A BYOAC Lightgun, are we up to it?

[shawnzilla]

Just for fun, I thought I would broach this topic again:

1) Could we, the BYOAC Community, come up with a design for a new pc lightgun?

    A) Design it (hardware)
    B) Write software for it
    C) Source the parts/labor
    D) Get enough people behind it, so that a production run would pay for itself?

2) Perhaps any profit made could go towards BYOAC interests, such as funding for future BYOAC projects, Rom rights acquisition, etc...

[shawnzilla]

Whoops, meant to post in the main forum... Peale, can you move this one over?

[Hoagie_one]

RAndy?

[Thenasty]

don't forget DOS SUPPORT 

[ripzone]

Yes, it would be pretty cool but I can't help in the drivers section.

If anybody wants help designing the product I have a few ideas.

[IntruderAlert]

Anyone ever try hacking the Act-Labs gun interface to use a real arcade gun?

[shawnzilla]

What are your ideas (unless you don't want to share them publicly)? I'm hoping we can all brainstorm and make this a reality.

Yes, it would be pretty cool but I can't help in the drivers section.

If anybody wants help designing the product I have a few ideas.

[Lilwolf]

Someone did... said they got great results.

I took mine apart to put it in a gun.. but moved before finishing it... and never got back to it.

Anyone ever try hacking the Act-Labs gun interface to use a real arcade gun?

[Lilwolf]

The question is how you would want to do it.

I dont' believe its worth going for a standard light gun solution but instead using leds and light sensors is the way to go. 

This way, you need a good a->d converter (Dave?) and a few light sensors... and some mapping of controls to convert them to screen locations.

looked into it in the past... but didn't have the time.  (also mentioned it in more detail in the last few weeks in other threads)

[Flinkly]

i think we could with our combined knowledge, but about 75 percent of projects never get off the ground around here.

if we did make one, we'd have to have a solenoid inside.  as for design, i think it should be nice and heavy, like a real gun, and looks like one too, kinda like the bio-gun offered over on liksang.  just my two cents.

also, to make it nice, we would have to incorporate a fire button, and a calibration button on the gun, like act labs.  i'm sure andy or randy could help us if we had some pcb stuff that we needed produced, but i'm not sure about gun shells.  but it shouldn't be too hard.

worste case scenario, we could try to reverse engineer the act labs gun...

[Voodooray]

As a newby could anybody explain how a light gun actually works please.
Feel free to say absulutely no way man, get out of here, what are you trying to pull, why i aught to......etc,etc.

Ta.

Voodoo Ray.
88 Acid Revival, Safe!

[ErikRuud]

How a Video Game Light Gun works

[RayB]

I made a light-pen for my Commodore 64 when I was a teen. It used a Radio Shack photosensor and software that I had to type in from a magazine. It was not a very good light-pen.

[ErikRuud]

A lot of those old 8-bit computers had ligt pen inputs on their joystick ports.  It was fairly easy to implement, because they generally only had one video mode to deal with.

I think that we need something along the lines of this ligt pen interface, but much cheaper.

It would be cool if it had inputs for standard arcade light guns and/or Guncon guns.

[Flinkly]

not to sound stupid, but what is a lightpen?  is it like a light gun, but not gun shaped?  sorry, i guess i'm just too young, or out of the tech loop on this one.  i'd like to have my own lightgun, even if we had to do it byoac style, but i think by the time we finished such a product, there would already be another out on the market that would fit our nitch better.  like that one that uses infrared diodes around the screen instead of whiting the screen out.  just my two cents...again.

[IntruderAlert]

i'd just like an interface that I could wire a real arcade gun to
sort of an i-pac or keywiz for guns

[sWampy]

A lot of those old 8-bit computers had ligt pen inputs on their joystick ports.  It was fairly easy to implement, because they generally only had one video mode to deal with.

I think that we need something along the lines of this ligt pen interface, but much cheaper.

It would be cool if it had inputs for standard arcade light guns and/or Guncon guns.

The light pen interface had to be right on the display, since they work by know by watching the monitor for the scan line to pass, they know what part of the screen they are drawing right now, so when they see the scan line, they know where it is pointed.  This doesn't work real well from a distance, hince the flash, to make the scan line bright enough to pick up.   You also have to tie into the video signal so you can know what part of the display the monitor is refreshing when, different monitors, different setup needed, vga/arcade/tv, 3 different interfaces. ;-/   

A better solution would be something like iToy, or some photo sensor array,  that looked for a something like a ir led on the end of a gun, to triangulate where the gun was pointed, where it would work with any monitor, any scan rate.

[ErikRuud]

Light pens work on the same basic principals as a light gun, but they are pen shaped and designed to be used right up against the monitor.

Because of the short range and tighter focus, they do not require the "White Flash" that many light guns use.

I used to have a Koala light pen for my Commodore 128 years ago.

[ErikRuud]

A better solution would be something like iToy, or some photo sensor array,  that looked for a something like a ir led on the end of a gun, to triangulate where the gun was pointed, where it would work with any monitor, any scan rate.

That is essentially what the RGT system from eRealGames is.  They may have a PC version out soon.  They expressed some interest in this thread

[Shape D.]

As a person with no other abilities to add to the assistance of building a light gun I would like to offer my assistance with playtesting. 

Seriously though if you build these make something manly. That was the only crappy thing about the act labs guns. It looked like something my wife would keep in her purse.

[rdagger]

I'm not a big fan of the light gun because of screen flicker but I am very interested in the E-real Games Gun.

[Lilwolf]

If something is done here... we need to come up with what would be acceptable and what is not.

I would only want to see it work if it would

1) fit inside of a real arcade gun.

2) work with an arcade monitor as a top priority.

[IntruderAlert]

you left out the ELVIS T.V. gun...

[quarterback]

you left out the ELVIS T.V. gun...

LOL

[spiffyshoes]

I'm not a big fan of the light gun because of screen flicker but I am very interested in the E-real Games Gun.

[sWampy]

if a ps2 and a $30 camera can figure out where your hands are, surely a 3 Ghz pc could with minimal cpu load.

[sWampy]

This might be a good start http://charlie.dgrc.crc.ca/cgi-bin/Sylvie/Blog/casarch.pl?2004/04/13/4.txt

[ErikRuud]

Rdagger and SpiffyShoes,

Look at some of the earlier posts!

I already posted the information about the eRealGames RGT system.  My post was at 11:17:23am.

They are considering a PC version.  I posted the link to the other thread as well.

[ErikRuud]

LittleWolf,

I don't think you need to go to lasers, IR emitters will probably work better.

For multiple guns, you would just have the emitters pulse at  different frequencies.  DTMF is often used with IR systems in robots that communicate via IR.  As far as I know, many TV remotes are based on IR DTMF.

IR triangulation is possible.

Here is one simple example.
http://www.electronicsforu.com/efylinux/circuit/feb2003/DTMF%20Proximity%20Detector.pdf

[Lilwolf]

Yeah...

[ErikRuud]

No you do not need seperate detectors for each frequency. That is what the DTMF is for.  DTMF is most commonly used as telephone "touch tones" DTMF uses combinations of two tones combined to create unique codes.  This can be used with IR signals as well, allowing unique identifying codes to sent and received within the same wavelength of light.

