Light guns FAQ?

[NoOne=NBA=]

I think I may have finally figured out why everyone talks about how terrible the accuracy is on the Act-Labs guns, in spite of the fact that BOTH of mine shoot almost dead-on.

Do you guys actually AIM the dang things?

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In the first picture, the guy is hip shooting--which, if you've ever shot a REAL gun is terribly inaccurate.

In the second, he is not bracing the gun with his off hand, which leads to shots being pulled off to the side when firing quickly.

A gun is only as accurate as the person shooting it.

[NoOne=NBA=]

And HERE is a very accurate gun system, if somebody wants to attempt a really expensive hack.

You can even set it up to use REAL guns.

It uses a camera to detect a red laser spot on the screen that is sent out of the barrel of the gun.
It will accurately track EVERY shot, when calibrated properly, and is not subject to the angle of the shot like the other systems.

The camera basically rides on top of the projector, and views the screen during the game.
When it detects the brighter red light of the laser beam, it calculates the location based on the original calibration.
As long as the screen/projector/camera do not move in relation to each other, the shots will register from any angle.

We had two of them set up at a wildlife banquet I went to last weekend, and were "helping out" the younger kids on the other system accurately, with a second gun, from about the length of a basketball court.

[jelwell]

I think I may have finally figured out why everyone talks about how terrible the accuracy is on the Act-Labs guns, in spite of the fact that BOTH of mine shoot almost dead-on.

Do you guys actually AIM the dang things?
...
A gun is only as accurate as the person shooting it.

Throw down! I've used the Act Labs guns and they're accurate. No offscreen reload makes them useless to me. I refuse to install something that is going to cause more questions than it solves. "How come I can't reload, your cabinet is broken, you suck". That's the standard line of bull that comes out of my friends' mouths when something doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

I'm holding my breath for a sensor based system like the namco system or this e1 thing. Partially so I can play positional joystick (POT) based games like Revolution X and Terminator 2 - which never actually used a light gun at all.
Joseph Elwell.

[NoOne=NBA=]

No offscreen reload makes them useless to me.

You can map the reload button to work with most of the games by using Analog+, and/or set an unlimited ammo cheat on some games.
You can just disable the games that you don't like the operation of, and use the rest.

You're missing out on alot of fun with all the Digital Leisure games, too.
(Mad Dog McRee, Last Bounty Hunter, etc...)

[Lilwolf]

Wow... a combination of the lasershot and the eyetoy idea might be great....

think of this..

get a cheap $2 laser pointer.  add it to a plastic gun..  trigger to point it start the laser.

next...

get the eyetoy type software to pickup the red laser on the screen.  Should be a  LOT easier then trying to figure out the shape of someones hand and if they are holding up one or two fingers.

Then you could probably find different color lasers, one per player....  might get more then just 2 pretty easy.

Anyway, might be a good cheap solution that would require little / no changes on the arcade machine itself. 

I REALLY like that this could be used across the room.

[ErikRuud]

The camera does not need to be attached to the gun.

It can be stationary.  It just needs to be able to see the screen.

It would be something like this: http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~karni/presentermouse/report.pdf

Laser reflections off the monitor glass could be a problem.

[Lilwolf]

I'm not sure it would be...

because you could put the camera anywhere at any angle.

I think the reflection back might be hard on some.  but I don't have a glass bezel...

Anyway, I still think its an interesting idea.

[ErikRuud]

I gave that one a try.

I don't actually have a webcam at this point, but I do have three way to connect a camera to my cab.  I have a composite/s-video capture card, a firewire card and my Samsung camcorder can connect via USB.

Unfortunately, the laser tracker only seems to work with the USB input.  For some reason the USB driver for my camcorder only supports 15 fps.

I did get it to track the laser dot, but it is kind of jittery because of the 15fps limit.

It also crashed when I started MAME while it was running.

I don't have a glass bezel either, but the face iof my monitor is glass, so there is one spot where the laser reflects back at me.