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aimtrak guns installed, nearly satisfied with the results.

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SpatzST:

oh, I suppose that makes sense then. 

AndyWarne:


--- Quote from: DietCoke on July 25, 2014, 04:36:01 pm ---
--- Quote from: AndyWarne on July 25, 2014, 12:03:22 pm ---If the picture is not fitting the screen the gun will not be accurate and needs to be calibrated against the actual picture size rather then the screen. The calibration steps show a cursor which needs to be aimed-at at each step but if the game only uses part of the screen this wont work properly. The gun assumes the game uses all of the Windows desktop screen. So it will need to be intentionally mis-calibrated to work with these games, and this is not a supported method of operation.

--- End quote ---

Andy, I appreciate you stepping into the thread to answer questions with detail!

I've got a 16:9 monitor, but of course the Mame games are displaying in 4:3 and centered, so there are black bars on both sides that the game doesn't end up using.  Should I be calibrating against the picture size in that case?

--- End quote ---

It depends on what is introducing the borders. If its Mame then you can still calibrate over the whole screen size.

On thing worth mentioning. If you calibrate then move back or to the side while still aiming the gun at the screen, the correction for the move will not be applied. This is because this type of correction is only applied when the gun is aimed off the screen, then back on. I did this to avoid the cursor jumping around when updating the correction. This was not thought to be a drawback in gameplay.

AndyWarne:


--- Quote from: pbj on July 25, 2014, 03:02:37 pm ---At the end of the day - IR guns don't work very well for arcade games.  You're better off playing Wii games, which have been tweaked to play better with the technology.

If you insist making a cabinet and using IR guns, I think you're better off getting an EMS TopGun - that way you've only got buyer's remorse over $60.  If you put a wide angle lens ($1) on them, they work pretty well from about 5-6 feet away.  Unfortunately, most of us are shoving these things into 10x10 spare bedrooms and that much floorspace can be hard to find.

--- End quote ---

The Topgun is a low-resolution Guncon device which uses a driver to convert the Guncon protocol to Windows. I can quite honestly state that the Aimtrak blows away the Guncon in terms of performance.
You can compare this because the Aimtrak can be switched to Guncon mode and will then work on a PS/2 and also will work on a PC using the Topgun driver. Its an interesting performance comparison!

AndyWarne:


--- Quote from: dkersten on July 25, 2014, 02:10:55 pm ---
 I would think that having two or three IR sources at the corners of the screen with an algorithm that adjusts the calibration based on the distance the gun sees the corners from each other to allow for moving your initial position would be ideal, but at this price point it is probably a pipe dream. 

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Possible but the minimum screen distance would be massively increased if the gun needs to see all of the points at all times. It would also need to know which point is which so each light point would need to be switched on and off.
The Sega system did this. It was never a very accurate and reliable system.

Xiaou2:


--- Quote from: AndyWarne on July 28, 2014, 10:03:27 am ---
--- Quote from: dkersten on July 25, 2014, 02:10:55 pm ---
 I would think that having two or three IR sources at the corners of the screen with an algorithm that adjusts the calibration based on the distance the gun sees the corners from each other to allow for moving your initial position would be ideal, but at this price point it is probably a pipe dream. 

--- End quote ---

Possible but the minimum screen distance would be massively increased if the gun needs to see all of the points at all times. It would also need to know which point is which so each light point would need to be switched on and off.
The Sega system did this. It was never a very accurate and reliable system.

--- End quote ---

 Or you could put a Wide angle lens in there, and solve both all of that...


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