Look at these microrobots.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/

These guys can keep track of 16 different robots at a time.  They do not have 16 receivers on each robot.  They have four each, but that is just to give 360 degree coverage.

[shawnzilla]

As far as the actual gun mold, maybe we should talk to the guy who makes the Tron Repro Sticks (specialtyplastics).

Just based on my experience in getting the translucent buttons made, plastic molding (especially custom jobs) is very expensive. Another route to go, might be to use emachineshop.

What does everyone think about the importance/practicality of incorporating a solenoid?

[sWampy]

The cheapest solution would be some off the shelf toy gun rigged with an ir led that stayed lit all the time, and went off when you pulled the trigger, maybe flashed a pattern if you hit the reload button if you wanted to get that fancy, a $30 usb webcam, and some software like this http://charlie.dgrc.crc.ca/cgi-bin/Sylvie/Blog/casarch.pl?2004/04/13/4.txt or this http://www.edenspeace.com/eyebuddy/mousehead/getting_started.htm

[ErikRuud]

Hereis another one for camera tracking!

http://www.perceptual-vision.com/Nouse/download.html

This one tracks your nose, and watches for eye blinks as a click.

They even have a game for it!

If they can track a nose and blinking eyes, it shouldn't be too hard to track a gun with LED's on it.

[ErikRuud]

Here is another interesting project.

http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~matz/HGI/HandVu.html

It's looking like a BYO RGT is possible.

Oops, I duplicated the link from above.  I have now corrected it.

[Thenasty]

could someone E-mail or PM when this is FINISH  TIA

[SoundDoc]

I know its kinda on the edge of wrong n' stuff...

But to ease the development, in the ways of mame, would it not be advantageous to read out the 512K ROM on a act labs gun, since they no longer produce it, to preserve it for future generations? The same way ROM images are being saved for Mame? (and just happen to possibly learn from it some good practices in gun tracking detection?)

I don't mean steal their programming, which is wrong, but I have pulled a ROM image from one working gun, and burned it into a new ROM to repair a broken gun before, and gleaming a bit of insight on how one of the best guns works couldn't hurt in the development of a new system.

I think that IR triangulation, and/or lasers are quite adventurous, but may not be practical taking into account the accuracy that most gamers want, that's why almost all gun systems in use have been "flicker" or beam position based, its the easiest, and most accurate way of telling exactly where the gun is aimed.
To get away from the "blinding flash" you could shorten the flicker duration to only one cycle, and possibly try only detecting it on one gun, blue perhaps, so the flicker isn't so annoying, or maybe even just raise the overall gamma to ensure their aren't any black areas in the picture, which the gun can't pick up.

Just some more ideas...

SD

[IntruderAlert]

Hereis another one for camera tracking!

http://www.perceptual-vision.com/Nouse/download.html

This one tracks your nose, and watches for eye blinks as a click.

They even have a game for it!

If they can track a nose and blinking eyes, it shouldn't be too hard to track a gun with LED's on it.

Here is another interesting project.
http://www.perceptual-vision.com/Nouse/download.html

It's looking like a BYO RGT is possible.

Those two projects look mighty similar 

[sWampy]

I can't believe the only open source webcam/tracking software I can find is that visual basic stuff.  I can get to the source, to some, from a project I worked on a couple of years back, but I'll have to see about sanitizing it/declassifing it, so I can bring it out of the vault.  There has to be some open stuff already out there though.

[Hoagie_one]

i can offer nothing to help except a promice to buy a pair of guns if they reach production

[crashwg]

if a ps2 and a $30 camera can figure out where your hands are, surely a 3 Ghz pc could with minimal cpu load.

The EyeToy doesn't detect where your hands are.  It detects movement by seeing changes in brighness...

[sWampy]

if a ps2 and a $30 camera can figure out where your hands are, surely a 3 Ghz pc could with minimal cpu load.

The EyeToy doesn't detect where your hands are.  It detects movement by seeing changes in brighness...

Which tells it where your hands are.

[ErikRuud]

Here is another interesting project.
http://www.perceptual-vision.com/Nouse/download.html

It's looking like a BYO RGT is possible.

Those two projects look mighty similar 

Oops, sorry, that was the wrong link!  I have corrected it up above.

[sWampy]

Here is another interesting project.

http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~matz/HGI/HandVu.html

It's looking like a BYO RGT is possible.

Oops, I duplicated the link from above.  I have now corrected it.

Nice find,  with the source to that, and http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/  this might be a fairly easy project.

[tmasman]

The biggest issue I see right now is that the current solutions work by moving the mouse cursor... Howerver, you can't have 2 mouse cursors... So you wouldn't be able to track 2 guns this way...

Perhaps you could figure out a way to make an analog device drive the inputs (like the T2 guns) then you could build a driver that sends similar inputs to track the 2 guns.  Maybe that's not  the best way to word it, but I know what I'm talking about... (Drive a gun with something other than a mouse)

Anyhow, a gun with an IR Diod in the barrel & a camera should work for 1 gun, we'd just need to find a way to track 2 diods... (different flashing patterns maybe...) but then you're dealing with FPS of the camera & being able to adjust for different cameras...

Interesting...

[Silver]

The IR sensor approach is easily the best. It's also how Namco do it in the recent "light gun" games (HOTD3 etc...)

Its also fully customisable - make your own ideal guns and stick a detector on the front. The whole buttons/recoil thing is entirely seperate - nothing to do with light guns - and easily implimented.

The "hard" part is indeed working out the pulsing/tracking through the sensors. Then a driver etc....

Andy of Ultimarc has posted before saying he is looking into this exact setup (Namco IR sensors). I hope he is successful as he already has the experience - I imagine the Cypress microcontollers he uses on the Optipac/Ipac are capable of pulsing the emitters and probably coding into basic X/Y data on chip. This would mean he could simply use the USB HID interface that the analogue inputs of the Optipac already use to send data to the PC.

Please note all the above is speculation on my half - I was planning to look into this myself but stopped when a) I saw how much Sega charged for there "gun sense" boards which are clearly just 2 IR emitters each (and a tiny IC I think).  b) Saw that Andy was looking into it.

[RitchieTheBrit]

I second HOAGIE!  Crap at stuff like that, but as long as there was international shipping, I think I ouwld be interested in buying one.  As for the shell, wouldn't you be able to strip a Desert Eagle BB gun?  They're damn big pistols, and two of them would look rather splendisimo!

For those with a DC, BTW, Cybergun actually make one with recoil action, and it's not bad, either!  More accurate than the MadCatz version, and it looks the dogs danglies!  If anyones intersted I cou post a pics!

[ErikRuud]

The biggest issue I see right now is that the current solutions work by moving the mouse cursor... Howerver, you can't have 2 mouse cursors... So you wouldn't be able to track 2 guns this way...

Perhaps you could figure out a way to make an analog device drive the inputs (like the T2 guns) then you could build a driver that sends similar inputs to track the 2 guns.

[tmasman]

...Don't use IR leds with a USB camera. Use colored LED's. The driver could be setup to recognize different color leds.  One gun could use blue led's and another could use red.  You coud have even use more colors for more guns, but I don't think there is need for more than two.

