Author Topic: GunCon2 Screen Flashing !!! (Read 6246 times)

ZeroPoint · « **on:** June 16, 2005, 04:47:37 pm »

I am posting this new topic for discussing the need for screen flashing when using the GunCon2 compatible guns on PC. Please do not post any connection issues or driver issues here. Just facts about screen flashing !

Screen flashing issues:

Why must the screen flash ?

What Playstation2 games DO / DO NOT flash the screen when shooting ?
(I just played Time Crisis 2: Flashing screen when shooting confirmed !)

Have you seen any Playstation2 games that tracks a cursor ?

Is it possible to flash the screen from software ?
(Can it be done ? Programming tips, links etc.)
Note! The screen flash must be controlled by the driver... It

vibez · « **Reply #1 on:** June 16, 2005, 06:31:47 pm »

These guns do track on virtually every colour apart from really drak tones. If there is indeed a ps2 game that the gun tracks on, then you can bet your bottom dollar the game was designed to use lighter shades.

Obviously we need the flash only on games that were not designed for this type of gun. T2, House of the dead, VirtuaCop etc....

The main problem I have noticed is that if you aim at a dark target & there is a lighter area around it, the gun will shoot the lighter target, resulting in the poor accuaracy that has been reported.

Fact of the matter is, these are light guns, they are designed to hit the lightest pixel that they see. Not all games are written for such guns

TalkingOctopus · « **Reply #2 on:** June 16, 2005, 09:50:13 pm »

I think all of the ps2 games flash.

ZeroPoint · « **Reply #3 on:** June 17, 2005, 05:09:58 am »

@Vibez

Flashing in just "dark" games is not a good idea because of what you are saying about dark targets with lighter areas around it. The gun receives light all the time and triggers on higher pulses. Even games with light colors has so many levels of brightness (to get a picture at all) that the difference between the ambient light and the pulses of light varies a lot.

If we add a white frame in 1/25 or 1/30 of a second when pulling the trigger the gun will get an distinct pulse and we will get extreme accuracy on the coordinates readout. That is why I think the screen should flash in every game.

@TalkingOctopus

Thank you for your confirmation on the screen flash in these PS2 games.

I do not think that anyone actually take note of this flashing and it will not be any more disturbing in the pc-version.

This information help a lot. Keep up the good work.

vibez · « **Reply #4 on:** June 17, 2005, 08:40:54 am »

Quote from: ZeroPoint on June 17, 2005, 05:09:58 am

That is why I think the screen should flash in every game.

I agree, we should have it flashing in every game like you said.

Silver · « **Reply #5 on:** June 17, 2005, 09:01:00 am »

Does the gun track accurately on all colours apart from dark? If so, why not just write a program to up the gamma output (screen brightness) for light gun games? IF that does not work - then yes, flash away....

Lilwolf · « **Reply #6 on:** June 17, 2005, 09:20:02 am »

Dreamcast flash a light gray instead of white. And it works well.

Also, didn't someone say it was actually more accurate to flash a grid instead of all pixels?

vibez · « **Reply #7 on:** June 17, 2005, 12:09:48 pm »

Quote from: Silver on June 17, 2005, 09:01:00 am

Does the gun track accurately on all colours apart from dark? If so, why not just write a program to up the gamma output (screen brightness) for light gun games? IF that does not work - then yes, flash away....

I dont think this will work as the gun picks the lightest pixel it sees.

ZeroPoint · « **Reply #8 on:** June 17, 2005, 03:56:59 pm »

I have just tested screen flashing and the GunCon2 seems to like it a lot. It

Smog · « **Reply #9 on:** June 17, 2005, 08:24:24 pm »

I don't agree with flashing. I use my gun in gun-designed games and it works. If you increase the gamma it works better. That's all.
You can't think of using gun with each mouse game, each game is designed for a specific type of controller ... you would not use a trackball for playing pac-man and none ever tought of modifying a trackball to work for such game.

If you use pc-games designed for mouse .. you should use a mouse as controller. If you run mame games designed for lightgun you should use a lightgun for it. This is what I think and this is why I wrote the driver, to use the gun for mame lightgun games.

Another thing that none seems to care of : When you shoot at a target, most of times, it is not black. This means that the gun will work if you just increase the brightness of the screen a little bit. The problem is that damn damn cursor that, obiouvsly, does not follow the gun on dark areas and makes ppl think that gun is not working properly. But it IS working, if you aim to an enemy the gun will track in the right way!!! Don't look at the crosshair .. shoot and be happy..

