Any optical lightguns supported by GroovyMAME on PC?

[Dochartaigh]

Do any true optical light guns work in GroovyMAME? (i.e. the type which only work on 15khz CRT's - think Duck Hunt style).

I'm about to pull the trigger a complete AimTrak lightgun setup for over $200...which is IR, and needs sensor bars on top of my CRT, and isn't supposed to be as accurate as the older optical type –– so I wanted to ask before I dropped the coin as I would love an actual optical light gun for my PC/MAME setup.

I'm not opposed to having to run a converter card or box or specialty harness or whatnot - as long as it'll work on my Windows 7 or 10 PC running GroovyMAME with MAME 0.191. Many of the ones I've found have been out of production for ~10+ years, and only work in very old versions of MAME.

[haynor666]

From Ultimarc site https://www.ultimarc.com/aimtrak.html

Works with all monitors including CRT, LCD, Plasma

[Malenko]

From Ultimarc site https://www.ultimarc.com/aimtrak.html

Works with all monitors including CRT, LCD, Plasma

that uses an IR box, he wants a gun like an NES zapper, PSX GunCon , etc that use the flash on screen for shot positioning. There was a way to do it with GunCon2 guns but that was ages ago and likely used old MAME and XP.

[Dochartaigh]

that uses an IR box, he wants a gun like an NES zapper, PSX GunCon , etc that use the flash on screen for shot positioning. There was a way to do it with GunCon2 guns but that was ages ago and likely used old MAME and XP.

Exactly.

And if I could use my existing light guns that would be great – I have them for NES, PS1 (Cobra version for Namco and Konami games), PS2, and the original xbox. I find them all to be pretty darn accurate, and I would like to keep it like that if possible...

...but like you said optical light guns only seem to be usable from years ago, and I know the previously recommended USB-type models are all discontinued, and only work with super old versions of MAME.

[retrorepair]

I don't really understand why groovymame doesn't support real lightguns as it should in theory work well (with an adapter). I guess the interest just isn't there.

[Dochartaigh]

I think I'm going to bite the bullet and buy the AimTrak though...just still concerned. Seems you have to stand in the EXACT same place every time or the aim gets off? Different people can't even use it if they stand in the same place if they're different heights because the height of the gun has then changed....just seems like a PITA...

[Calamity]

I don't really understand why groovymame doesn't support real lightguns as it should in theory work well (with an adapter). I guess the interest just isn't there.

I'd say MAME supports any input device that's actually supported by Windows.

[retrorepair]

I was going to at some point hook up an original lightgun with a serial interface to test it with, it should in theory just work on a CRT shouldn't it? Once I've compiled a custom build of course.

[Calamity]

I was going to at some point hook up an original lightgun with a serial interface to test it with, it should in theory just work on a CRT shouldn't it? Once I've compiled a custom build of course.

An original light gun shouldn't "notice" any difference as long as the emulation is good enough and you have proper vsync (e.g. GM). A custom build shouldn't be needed provided the light gun shows itself as an standard Windows input device (even if a specific driver is required, analog to PPJpoy).

[retrorepair]

Having looked into it, I think MAME would just need the "detect" signal exposed for the Zapper at least. Possibly Lethal Enforcers guns and the like too. Timing is critical but to what degree I'm not sure. So long as the input trigger pull and screen update are close enough together it should work.

This is on a CRT of course.

[RobeeJ]

I think there might be more to the hardware than that, maybe early light gun games used the CPU to calculate the timing but I'd be amazed if anything after a certain date didn't use dedicated electronics to do some (if not all) of the timing and flashing of the screen. Plus some games used a genuine lightgun where as others used what were effectively analogue joysticks.

[retrorepair]

I'm talking more about console guns but yes there's more to it post Zapper era and of course later games like Ghost Squad and House of the Dead 3 used a camera setuo similar to a Wiimote.

I think on Guncon games etc timing would be more critical but the concept is still very similar. These games, or at least the gun, I believe sampled the composite video signal too.