That's not a bad idea, I was just thinking that actual light would get annoying... You'd see it's reflection off of your monitor or the glass in front of it. IR could be seen by the camera without being seen by the users.

[1UP]

The problem with this whole thing is Mame's cockeyed support of lightguns.

[ErikRuud]

Getting Guncon2 support into MAME itself would be great, but only for those using TV's.

I think a more universal "Guncon2" approach would involve a hardware solution that could get its synch from VGA, S-Video or Composite.

I really like the camera gun idea the more I look into it.  It is independent of the monitor type and size. The gun could be wireless, and almost any gun design could be used.

[RitchieTheBrit]

Erm, 'K, I know nothing, but I like the way 1UP is thinking.

There's some really neat looking GCon guns out there, it would open up a world of possibility!  The GCon system seems to offer the most accurate and reliable bas on which to work.

And I know that Cybergun have a GCon version of the Desert Eagle 50 cal, as well as a neat little Scorpion...

Oh, and I saw an UZI, AN UZI...

Oh, and...   

[Silver]

I'd love just to plug in a gun-con and have real-time no white flash tracking. Nice and affordable too!

Theres a mame issue - where there does not appear to be native lightgun support. Feeding raw x/y data into the emulated game board would depend on how they got the data. The IR/LED arcade gun systems calculate the postion from the multiple IR data on the game board itself, so emulating that would not be a good idea.

Lightgun issue is simply that there no lightguns for pc's that are close to console ones for style/accuracy. However, if we BYOLightGun you could just put the technology inside a guncon case...

Personally, I think a BYO gun using a USB camera and LED would be much harder than using an array of IR LEDs around the screen. To use a camera you are going to have to write/acquire software that will analayse a video image and track both movement AND angle (you have to work out where its pointing and where it i). This would take a lot of processing power I believe. This is exactly what eRealgames are doing for there gun - so I would either keep emailing them to release the PC version this year, or if they fail - it looks very hackable as apparantly it already comes with a USB connector.

[Thenasty]

I'll spend $200 for one when you guys have it working specially for DOS/Arcade Monitor (15khz).

[sWampy]

Personally, I think a BYO gun using a USB camera and LED would be much harder than using an array of IR LEDs around the screen. To use a camera you are going to have to write/acquire software that will analayse a video image and track both movement AND angle (you have to work out where its pointing and where it i). This would take a lot of processing power I believe. This is exactly what eRealgames are doing for there gun - so I would either keep emailing them to release the PC version this year, or if they fail - it looks very hackable as apparantly it already comes with a USB connector.

Most of the software is already written, there is pretty complete library on sourceforge to do a camera tracking an object such as a nose/gun/eye. 

How does a bunch of led's around your monitor tell you where the gun is?

[RayB]

Starburst in Toronto is currently selling Happ guns for $70 canadian. Is there no way to get these to work with MAME?

[tmasman]

Starburst in Toronto is currently selling Happ guns for $70 canadian. Is there no way to get these to work with MAME?

Currently... No.

[shawnzilla]

Since I first posted this thread, it certainly seems that as the BYOAC community, we have the ability to make this happen. What I'd like to do is form a task group to pull this togther. The task group will have four divisions:

1) Hardware/software - This group will determine the best way to design/implement a lightgun

2) Design - What should it look like, and where will we source the parts

3) Public Relations - This group will serve as liason to the Mame dev team, as well as setting up the financial structure of this project (i.e., ensure that this will be a community project with all profits (after paying back investors) being re-invested into either A) The lightgun project or B) Future BYOAC projects or C) Un-dumped boards

4) Investors - Need I say more? I count myself as one of the primary investors. But, I certainly can't foot the bill alone.

Is this acceptable to everyone? If so, please PM me indicating your interest in any of the four groups. I truly believe we can make this happen, so that we don't ever have to lean on a company like Act-labs again.

[Trimoor]

Here's my take:

1) Use the camera tracker approach, with three IR LEDs per gun.  Why three?  That way it can track it in true 3D space, unlike the dual LED eRealGames which forces you to recalibrate every time you move toward/away from the monitor.  They can be placed anywhere, so long as they are all visible to the camera and are not in a straght line.

To differentiate between LEDs, there are two ways.  You can use color LEDs, but this can be annoying, and colored objects can cause interference.

The alternative is flashing at different rates.  My Logitech Quickcam allows me to set the refresh rate at 60Hz for lower resolutions, but I have no idea if it actually works this fast.  To control the flashing, use the serial port.  Set it to pulse once per camera refresh, where a decade counter cycles the LEDs so only one is on per camera frame.  At 60Hz, this gives both guns a full 10 samples per second.  You might run into problems if you move the gun too fast, but hopefully this can be corrected in software.  A filter should be used on the camera to remove anything but IR light.

I can help with hardware, especially circuitry.

Anyone who decides to help with software: Please, please use portable code.  I don't want to be stuck with windows.  Solid C is probably best for something like this.  No VB!!

2) This might not go over well, but what about using the case from real guns?  We could try to order the two halves directly from the factory, without any deadly firing mechanisms installed.  You can't beat the realism.  Otherwise, we should contact the manufacturer of the Happ guns and order some plastic shells.

[Gamecab]

Has anyone seen the VR Gun that you can make from a Gyroscopic mouse and other parts? http://www.geocities.com/mellott124/

It looks like a good start if you want the gun to work on all monitors.

Thanks
Charlie

[Lilwolf]

btw, as another way...

there are some very cheap crappy guns that work in mame.  Whats the chance if we hacked them into a true arcade gun, and the arcade guns original optics... that it would be better then the original?

It might make sense to use either the bio gun or the other crappy but kinda working still selling guns and fit them in a better case... with better optics.

might be an option.

[quarterback]

http://www.geocities.com/mellott124/

The link is bad.

Works for me

Hi, my name is Kevin Mellott and I like to mess around with VR. I graduated with Honors from High Tech Institute, a trade school in Phoenix, AZ and currently have my Associate degree in Computer/Electronics, FCC GROL Certification, C.E.T. certification, Fiber Optic Certification, and my A+ Certification. I currently work for Agilent Technologies in Santa Rosa, CA.

VR is one of my passions. My first Virtual Encounter was enough to hook me on this amazing concept. I have surfed the web countless hours looking for everything from Power glove information to old Vr Systems that never where, like Atari's IVR system. I am going to update my page as much as possible with all the information I have found on any subject regarding Virtual Reality and so forth. If you ever have any questions or comments please feel free to email me. I have much more info then listed here and I am always happy to help. So here goes.

[1UP]

I think the camera gun is not going to pan out.  A cheap USB camera just doesn't have the resolution to get the accuracy you can get with a proper light gun.  I'd be willing to bet that motion tracking on two guns simultaneously will bring any system to its knees.

What you're doing is trading screen flash for precision.  There is a better compromise: rather than reinventing the wheel, improve on it.  The screen flash on most PC guns is usually pure white, which not only gives you a headache pretty quick, but also distorts the monitor, further degrading accuracy.

A better way would be similar to the Guncon 2/PS2: flash the screen gray.  Easier on the eyes, less distortion, and still enough contrast for the gun to time the flash.

