Lightgun for LCD, Plasma, Widescreen, 100Hz announced!

[b3atmania]

I came across this lightgun. They claim it works with plasma, widescreen, 100Hz overscan, LCD, TFT displays.

The site is vague about how it actually works, but it seems to work independant from the display type and size. It is likely to use some kind of tracking sensor(s) around the display area. Hopefully it does not require the eye-straining screen flash when you fire.

The gun identifies itself as a HID (Human Interface Device) and is compatible with existing USB mouse drivers. It should work well for MAME.

Apart from its technical promise, the gun doesn't look half bad as well: a black Time Crisis-style gun that doesn't look too much like a toy.

The only thing that could make this product better is a translation box that converts the USB signal to the console gun protocols, such as Guncon 2.

Link
http://www.eopstech.com/pro3.html

[tmasman]

Very interesting...
HOW MUCH!?!? I will definately be interested if it will work with MAME (As I'm assuming it would as it works like a mouse)

Looks like a nice style too...

[nighthawk2099]

well.... per the PDF info

http://www.eopstech.com/img/pdf/Motion%20Sensor%20USB%20Video%20Game%20Gun%20spec%201.0c.pdf

It says that it interfaces as a USB mouse.... soo...... hummm..

Also says something about recoil action....double hummmm...

[TheTick]

If its motion sensor, calibration and accuracy must be a ---smurfette---. Hopefully its not just translating the degree of tilt like the Gyration Mouse (uses a gyroscope).

First half of 2004, huh? I guess the real question is can you get two of them to work at a time with Mame Analog+ (or is it Analog+ Mame???)

[John IV [MameUI64]]

http://www.mame.net/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showpost.pl?Board=mamegeneral&Number=133772&page=0&view=expanded&mode=flat&sb=5#Post133772

[tmasman]

From the looks of it, you should change the title of this thread to "motion base gun for..."

Seems that it'll work like those "gyrovision" mice... Basically "tilt" detaction...

Straight from the horse's mouth...

Basically, it is a motion sensor game controller that should work with all type of displays and you aim the target with a cursor.

As they said over @ mame.net... Back to the drawing board...

[patrickl]

tmasman,

They say "motion sensor" and that's not just "tilt" detection. With motion sensors they conceivably could be able to keep track of location and orientation of the gun in 3D space and based on that calculate where it is aimed. I really wonder how they could keep this accurate enough though.

At least I hope it's not just a tilt device  

[b3atmania]

I fail to see why motion sensor would be worse than current lightgun solutions. Current technology requires annoying screen flashes hurting your eyes after only minutes of play.

The gun is promoted as for use with first person shooters, but also for Silent Scope. Silent Scope is a game that is similair to many other aim-and-fire games in MAME.

Why wouldn't this work great for MAME?

[paigeoliver]

Soon as I read "motion detection" I started thinking "Power Glove" and we all know how great that was at controlling games.

Speaking of total shite. Do any emulators support R.O.B. the robot? I have kind of felt left out in the moving robot area ever since my buddy got the Dr. Who Pinball with the talking/moving robot on top.

[patrickl]

I fail to see why motion sensor would be worse than current lightgun solutions. Current technology requires annoying screen flashes hurting your eyes after only minutes of play.

A motion sensor device has an error that increases over time. So you need to recalibrate periodically.

If it would work like a "gyroscope mouse" then the error wouldn't be much of an issue since you need to check the on screen cursor anyway. But if you depend on the gun aiming at an exact point it would really be annoying if the calibrating went off every 5 minutes.

[tmasman]

I fail to see why motion sensor would be worse than current lightgun solutions. Current technology requires annoying screen flashes hurting your eyes after only minutes of play.

The gun is promoted as for use with first person shooters, but also for Silent Scope. Silent Scope is a game that is similair to many other aim-and-fire games in MAME.

Why wouldn't this work great for MAME?

