VR lightguns

[Toasty833]

Just picked up a Vive last week, and it's pretty neat. But the one thing it's really missing is any kind of real lightgun support on a software level.

On a hardware level, it's pretty high already. While the low resolution makes resolving gun sights at arms length a little difficult, this could easily be fixed with a slightly oversized gun model, which most arcade lightguns already were, or a larger virtual screen, to make aiming more of a full body experience, and less dependent on the sights.

The Vive is more than accurate enough, and I think even the weaker headsets with poorer tracking will still be fine, because even if your true hand position is off, the virtual gun will still be lined up correctly for your eye, so any tracking mismatch won't be a major issue as long as the controller isn't jittering around or something. I don't think proprioception is accurate enough for people to really notice small disconnects of a mm or two, and at +/-0.3mm any Vive tracking issues are certainly unnoticeable for me.

The real problem is the total lack of software support. Number one on the list is some kind of 3D lightgun model that you can drop into SteamVR and use as a replacement for the controller model. Without that, I'm basically stuck trying to eyeball the rough middle of the top of my vive controller to aim. You'd think that in the 3 years this thing has been available, someone, somewhere would have at least uploaded a single gun model to the Steam workshop, but nope, nobody with the know-how has bothered. I gave it a shot myself, but I don't know the first thing about modelling, so the best I managed was half a gun with incorrect textures and Z-fighting all over the place. It's also pretty tough to find suitable models, and ideally you'd want something with a nice clear sight picture.

In terms of software, Virtual Desktop "works". If you're still using legacy OSes like Windows 7 like I am, it adds a fair amount of latency because the program is using some DX11 capturing stuff based on newer OS based latency improvements. You also can't run most stuff in full screen, but borderless fullscreen works. The app even has support for disabling the laser and cursor, so you could pretty easily calibrate in-game to your virtual sights and get something very accurate. The other major issue is that there's no real support for keyboard keys while in VR, so you can't easily do things like add coins or enter calibration modes, you have to fumble around with a regular controller, or a numpad or something. There are ways to map VR controllers with autohotkey that I haven't really looked into, but the number of buttons is already severely limited, ideally a VR lightgun app would have some kind of on-screen menu where you enter inputs with your off-hand. There is an on-screen keyboard in SteamVR, but it's cumbersome and you can't just use it on a single controller.

In an ideal world, emulators like Demul, MAME, and Model 2 emulator would have native VR support, but obviously that's not a realistic option for the foreseeable future given the low adoption rate and niche appeal. Native support would also probably add some neat stuff like Dolphin VR offers, like being able to render games in true 3D, but I feel like the camera movement makes this a bad idea, and a lot of these arcade games were never really intended to show the backsides of objects, so being able to move your head around could show some weird geometry stuff.

The other issue I've noticed with VR is that it makes it a little bit too easy to aim. In real life, if you focus on the sights of a lightgun, the screen behind it becomes blurry, which is why people generally just focus on the screen and ignore or close their non-dominant eye, but in VR you can focus on the sight while the background remains crystal clear, because there's only one real focal plane. It's not much of an issue, and if you focus on the background you'll still see double sights, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I can already tell I'd much rather use a Vive for lightgun stuff over something like an Aimtrak, and maybe even over my Act-Labs setup just for the sake of convenience, being able to play machine gun or other constant tracking games, and stuff in widescreen is a nice boon. The accuracy is already there, the resolution is good enough, the problem is software. And maybe one day we could get something neat like a lighthouse tracked gun peripheral with Namco-style solenoid recoil and a nice microswitch trigger, or higher resolution HMDs that let you more comfortably resolve sights at arms length, but those are still a while off. It's just a shame the software side of things is still so lacking after these devices have been out for years, but I suppose this is a niche hobby to begin with.

[Howard_Casto]

Vr lightguns are an interesting concept.  Because the computer essentially generates the screen itself in virtual space, tracking accuracy isn't as important as you are tricked into thinking you are aligned even when you aren't in the real world.  The only problem I see with it is enduring Vr that long.  For me at least it's short bursts of play or I get a little sick. 

[Toasty833]

I only feel sick with artificial locomotion, which isn't really a problem for lightgun stuff on a virtual screen. It does get a bit sweaty after a few hours, but the nice thing about arcade games is that they're not really intended to be something you play for more than an hour, max, so taking breaks between games isn't hard.

[SammyWI]

Interesting idea.  I have a Vive but I've never messed with the virtual desktop thing or even much of the user made stuff.  I like a lot of the FPS games in VR and from that I have found iron sights to be very hard to use in general.  But red dot sights work much easier so I would recommend that if you ever get a model working. 

I don't know what file formats the user made stuff uses but you might want to take a look at the Unity 3D Asset Store for a gun model.  They have quite a few things for free and Unity 3D is used to develop a lot of VR games some you may get lucky and find something usable.