I think by far the best thing would be to use existing hardware as much as possible.  I think by the time you buy a gun to gut it, and a camera to hack inside, you'd actually be better off buying a Happs gun (the basic model is $70 in standard colors, and it even fits their holsters.)  If someone could come up with a cheaper interface for these, and a Mame driver, you'd be on to something good.

Speaking of which, I am working with Jack over at R0R3 to get one of his boards for testing, and a couple recoil guns on the way from Happ.  If someone wants to work with me on creating a Mame driver, speak up now...

BTW, in the absence of the Act Labs VGA guns, there are always these:

http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=270&products_id=1429&PHPSESSID=6ab3f4545866b56802e980b3c167ccda

I've found them to be decent when properly calibrated (video must be 640x480, and need to tweak mouse sensitivity settings a bit), and two will work with Analog+.  Out of stock currently, but hopefully they'll be back.

[Silver]

i agree that motion tracking of cameras is not the most effecient way to go about this.

I also have my doubts about just improving the video-gun idea. If we can get a good solid gun a la guncon2 then great, but to work with composite/s-video/and PC's would be rather akward, increasing the work.

Plus plahying around with my really old monitor I find that globally increasing the brightness - even just to light gray - has a rather large distortion effect. I'm convinced this would affect the accuracy.

If we are starting from scratch, I say go for the prefect solution - remove the display from teh equation altogether, 1-off calibration at installation, real-time tracking. Aim high!

[Xiaou2]

 Well, a 1mega pixil camera with propper lenses would probably be more accurate than an arcade lightgun.   However... many cameras lack the speed needed for such a fast realtime situation.  The bandwidth would be insane, and again, something would have to interpret the images in realtime. 

  Also, a typical lightgun may not work for many different types of displays. 

  A typical arcade machine is spec'd out to precise means:

 1)  Known arcade monitor, refresh rates, ect.
 2)  Perfect sync arcade system.

 A pc running windows isnt the most stable thing as far as 'timing' goes.  Windows itself may use methods which throw timings off.  Special video card drviers may update displays in odd ways or timings as well.   

 Some tvs use strange updating methods too - which is why my panasonic tv wouldnt work with the act-labs tv gun.

  Im no expert on this kind of hardware... but from the things Ive seen, Im pretty sure that a typical arcade lightgun will not function well with mame and a non arcade monitor. 

  An alternative method is needed... or should be sought.   However... it may well be beyond the expertise on this board.   Or, at least - maybe beyond the financial
capability.   


   

 

[menace]

From the gun design stand point several things have to be considered.  it should be no heavier than the act labs gun--anyone who has actually played a game of area 51 knows that after 10mins, your arms are killing you and that thing weighs mere ounces.  Also, would an accurate sighting mechanism be possible.  This would make eventual calibration even more precise.

Also the length of the cables should be longer than an act-labs standard length so that the control box (if required) doesn't have to be at the front center of the cabinet.  wireless would be the cats --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- but that seems a tad more difficult.

[ErikRuud]

Have any of you looked at the videos on the HandVu page?







Tracking a few LED's would be a lot easier than what they have done, and they don't appear to be using anything really high end.  The minimum cpu they reccomend is 1.5ghz.

[ErikRuud]

Has anyone seen the VR Gun that you can make from a Gyroscopic mouse and other parts? http://www.geocities.com/mellott124/

It looks like a good start if you want the gun to work on all monitors.

Thanks
Charlie

The big problem with the Gyro mouse/Gun idea is that there is no relationship between the gun and the screen at all.  You can stand anywhere with in range of the receiver and the mouse will still work. You could stand behind your cab and it will still work!  You would not be aim with the gun.  Others have said that you have to aim by twisting your wrist instead of moving your arm to mae these work.  This is not the most natural motion for using a gun.

[Silver]

Tracking a few LED's would be a lot easier than what they have done, and they don't appear to be using anything really high end.  The minimum cpu they reccomend is 1.5ghz.

I wouldn't fancy running mame on my pc alongside an app that has a minimum cpu requirement of 1.5GHz, and then streaming 60fps video down the USB port.

[sWampy]

Tracking a few LED's would be a lot easier than what they have done, and they don't appear to be using anything really high end.  The minimum cpu they reccomend is 1.5ghz.

I wouldn't fancy running mame on my pc alongside an app that has a minimum cpu requirement of 1.5GHz, and then streaming 60fps video down the USB port.

Well 90% of the cpu load they are doing is tracking the hand and trying to figure out how the fingers are held in realtime.   This would be tracking a single point of light, or even better a target pattern on the end of the barrel, that is static and never changes shape.   

I don't think you would need 60fps of full resolution video either.   You should be able to track the gun accurately enough  in a 320x200 mode, or maybe even 160x100 black and white at fairly low fps, just enough to show you a cursor updated a couple of times a second, then when you pull the trigger it could then take a high resolution shot to get exact location of gun.

I was playing with the nose mouse project with a $40 usb 2.0  camera I picked up at officemax yesterday, and it worked suprisingly well for playing arkanoid and tetris, a little tiring though.   

[ErikRuud]

Exactly!

The HandVu system is tracking dozens of points on a hand, and trying to recognise gestures.

The NOUSE sytem is track the nose and eyes.

Both of these systems are tracking based on skin color and shape.  They have to do a lot of calculations to determine what is a hand/head and what is not.

For a gun system, you would be track a few bright points of light which is a lot easier.  A single gun system wouldn't even need to scan in color, so the overhead is not as high as you might think.

[sWampy]

Exactly!

The HandVu system is tracking dozens of points on a hand, and trying to recognise gestures.

The NOUSE sytem is track the nose and eyes.

Both of these systems are tracking based on skin color and shape.  They have to do a lot of calculations to determine what is a hand/head and what is not.

For a gun system, you would be track a few bright points of light which is a lot easier.  A single gun system wouldn't even need to scan in color, so the overhead is not as high as you might think.

Need to play with the camera a little and see how well they see IR Led's it might be possible to just have a pattern on the end of the guns (checker board on one, stripes on the other) shine a few ir led's at the players, and have it light up the targets enough for the where they can be tracked.

[Silver]

Hmm, well I could be wrong about the cameras-not-a-hot-idea then.

If you have the system to play with, can you try one of the constant-tracking gun games? I think Opwolf or T2? Would be interested to see - if it works fine, then hey - build your own gun this weekend!

Also - as I'm still curious - could you take a look at cpu usage while constantly moving the sensor around in windows?

I've always doubted the accuracy of these 1 camera systems too - especially if you move slightly since calibration.

EDIT: And there is not much shortage of these camera trackers:

http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/index.html
http://www.naturalpoint.com/smartnav/

This TrackIR already just works on 1 reflective dot so maybe simpler than the nose-trackers. And you can just stick a reflective dot on your arcade guns....

[ErikRuud]

Take a look at the TrackIR 3.

It uses a three point reflector to give a full 6 degrees of freedom.

That is the closesedt I have seen to how I think the gun system could work.

All it needs is a way to register a trigger pull, and calibration mode so that it knows where the edge of the screen is in relation to the gun.