Basically you could be aiming the gun at the wall beside your screen & you could still be shooting on screen... There would be no shooting off screen, because the mouse cursor is always on screen, you could never take a few steps back from the screen because then the to get the cursor to the bottom of the screen you might end up pointing at the floor...

Basically when you move the gun around the cursor moves around... It might be playable but it would be annoying as heck! Any time you twitch or aim the gun at the ground you've got to re-orient the cursor to a intelligible position in relation to where you are holding the gun.

I'm not willing to do all that & put up with all that crap... You've got to keep track of the cursor on the screen instead of keeping track of where you're aiming the gun. BLEH!

hm... I wonder if there will ever be a decent solution to this... (an accurate, little-to-no screen flashing, decent looking, consistant PC gun f/ games...)

How do the Jurasic Park guns work? They actually move a cursor around the screen even with out you shooting... There's got to be a decent way to do something similar on a PC.  I wish I had gone into electrical engineering... I would love to get into creating solutions for this type of stuff...

[Lilwolf]

btw... got an email back (deleted it thinking it was one of the other 100 junk emails... had to search for eops)

Thank you for your interest. Our answers are listed below.

 

Regards

 

EOps Technology

I have some questions about your new EOps Delta Gun.

 

I am in a group of people who design and build arcade machines to run in our own homes.  Better lightgun support is something we have been hunting for for ages now.  Most of the current solutions barely work if they work at all.

 

1) Does it handle free tracking?  Can it receive mouse inputs event when trigger is not pressed?

 <EOps> Yes.

 

2) Does it handle 'out of bounds' triggers seperately?  (IE, if you shoot offscreen does it trigger a different mouse button or shoot a specific pixel?

 <EOps>  No

 

3)  Will it work with more then one gun?  (But question here...)

 <EOps> it is more a question about the game program.

 

4)  I'm assuming that since it works with LCDs and weird refresh monitors and TV's it will work with 15hz and 25hz true arcade machines...  That it has nothing to do with the monitor itself.  Am I correct?

 <EOps> Yes

 

5)  Do we need to attach anything around the monitor?  If so, will it work under a smoke plexi glass?  Does it need to be right at the edges of the monitor or can it be moved and configured to be farther from the corners of the monitor?

 <EOps> No, you don

[Lilwolf]

<talking about the email seperately>

I'm not sure what to think...  I have a feeling its a gyroscope..

These SUCK for gun games.  your pointing at the bottom left... you want to point to the top right so you move your arm (not twist the gun).  gyroscopes you wouldn't care about moving your arm, you twist your wrists.

Anyway, we will see....   But I'm not getting my hopes up.

Also, not handling out of bounds shots in any way might make reloading hard... but that is something analog+ can do for us.

[patrickl]

You could in theory do this with a motion sensors. In theory you could even built a navigation device (like GPS) with motion sensors. In practice I doubt they could get the motion sensor stuff working accurately enough, but I'm sure hoping they did.

Question is more "did they do it or did they copy a gyroscope mouse with a cool cover".  I guess we have to wait till they give more details. We're just guessing now.

I have been trying to built a "inertial navigation telemetry" kit for karting. Well ... that is ... I bought a lot of chips and did a lot of research and then lost interest. But I have seen research of people using accelerometers for race car telemetry. Problem is that you need an added system (like GPS) to keep the inertial system calibrated (or you will suffer loss of accuray over time). The Analog Devices site also has an article on using accelerometers in the gaming industry: Using Micromachined Accelerometers in Joysticks, 3DOF and 6DOF Systems A New Paradigm for the Human Computer Interface.

[TheTick]

I saw this on hotdeals.com this morning

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=P5

Saw it a year or two ago, didn't think much of it than either.

Somebody just needs to produce a cheap positional gun, so we can stop hacking the 20 lb arcade versions.

[Dave_K.]

Hmm, I wonder how accurate a gyroscope mouse is.  This could turn out to be a cool solution for a silent scope mounted gun (easer than setting up pots for the axis').  

