolution to replace a light gun, even compared to the wiimote/move. |
| BadMouth:
Yeah, did some quick experimenting. My upright cab is a total mess when you shine the laser at it. Got a crisp reflection of the laser source, plus reflections on the bezel plexi, the monitor, and maybe some reflections of reflections. :lol I still have a rear projection tv in my living room. It's much more workable. The laser source is reflected, but it's a large fuzzy blob. The only crisp red dot is where the laser is pointing. At the show, the camera was a few feet in front of you at about waist level. Might be workable with a pedestal CP. I did a little bit of googling. One discussion mentioned adding a bandpass filter that would only allow the camera to see the spectrum of the laser. That would cut down on image processing load. They also make IR lasers... --- Quote ---A camera tracking a stationary dot array = wiimote. A moving dot array being track by a camera = ps move. This sort of thing is in that family. --- End quote --- The problem with both of those is that the calibration changes slightly based on the height and angle the gun is held at. If a tall person calibrates it then hands it off to a child to use, the calibration will be way off. This method is detecting where a dot is on the surface of the screen. The height and angle the gun is held at is irrelevant, so calibration is good no matter where you are aiming from. While I dream of a pinpoint accurate solution for flatscreens, I don't have time to mess with it much. If I find somewhat plug and play software, I may find a spare hour here or there to experiment. |
| Howard_Casto:
The only way I could see it done would be so awkward nobody would bother. You'd have to use a lens filter like you were talking about. You would also have to make the bezel glass out of something non refractive and possibly put the camera between the monitor and the glass, pointed at the bezel. That would eliminate the people problem. So you'd essentially have to gut a projection tv and put a flatscreen in the back. I'm honestly not even sure that would be viewable. I think the issues with the wiimote at least could be compensated for if you used a wiimote plus. Since they have a true gyroscope, you know the angle the wiimote is tilted at. Combine that with the ir position and you've got a vector. I'm just not nearly good enough at geometry to figure out how to put it together. You know, captain power might have had the right idea. It worked closer to how nes zapper worked. Bullets flickered at one frequency of light, targets another. They used a light sensor to decode it. Now that won't work on a lcd, but using a standard webcam to decode the flashes, that'd work just fine. Of course it's useless for existing games, they'd have to be re-written. |
| BadMouth:
Found another business card in my wallet, which jogged my memory. There were actually 2 vendors with the laser stuff. This is the one that said they were coming out with a $500 setup that would work on flash games, etc. https://www.laser-ammo.com/home.php (only a little fear mongering :lol ) Their current setup is much simpler and uses a standard webcam. I can see this being possible with off the shelf software, but cardboard targets aren't as fun as arcade games. (at least not with fake ammo) On all the demos I've seen of a laser dot translated to mouse position on a projected image from the PC, the image is light and washed out looking. There's probably a reason for that. :-\ |
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