[Silver]

Looks very nice (if expensive).

I notice that they have withdrawn generic mouse support in recent drivers, and only support particular games in the drivers - there is no full directX input.

The trigger pull is just a button - so stick the detector in the front of the gun, and wire the button microswitch to your ipac/keyboard hack/keywhiz.

The biggest issue for me is no 2 players - that would require either a driver rewrite to track 2 points (and not get confused) or 2 systems on a different IR frequency or pulse timing (I notice they use LED IR tracking in this system - they just use a camera to detect the points rather than IR LDRS)

Hmm This suggests writing a driver to track 2 points by 1 camera is quite do-able - different shaped detector point or something.

I still like the idea of building-your-own from scratch though. I'm going to keep looking for the IR LED/LDR/PIC approach...

[AndyWarne]

I am already looking at the issue of light guns and have got to the point of writing code and having a working IR mechanism. My intention is to make it system-independent but if this does not work out it would be necessary to have close integration with MAME. If this becomes necessary then some kind of open-source arrangement might be a good idea. The problem with open-source is that it makes recouping any financial investment difficult and this kind of project would require investment to do it properly.
Andy

[Silver]

That's fantastic news Andy.

Do you mean code for a PIC/microcontroller rather than an OS?

I see your problem though. Are you looking into making it supply raw x/y co-ordinate data? and then a driver in the os?

Maybe its also time to look at the lighgun code in mame, which I believe just emulates a mouse.... time to brush up my C skills.. (or try anyway).

[tmasman]

Take a look at the TrackIR 3.
It uses a three point reflector to give a full 6 degrees of freedom.
That is the closesedt I have seen to how I think the gun system could work.

This still isn't exactly like what we want, but it's definately a proof of concept!

This device is designed to move the camera view around as you move your head... (Real-time tracking)...  There's absolutely no reason why you couldn't design something similar with reflectors or IR LEDS attached to a hand gun.

I've been thinking through the math behind calculating the gun's aim... It could be a bit tricky... If you move left or right fron the point you calibrated the gun, it would be tricky to re-figure the actual gun angle... (Although still doable).  But what if you changed your distance from the screen?  That would drastically change the angles... ug... I'd be willing to mess with it, but I've never messed with image recognition or manipulation programatically...
gr...

I might mess with some of it in my free time, but meanwhile, I'm gonna be watching Mr Warne for any further progress.

[Trimoor]

3 LEDs is enough for full 3D tracking.  When moving away, the dots appear closer together.  The tracking algorithm is relatively simple; it's a video card in reverse.  It measures the distance between each dot and uses cosine to calculate a 3D object.

AndyWarne, how does an open source make investment difficult?  The investors are willing to pay for the finished product, or a finished idea.  We don't care about selling it.

[Hoagie_one]

do we have an ETA on light guns Andy?

[rdagger]

Since, my cab has an LCD monitor I am going to go with a camera approach.  The field of computer vision is developing very quickly.  It should be possible for a computer with a camera to discern 2 guns and determine where they are pointing.    Instead of using LED tracking, the software could be trained to learn a gun's shape.  This could be a very inexpensive solution, because it is all software based.  You could use any webcam and you could use any gun.  You could even use a real gun (just take out the bullets and wire the trigger to an encoder or use blanks for realistic recoil)

Judging by the posts it seems like someone needs to start a BYOAC Lightgun website.

[Trimoor]

It can be done entirely in software, but that means more computing power is diverted from MAME.  Tracking 3 points of light takes far less power than object recognition and orientation.  The LED triad can probably fit inside the barrel, using a lens to spread them out.  If the tracking software is good enough, you wont even need to pulse them.  For the second gun, use four LEDs.

[sWampy]

Since, my cab has an LCD monitor I am going to go with a camera approach.  The field of computer vision is developing very quickly.  It should be possible for a computer with a camera to discern 2 guns and determine where they are pointing.    Instead of using LED tracking, the software could be trained to learn a gun's shape.  This could be a very inexpensive solution, because it is all software based.  You could use any webcam and you could use any gun.  You could even use a real gun (just take out the bullets and wire the trigger to an encoder or use blanks for realistic recoil)

Judging by the posts it seems like someone needs to start a BYOAC Lightgun website.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/  Has most of the code already written to do this, just slap an A or whatever on the end of one gun and a B or whatever on the end of the other, and you could be pretty set.   You could even put led's in the gun where they were wireless if you wanted. 

[sWampy]

It can be done entirely in software, but that means more computing power is diverted from MAME.  Tracking 3 points of light takes far less power than object recognition and orientation.  The LED triad can probably fit inside the barrel, using a lens to spread them out.  If the tracking software is good enough, you wont even need to pulse them.  For the second gun, use four LEDs.

You don't need the LED's in the gun.   Worst case if you can't track the gun easily, put 3 reflective dots on one gun, and dots in a different pattern on the other gun, and point an ir led back at the player to get some light on them. 

[ErikRuud]

Here is another head tracking application. http://freelook.org

They specifically state that you can use an LED as a marker.

[1UP]

You could use any webcam and you could use any gun.

[ErikRuud]

Yes, three of four points is more than enough.

[Trimoor]

So, anyone started on a test program/drivers?

[Flinkly]

not to trample on the effort, but if andy is doing well on creating his own for the comunity, wouldn't it be kinda a waste to make our own? he would probably be done before we got too far anyways, just hate to see you guys waste your time.

p.s.  i'm not trying to trample on your guy's feet, so if you don't see it as a waste, go on and make one to prov me wrong. 

[Adam]

I had a shot at a reverse webcam lightgun tracking system.
I basicly threw together the webcam and squares detection components of opencv.

http://users.tpg.com.au/mindle/camdemo.rar

Point your webcam at the screen and hit a key to take a pic. Escape quits.
You need the whole screen to be visible for it to work. If grabbing the picture with a decient webcam is fast enough i'll probably move to using a few LEDs around the screen.

[Silver]

not to trample on the effort, but if andy is doing well on creating his own for the comunity, wouldn't it be kinda a waste to make our own? he would probably be done before we got too far anyways, just hate to see you guys waste your time.

p.s.  i'm not trying to trample on your guy's feet, so if you don't see it as a waste, go on and make one to prov me wrong. 

I agree... I think some time and effort would be better spent improving the mame code for light guns or perhaps a driver that supports raw input and not mouse emulation. I  think this is how dual lightguns are forced to work already.

Such improvments would benefit both DIY webcam projects - the TrackIR system already does not use mouse emulation - an other setups.

[NiN^_^NiN]

http://www.arcadecontrols.com/wwwboard/messages/40217.html

I'm tired so i didnt look if it was posted so kill me if it was 

[Lilwolf]

my webcam is crap.

but isn't it true that they just aren't fast enought (forget about the processing time per image) to be used?

it seems like you might be able to get it to work on the first level or two on some shooting games if you got the drivers working... but after that... the cameras wouldn't take pictures fast enough for the computer to figure out where the pointer SHOULD be looking

and after that... even if everything above worked....

how would you make a trigger press?  thumb twitch?  or middle finger?  seems like this would be another huge hurtle.