I also wonder if the driver is what calculates the mouse position, or if its all done inside the mouse and uses a standard usb hid mouse driver.  If so, then this will work on a playstation2 with silent scope.

[Jakobud]

FYI I just got an email back from that company saying that the motion sensor technology is a NON gyro based technology that they hold the patent on.

[patrickl]

Did they ever answer the question if you can aim the gun at an exact point (ie works like a lightgun) or that you just aim by use the cursor on screen that moves globally in a similar way as the gun moves (ie works like a gyro mouse)?

There are several ways to implement motion sensing (mercury, micro machines, gyros, magnetometers etc). I guess whatever they use is not that important. Trouble is that they seem to hide wat the thing actually does with the technology. And we have to wait for Q2 for the thing to arrive!

[tmasman]

It's not that hard to figure out guys...

This is directly from eops...
Basically, it is a motion sensor game controller that should work with all type of displays and you aim the target with a cursor.

[TheTick]

Hmm, I wonder how accurate a gyroscope mouse is.  This could turn out to be a cool solution for a silent scope mounted gun (easer than setting up pots for the axis').  

I also wonder if the driver is what calculates the mouse position, or if its all done inside the mouse and uses a standard usb hid mouse driver.  If so, then this will work on a playstation2 with silent scope.

The gyration mouse uses a standard HID mouse driver. Its very accurate... just a pain in the ass to get used too.  There is a trigger button you hold to enable the cursor movement. If you don't release it before clicking a mouse button, there is a good chance the cursor will jump from the click motion.

[patrickl]

It's not that hard to figure out guys...

This is directly from eops...
Basically, it is a motion sensor game controller that should work with all type of displays and you aim the target with a cursor.

In fact a gun that puts the cursor exactly at gunpoint will fit that description just as well as a gyro mouse does.

I may be hanging on a straw here, but you are only seeing the negative in it

I'm still hoping the "state of the art motion sensing" does not mean "age old tilt device". Allthough I agree it's unlikely that it doesn't.

[tmasman]

I know I'm being a little negative, but I've gotten my hopes up too many times to do it again.  Until some one can prove to me that it's a new technology that will work well, I'm gonna be the neigh-sayer...

I still want to know how the Jurassic Park guns work...
Anyone out there know?

<edit>
I keep saying Jurassic Park, but I mean "The Lost World, Jurassic Park"

[patrickl]

They could time when "the dot" passes by and deduct from that where the gun is aimed it. At least, that would work if the sensor is fast enough (and sensitive enough). For a fast sensor, at any time there would only be a single dot on the whole screen illuminated (or maybe just a small "streak").  

I have never seen the game myself so I don't know, but in theory I guess they could "see" where you point the gun without flashing the screen.

[NY_in_TX]

I know I'm being a little negative, but I've gotten my hopes up too many times to do it again.  Until some one can prove to me that it's a new technology that will work well, I'm gonna be the neigh-sayer...

I still want to know how the Jurassic Park guns work...
Anyone out there know?

<edit>
I keep saying Jurassic Park, but I mean "The Lost World, Jurassic Park"

Hmmm.  Tmas, that's a good question.  I never tought about it, but those guns are hand held,and they constantly move around the the target cursor as you move the gun around.  Kinda like T2, but in a handheld unattached form.

now THAT's what we need.  no clue how to figure it out, but hopefully someone can make sense of it.

I've often wondered how time Crisis can use a light gun and a projection screen, but I can't use one on my bigscreen at home.  I don't really need an answer,but all I know is it would SWEET if I could.

ny

[Lilwolf]

There are many ways to do the full tracking guns...  But most cost a lot...

Hopefully there will be a real solution soon.  I'm curious how they do it...  But without any way to calibrate (no drivers) and nothing mounted..  I'm not expecting the best.

[TheTick]

The ACT Labs Light Gun has no drivers either, but you can still calibrate it.

Lets wait till they release it (assuming they actually make it to production), before we tear it down. If its under $50 I'll give it a try. If its crap... to ebay with it.