Ok guys Andy has just left and there is sooo much info to try and convey!
So firstly I want to say thanks to Andy if he happends to read this for traveling over to my house and bringing his stuff for me to play with.
He has been here for around 5 hours and in that time it has been pretty much non stop light gun games!
As you will probably imagine my shoulders are killing and now physically and mentally tired so I am not going to even think about sorting through video footage at this time but I will do a quick write up of our findings, pro, cons etc.
So I will start with some of the basic questions that have been asked and that I myself had:
Distance from screen ratio: We have been unable to fully test this so no confirmed numbers at this time but initial tests would seem to indicate approx 1 1/2 times the screen size minimum.
Does it work on a CRT? YES! We managed to fully prove this today and video footage will follow!
Does it work on other emulators other than MAME? Yes!! Today we have been playing on MAME, Demul, Sega M2 and a few others.
Does it suffer any tracking loss at the edges of the screen? Yes and No.
This is something we have played with ALLOT throughout the day with me really being picky about it!
Directly in front of the TV regardless of height or position the Sinden lightgun tracks beautifully all around the outside edge of the screen and through the middle I could move around without issue. However standing at angles to the TV it does bring in some horizontal movement, Not as much as the AT's but its still there. Interestingly its more noticeable in the middle of the screen than the outside edges.
Andy accepts that this needs improving and thanked me for pointing this problem out and will now be working on his algorithm to improve this.
Do lights or reflections affect the Accuracy? I personally never witnessed any evidence of this, But Andy admits that during heavy sunlight etc this can be a problem due to the white out effect. But as I said this has not been a problem for us today with lights on or off, Near my glass display cabinet or with the conservatory door curtains being open.
Any Lag? Nope not that I noticed! There was lag with the cursor following my sights when I was doing tracking tests but in terms of actual shooting and the games no. Only some slow down of the actual games themselves on occasions but that is obviously another matter.
Will it be sold as a kit? At this time, No but more on that shortly....
Will it be wireless? Andy hopes to make this a possibility in the future and believes it will be possible. However the investment for this would be substantial as all the processing is done via the PC at this time, So it would require some form of micro computer to be installed in the gun itself.
Recoil? Being looked into but not at this time.
Will it be a open source project? Not at this time no. Because of the time and financial investment he has currently put into this he obviously needs to make some money back from it (hence no kits yet) BUT his dream is to make this open source eventually and allow more people and devs to inprove the code, mount in their own guns, develop games for etc etc etc.
Price? - Currently unknown but he is aiming to produce this at as fairer price as possible to allow everyone to afford it.
Does it click like a mouse? Yes it emulates a mouse fully.
Will he be custom building them? Not at this time, He really wants to get this thing to market for everyone to be able to enjoy light gun games. He plans to launch a 2nd kick starter in the not so distant future but has learned from his mistakes and wants to get more content out there first, more people trying it, public showings etc etc.
So there is the answers to your Q's I hope.
Next the actual product, So Andy brought his original prototype with him to show me and the new one he has had custom built and designed.
He has asked me not to take any pics of his current prototype as he wants to reveal that as part of a big reveal himself but i can say its very nicely designed with some very cool features that I have never seen on any other light gun! It is lefty or righty friendly and feels very nice in the hand.
As you will recall from his original videos the gun requires a white defined edge border to work, He has developed a method of short cut keying this as a overlay so it will work for other emulators or with hyperspin etc. It is still a work in progress getting it to work fully but what I have seen of it today is good. It also is adjustable in the config program he has designed for it.
He explained to me that sometimes you need a thicker border for it to correctly work in say harsh light etc but the border used today for most of the games was quite thin and did not subtract from the experience. When we did run a thicker border it sometimes overlapped part of the game screen but this is again something he is working on to be able to window the game inside the border.
So how does it work? Well really damn well to be honest, Videos can not do this thing justice. There are some issues such as the horizontal movement when at angles and the over lap border but remember this is still in prototype development at the moment.
We found trying to video it "in action" was really damn difficult as when I had a camera infront of the sights I could not see wtf I was shooting at (had to guess) So I have some footage of that but it does not do it justice tbh.
I also have some tracking footage of taking a cursor around the screen however watching it back now I fecked up and forgot to move around! But as I stated earlier vertical movement has no effect just substantial horizontal movement like standing at 45 degrees to the TV etc.
Possibly one of the most impressive things about it is the calibration, Because it is calibrated to the white border you can literally plug it into any screen and it will be pretty much spot on! I was playing virtua cop on my 42" LCD and I was able to literally turn 90 degrees and continue playing on the tiny laptop screen to the side of me! Really was very impressed by that! So yeah dual screen shooting could be a thing! Not sure how that would be used yet but ya know devs....
Accuracy wise as I said above once calibrated as long as I stayed within the horizontal confines of my 42" screen I had no issues I could play point blank and I have not missed one of those 1 shot 1 target games at all today, Even the one with the camera mounted behind!
Needless to say the only time I have had a cross hair turned one is when I was doing the tracking experiments all the playing has been done without the crosshairs.
We took a screen capture of Sega sports shooting as well with me playing which I will post up once I have the energy.
I have never played this game before today (or even heard of it) But the accuracy required and the speed was substantial with small and large targets.
I will say now I sucked at it but we did jump straight in the deep end on master difficulty!
Again no cross hairs were used as you will see and I was approximately 100" away from my 42" screen while playing so it was very frantic but I think it really shows what the gun can do.
I admit now that we fecked up and didnt really start doing videos until we had been playing for around 4 hours by which time my arms feel like they were gunna fall off so my shooting started getting sloppier as we went on....
But yeah I will be happy to answer any Q's in the mean time until I get the videos up but this is a real thing guys, It works really well and with some interesting extra possibilities!.
It destroys the Aim traks in terms of accuracy and the features (Yup I just said that....)
Also Andy is a really really nice guy, He has a genuine love for light gun games and really knows his stuff.
He is literally improving on his software on a weekly basis and wants to make it work with everything from a Pi to the original hardware.
So I am really excited to see where this goes in the future because I think it could be really big.
I feel genuinely honored to of been considered for this sneak peak and asking my opinions (which he was very receptive of both positive and negative!)
Sorry I have been waffling for far to long now and will stop there haha.
Watch this space ppl.....