I personnally think it would be super cool.  I would love to see someone use this to make a DDR pad (on any surface)... and a few other items like that... but I just don't see it being a real solution for gaming...  just something to show your friends...  "no really... just point at the screen and say bang... it really works!"

[Trimoor]

Most webcams can take images at a full 30fps.  Some might be able to achieve greater speeds.  With enough processing power, it can track the guns in real time.

Games run at 60 fields per second interlaced, and I'm guessing that most of them only render 30 frames per second, one image for both fields.  I think it will be plenty fast.

As for the triggers, they would be connected to a keyboard encoder.  If wireless shooting is desired, the triggers could activate an IR LED in the front of the gun for the camera to see.

[Silver]

I think most webcams would not be up to the task. Depends how good you want it....

The TrackIR system above is designed for use in games (head-panning in flight simulators etc...) and the premium edition runs at 120fps - the slowest one is 60 or 80fps I think.

They get around the processing image overhead by using infra-red emitters to reflect a very obvious point source, making it very easy to follow. they state cpu usuage for realtime tracking is under 1%. I am sure this would work very well as a gun - but again its a custom driver or mouse emulation. And if you want two guns you would probably have to program it yourself. Although it looks like they have a SDK for their optitrack or whatever....

[ErikRuud]

not to trample on the effort, but if andy is doing well on creating his own for the comunity, wouldn't it be kinda a waste to make our own? he would probably be done before we got too far anyways, just hate to see you guys waste your time.

p.s.

[Lilwolf]

Well, if processing power is then the issue... heres a question....

Could we take that software and add it to a seperate computer.. Then pipe the output out and into another computer through another machanism?

It seems like if we could find a dedicated computer solution... then it wouldn't effect the original computer... It might make this doable...  Plus you wouldn't have to worry about the game being emulated to have it work well.

I would try to find a 1+ghz machine for a dedicated solution if it worked well.  Especially if it coudl be headless.

And after writing the last message... I've now decided it needs to have speach recognition software installed... so that saying bang would be enough.... I really think telling someone "just point and say bang" would be by far the coolest thing!

[ErikRuud]

I had a shot at a reverse webcam lightgun tracking system.
I basicly threw together the webcam and squares detection components of opencv.

http://users.tpg.com.au/mindle/camdemo.rar

Point your webcam at the screen and hit a key to take a pic. Escape quits.
You need the whole screen to be visible for it to work. If grabbing the picture with a decient webcam is fast enough i'll probably move to using a few LEDs around the screen.

Cool,  I'll have to download it and try it at home tonight.

I have also wondered about the possibility of turning it around like this.  You can't go wireless this way, but it does make the positionong calculations a lot easier, just calculate the difference between the markers and the center of the camera image.

[u_rebelscum]

I think some time and effort would be better spent improving the mame code for light guns or perhaps a driver that supports raw input and not mouse emulation. I  think this is how dual lightguns are forced to work already.

I'm not sure what you mean by "raw (lightgun) input", but IMO it's the windows driver that should be doing any calibration, computation, and/or translation.  To me, that would make the info not "raw" (but that's for a different thread ).

Mame excepts joystick or mouse inputs fine for lightgun games.  The -lightgun option is just some special code to treat the mouse input as absolute, instead of the usually relative mouse info.  Since joysticks are usually absolute, mame shouldn't have problems if the lightgun is joystick.  (The reason the old-old actlab joystick lightguns don't work wel in mame is the same reason it doesn't work well for any game: calibration sucked.)

I'm not saying mame's current "lightgun" code can't be improved: it can be.  But mame doesn't need any new code to support joystick lightguns (except maybe a way to set mame's analog acceleration to 100% from the commandline, and maybe rename the "lightgun" option to "mouselightgun").  IMO, Mame shouldn't have to add code to fix bad device drivers.

[rdagger]

I had a shot at a reverse webcam lightgun tracking system.
I basically threw together the webcam and squares detection components of opencv.
http://users.tpg.com.au/mindle/camdemo.rar
Point your webcam at the screen and hit a key to take a pic. Escape quits.
You need the whole screen to be visible for it to work. If grabbing the picture with a decent webcam is fast enough I'll probably move to using a few LEDs around the screen.

I too have started work on the reverse camera approach.

[Silver]

@u_rebelscum

by raw I basically meant non-mouse (there also seems to be a rawinput structure on the win32 msdn microsft stuff, or rawhid for input from a USB HID device - think I got the term from there).

You clearly know more about the mame setup than me, it sounds more flexible than I had been told. I was thinking that there was a data-from-light-gun-->convert to mouse input-->send-to-mame-->mame converts to game-type input indriver. I though that if you had a driver that could just feed absolut co-ordinates mame could pass that directly to the emulated game.

This may be completely irrelevant  As you say its already happy with joystick input, it probably is. If you have any experience with windows drivers in this area, I suggest dropping AndyWarne an email...

[RayB]

Forgive me for not reading all posts in this thread and perhaps repeating something already said, but Happ sells the gun optic board alone: http://www.happcontrols.com/amusement/optical/960066100smd.htm

Seems to me that figuring out a driving or additional mods to that existing circuit might be another way to go...

[brandon]

I put in a vote for sensors to triangulate the guns position just like what "Jurassic Park" and "House of the Dead 3" use.  That would mean any monitor, DLP projector, TV.. any display you want.  and two player support is obviously possible since the above games were two player.  Someone like Andy or RandyT could make an interface for the sensors and have it report joystick coordinates as an HID.  Maybe a joy2mouse type program or driver could convert the joystick coordinates to absolute mouse coordinates.  I just think that using a webcam for tracking sounds way too complicated.  I could be wrong...

[u_rebelscum]

@u_rebelscum

by raw I basically meant non-mouse (there also seems to be a rawinput structure on the win32 msdn microsft stuff, or rawhid for input from a USB HID device - think I got the term from there).

Ah, RawInput. 

- It's an winXP only thing:  crashes on winME/98, doesn't work in win2k (but at least it doesn't crash).
- The device driver sets the sturcture.  Two of the three structure types are very standard "RawMouse" and "RawJoystick", which can use normal windows drivers that come with windows.
- The third is RawHID, which means the device must be a HID (Human Interface Device).  If this is used, mame must add special codes that does what a device driver normally does.

- A minor plus, it looks like with the new minGW compiler mame is now using, rawinput is now included in the headers & libraries;  Before the upgrade, it wasn't.

...I was thinking that there was a data-from-light-gun-->convert to mouse input-->send-to-mame-->mame converts to game-type input in driver. I though that if you had a driver that could just feed absolut co-ordinates mame could pass that directly to the emulated game.

Umm, since joystick and mice can pass absolute coordinates, why invent a special driver and data structure that does the same?   

Of course, if the "data-from-lightgun" is something that's not the coordinates, such as time from start of screen refresh like from a real arcade lightgun (over simplified), at some point it needs to be converted to a coordinates before mame gets it (well, unless mame starts simulating the circuits that did the convertion on the real arcades).

This may be completely irrelevant  As you say its already happy with joystick input, it probably is. If you have any experience with windows drivers in this area, I suggest dropping AndyWarne an email...

I know mame's input code okay; but write windows drivers I've never done.  I don't even have time to rewrite some features I need to to make MameAnalog+ fully functional again ATM, so learning device drivers is out for me for now.

[shmokes]

I put in a vote for sensors to triangulate the guns position just like what "Jurassic Park" and "House of the Dead 3" use.  That would mean any monitor, DLP projector, TV.. any display you want.  and two player support is obviously possible since the above games were two player.  Someone like Andy or RandyT could make an interface for the sensors and have it report joystick coordinates as an HID.  Maybe a joy2mouse type program or driver could convert the joystick coordinates to absolute mouse coordinates.  I just think that using a webcam for tracking sounds way too complicated.  I could be wrong...

IIRC Andy posted somewhere, just in the last month or so, that he IS currently looking into a product to do just this.  I think he specifically wanted to make something to work with the NAMCO guns.  I sure hope he does cos I've got a pair of Act Labs guns new in box so I'll be certian to be able to afford whatever solution he comes up with after I Ebay my Act-labs guns.  If nobody comes up with anything else at least I can fall back on my Act-labs guns.

[NoBonus]

Though this product is not a lightgun, it may give some design ideas or inspiration. It would be fun to have just to mess with though.

http://www.atruereview.com/pistol_mouse/index.php

[brandon]

Though this product is not a lightgun, it may give some design ideas or inspiration. It would be fun to have just to mess with though.

http://www.atruereview.com/pistol_mouse/index.php

sort of looks like "Lazer Tag" or was it "Photon"?    that reminds me.. I wish I still has all that stuff...

[IntruderAlert]

how about building it inside one of these babys?


http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/blasterrifle/main.html

[rdagger]

I'm leaning toward the Plager Katsumate Series-D blaster.

[IntruderAlert]

btw, as another way...

there are some very cheap crappy guns that work in mame.  Whats the chance if we hacked them into a true arcade gun, and the arcade guns original optics... that it would be better then the original?

It might make sense to use either the bio gun or the other crappy but kinda working still selling guns and fit them in a better case... with better optics.

might be an option.

yeah.. that's what I was talking about earlier
just hack an existing light gun interface to use a real arcade gun
I mentioned act labs but any cheapo device might do as well as long as you are using the real arcade gun optics and all

[NoBonus]

You know, since this is BYOAC and we all have different ideas about what the gun should be like, why not just produce the guts of the gun and let the people who buy the guts find a suitable gun to put it in.  Maybe it could even include all of the triggers and buttons, just not in a gun case.  That way if someone wanted a rifle, they could make one.  If someone wanted a .45, they could make one.  This would make the possiblities limitless.  Of course, it could be produced with a "complete gun" setup and a "gun kit" setup.  This way those who like the BYOAC model can get it, and those who want something different could just get the kit and go nuts.  I, for one, would incorporate it so the barrel mech fits over my eye and the trigger is on my temple...

[brandon]

I wonder if you could use an Analog Devices ADXL202 accelerometer?

[ErikRuud]

That is similar to the technology in the Gyro Mice.  It would sort of work, but it would not be true aiming.

[brandon]

as long as the shot goes where the barrels pointed I dont really care

http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,764%255F801%255F0%255F%255F0%255F,00.html

They sell gyros and accelerometers.. I think if you can make a VR glove with them you can make a gun..but then again those guy were at University of California, Berkeley.  They might have more between their ears than most normal humans 

[ErikRuud]

The problem with gyro mice as guns is that they have no direct link to the screen.  They also don't allow for a "natural" gun aiming motion.  They register twisting at the wrist, better than movement of the whole arm.  An accellerometer based system would probably handle arm movements better, but I don't think that it would get confused by the user changing position.

[brandon]

yeah.. I thought about that.. the gyros and stuff would detect tilt and movement but you'd still need something to tell the PC the point of origin.. This makes hacking some Guncon's sound SO much easier now

[Lilwolf]

It would be pretty cool to be able to hack one to get two machine gun squirt guns to use them with T2 type joystick gun games... make them wireless and your would have a really cool sweet remote T2 sessions.

[brandon]

hmm.. that gives me a thought.. I have a wingman extreme Gamepad with a "sensor" button.. when I enable that it actually lets me tilt the gamepad and it translated it like analog on the X & Y joystick axis.  I could hack that tilt sensor into a gun housing thats mounted to a control panel and make a T2 positional gun without pots!.. or I think I could... sounds worth a try at least..

[dan57fina]

so 1up...do you mean to say that if we could convince the MAME development team to add guncon2/ror3 support, we could simply plug these devices in and play?

[gl.tter]

Interesting thread guys.

[rchadd]

how does the xbox lightguns work?

it does not flash the screen when you shoot a zombie in House of the Dead 3.

maybe xbox lightgun is good way to go as it is essentially USB - you just need to figure out a driver

[rchadd]

Here is another head tracking application. http://freelook.org

They specifically state that you can use an LED as a marker.

just seen this movie from their website



looks good it is using a superbright led as tracking target

however not very useful for playing the helicopter sim. for example he has to look away from the screen to scroll the display up/across.

[psik0tik]

I think the freelook thing is a very good idea...but I also think the ps2 lightguns with a ps2 to pc adapter is a good idea too. It would involve just making a driver for it and I have all the hardware sitting right in front of me. I downloaded freelook and I have a webcam set up. Imma try to attach a led to the gun and see if I can get it to work.

[MajorLag]

its even easier then that. PS2 lightguns are HID complient USB devices. All that needs to be done is to ahve a driver written for them.

[psik0tik]

Ok,  the ps2 lightgun works...just not accurate at all. Need a ps2 to pc driver. Thats the cheapiest, Do it yourself freindly thing i can think of.  Plus you can go buy the 10 dollar ps2 lightgun and put its guts in whatever lightgun you want......Even that uzi I saw on another site...heheheh...an uzi that would be so sweet 2 uzis strapped to the sides of my mame cab.  ;

[brandon]

I wonder why nobody has done this yet?  If its already USB then it seems like that would be ideal.  Maybe somebody could build a little dongle device that get the sync from the VGA and connects to the RCA plug on the guncon.. then they'd work for VGA and TV-out.  hmm.. I wish I knew jack about programming.. well, I DO know jack.. and that's about it 

[MajorLag]

A Linux driver has already been written, though I seem to have lost the link. Also someone here was working on a Windows driver at one point, lost that link too.

[Lilwolf]

Your really getting the ps2 lightguns working?

Anyone out there with a ps2 lightgun and a TV out?  This REALLY should be tested and SHOULD work.

I don't believe you will get it working with VGA because of the different optics and timings... but if the ps2 has the ability to work on a VGA that would be the test.

You MIGHT get lucky hitting wierd refresh rates though

[psik0tik]

Thats what im using is tv out. I couldnt get the vga to work at all. But there is lightguns that work with vga already besides the ones that actlabs has.  Here you can read on the differences of them. http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/lightgun1.html

Theyre pretty cheap and good.
The problem is...Is getting a lightgun to work with a tv from a pc. And since ps2 lightguns were made to work on a tv and are HID compliant usb devices then they should work with the right driver in windows.
 And theyre hella cheap. I still want that uzi real bad.

[psik0tik]

Sorry for the double post but I found some linux ps2 lightgun drivers....Does anyone know how to covert this to windows?
http://psynergy.pakl.net/snippets/?id=21
http://psynergy.pakl.net/snippets/?id=22

[MajorLag]

Thats what im using is tv out. I couldnt get the vga to work at all. But there is lightguns that work with vga already besides the ones that actlabs has.  Here you can read on the differences of them. http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/lightgun1.html

Theyre pretty cheap and good.

They're pretty cheap anyway. Actually, only the BioGun is still available, it only seems to work in win98 (for whatever reason, it doesn't make much sense), and it has the worst accuracy of the lot.

[Kremmen]

Sorry for the double post but I found some linux ps2 lightgun drivers....Does anyone know how to covert this to windows?
http://psynergy.pakl.net/snippets/?id=21
http://psynergy.pakl.net/snippets/?id=22

These are not lightgun drivers.  They are routines for reading a lightgun in linux running on the PS2, not linux on a PC.

[Kremmit]

Kremmen? 

That's it, I'm changing my name to Peel.

[MajorLag]

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/bgoines78/

There, that should be a real linux driver. It was originally linked by SpamYouToDeath on January 3rd 2005.

I still can't find the post on the board someone made who was working on it.

[psik0tik]

well if the one I posted isnt a driver is it at least a start? And mabye it can help the one that majorlag posted work?

[Kremmen]

Kremmen?

That's it, I'm changing my name to Peel.

Not trying to steal your nick.  I've actually been registered for a long time, just never posted before.

[coasternuts]

Man, now I'm confused. 

What we need is :
1)  a lightgun that will work on both TV and VGA.
2)  won't flash the screen.
3)  is accurate enough.

I read those reviews and all fail on 2 correct?
Some are harder to find in 1, correct?
And 3 seems to be a problem with everyone except Act Labs, correct?

(LOL! You can have  'coasterballs'. )

[Lilwolf]

Yes.. but even then... Act labs isn't all there.

The aim ever so often shoots in just a weird spot off screen.  And for some games (Police Trainer) thats it.

The 'ultimate' would also work in full tracking or machine gun mode.. IE mouse tracks even when the button isn't pressed.

I'm starting to think that the cameras might be the way to go.  I like the idea of adding one to the front of a gun.  Removing the UV filter and then add the color filter (few places on the net show you how to do it... some cameras its a .50c fix.  Then add a few very easy to find UV lights around the screen.  Now the get the free camera->hud drivers to work with mame...

[psik0tik]

I tried the freelook thing and that is cool. I stuck a white led to my  head and it worked. But youd need to be some distance from the screen to use that and youd have to stand in one spot.

[psik0tik]

Did we give up on this?

[Trimoor]

I am convinced the solution lies in the webcam/infrared LEDs idea.  The hardware is trivial, but we need software.  Any coders available?

[psik0tik]

Theres already software  Freelook. And it works but buggy as hell.

[gl.tter]

I am convinced the solution lies in the webcam/infrared LEDs idea.

[Billkwando]

In fact, that's not a bad idea.

[Billkwando]

Ok, Smog released a test driver. Please read this thread at MAME.net for more info and details, but I did mirror the file on my own webspace.

The thread is:
http://www.mame.net/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showpost.pl?Board=mamegeneral&Number=172052&page=0&view=expanded&mode=flat&sb=7#Post172052

The file is mirrored here:

http://www.geocities.com/billkwando/guncon2v02.01.zip

The bottom line is that the current version will only work for 30 days because the program he made it with is shareware.

[rchadd]

would the Gcon2 driver work with arcadevga card to an arcade monitor?

would this driver make PS1 shooting games playable in PS1 emulators such as espxe?

i dont have a gcon2 to test with.

[Billkwando]

I think it does specifically work with arcade VGA but I haven't tried it yet because I just found out today (I'm at work) that the test driver is out.

The italian MAME forum has more info if you use the Google translator. I know with his card he had to wire up an adaptor.
I'm hoping it will "just work" with my TV out card. *crosses fingers*

[brandon]

hey anybody know if there is a way to extract the the composite sync from S-video?  I want to connect my TV to my PC with S-video but run the composite sync to the Guncon2.  and btw, does this driver even work with TV out or do you have to connect it to an arcade monitor the way he did?   http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/circuits/svideo2cvideo.html

[Billkwando]

I believe someone here said there's a certain pin you can use from S-Video to extract the necessary data.... If you're using TV out, perhaps you can hook the TV to the S-video and the gun to the composite video? I'm HOPING it will work like this. I would think it would considering composite video is the gun's native signal....

BTW about the "30-day Trial" status of the driver.......

Perhaps it WON'T expire. Can someone who understands english read this?

http://www.jungo.com/support/faq.html#lfc3000

[brandon]

I believe someone here said there's a certain pin you can use from S-Video to extract the necessary data.... If you're using TV out, perhaps you can hook the TV to the S-video and the gun to the composite video? I'm HOPING it will work like this. I would think it would considering composite video is the gun's native signal....

my PC video card only has a s-video out.. but as far as the other point.. I have an s-video cable on my PS2 that also has component.. so I connect the s-video to my TV and the guncon2 to the unused composite connector and it works perfect..that's basically what I want to do with the PC

[Billkwando]

It sounds like you'll be needing that mod

[brandon]

according to the link I posted above.. pin 3 carries the luminance and the sync.. so in theory you could connect the s-video from PC to TV as normal and tap off of that pin and connect it to the Guncon2.  of course the guncon would also have to be grounded so I'm guessing that would be pin 1 according to the pinout..  I really hate to cut up an S-video cable just to try this...   

1   Y ground
2   C ground
3   Y (luminance+sync)
4   C (crominance)

[Billkwando]

Perhaps just buy some s-video jacks from radio shack and make a quick passthrough box out of an old box of BBs?

[IntruderAlert]

I'd like to know if you will be able to use 2 guns at the same time
and also for sure if it will work with ArcadeVGA

[disneysw]

You are correct, you can tap the sync off the S-Video straight in the G-Con connector and pin 1 is ground.

The driver does NOT have a thirty day limit, that's just for the dev kit.


As for me, I downloaded the driver earlier tonight and have the gun registered with windows (note you have to use the batch file installer and I for some reason I had to modify it under WinXP to get it to install correctly). I had hoped it was possible to use the composite video out on the ArcadeVGA to drive the GCON but the drivers don't seem to allow it to be enabled. I should have know this as the modes are not standard TV resolutions. This means I'll need to create a special cable to extract the SYNC's. Thankfully the ArcadeVGA always uses negative going SYNC pulses so it would be easy if I had two small caps and a spare VGA cable. None of the buttons work yet but that could be because the gun is not detecting a sync input - let you know how I get on.

PS, I am using a D9200 monitor - have to see what happens with that!

[Billkwando]

Hee hee, SMOG has a BLOG!:

http://lightgun.splinder.com/

This will show all the details of his progress. And stuff. I tried to install the driver last night and it didn't do anything.

I had the gun plugged in when I installed it. Any hints?

[Flinkly]

I'm leaning toward the Plager Katsumate Series-D blaster.

ah, another lover of Blade Runner.