However, I got interested from the flashing topic, cause indeed it can help on very dark pc games not designed for guns, and worked a bit on it:

I gave up with software flashing, it doesn't seem to be possible with directX apis and I don't have knowledge about VGA register and things like that, to make it at low level (I bet that XP won't allow me to do it so easly however).

Hardware flashing could be the solution, cheap and fast. Buy a 12c508 (2,5 euro) write 10 codelines in pic-assembly and you can flash a trasparent (dot matrix) white screen whenever you want. Cheaper solutions (less than 1 euro) can be used for flashing a totally white screen. I know zeropoint is working on it, when he'll show us something I will try to modify the driver to use his HW-flasher.

MiKman · « **Reply #10 on:** June 18, 2005, 01:00:24 am »

Quote from: Smog on June 17, 2005, 08:24:24 pm

Another thing that none seems to care of : When you shoot at a target, most of times, it is not black. This means that the gun will work if you just increase the brightness of the screen a little bit. The problem is that damn damn cursor that, obiouvsly, does not follow the gun on dark areas and makes ppl think that gun is not working properly. But it IS working, if you aim to an enemy the gun will track in the right way!!! Don't look at the crosshair .. shoot and be happy..

Speaking of the crosshairs, is it possible to completely disable them in mame32 or any other version of mame for that matter. I'm not a big fan of them and don't like pressing the Function key to disable them on every game I play..... Anyone

ZeroPoint · « **Reply #11 on:** June 18, 2005, 06:27:56 pm »

@Smog

As you don

jelwell · « **Reply #12 on:** June 18, 2005, 07:56:25 pm »

Is it possible to allow the user to decide whether or not flashing is necessary?

A driver switch (if it's software based) that I can basically tell the gun driver that "This game is bright enough already, and it's working fine, please don't flash".

Joseph Elwell.

Smog · « **Reply #13 on:** June 20, 2005, 06:36:06 am »

That's the difference between our point of views :

If I want a girl to get undressed I just ask her to do it, no strange tricks

(I mean there is a strategy for all things, A controller is good for a game but not for another: That game does not flash ? Well, this mean you can't use a lightgun!!! )

However I said I don't agree, but I still want to help with that ...

vibez · « **Reply #14 on:** June 20, 2005, 10:52:32 am »

Quote from: Smog on June 20, 2005, 06:36:06 am

That game does not flash ? Well, this mean you can't use a lightgun!!! )

However I said I don't agree, but I still want to help with that ...

No offense smog.

I thought you of all people would be for the goal of getting things working on stuff that they shouldnt. After all you invented the driver for getting guncon2 to work on a PC

Smog · « **Reply #15 on:** June 20, 2005, 11:09:00 am »

offense vibez ? Why should I be offended ?

I think making the guncon2 work on a PC is just a way to use a cheap gun for the same purposes other guns were already designed with SAME technolgy ... it's different from making the gun usable to make coffee too.

In the same way I modified my arcade trackball with a mouse hack just to avoid buying expensive hardware for it ... but I don't use it to play pac-man just because I have it.

Anyway ... this is philosophy ... you can agree or not.

vibez · « **Reply #16 on:** June 20, 2005, 01:20:03 pm »

Thats the thing. Pacman was never intendid to be used with a trackball. HOTD was intended to be used with a lightgun, its just that they designed it for a lightgun which flashes. Personally I think its rather short sighted saying if game doesnt flash......don't use a guncon2

Smog · « **Reply #17 on:** June 20, 2005, 05:19:06 pm »

Quote

they designed it for a lightgun which flashes

f game does not flash, it cannot be designed for a lightgun!!!! It's not a guncon2 problem. Each and every gun that was ever build in history needs the flash (or light targets, let's say it does not work on black that is more correct)!!!!
If it does not need it .. it means it is NOT a lightgun (See terminator 2 controller) .

ZeroPoint · « **Reply #18 on:** June 20, 2005, 06:35:49 pm »

I get real dizzy reading this...

What does the games actually have to do with this ?
This is a matter of how accurate the gun will be on any background. If you have read my analogy correctly the facts should be clear. If anybody gets disturbed by this "girlfriend"

involved I will be happy to write another one.

Remember that the gun receives light from a large portion of the screen, the whole screen or the whole screen with all the ambient light surrounding it. The gun doesn

Smog · « **Reply #19 on:** June 21, 2005, 05:02:22 am »

Quote

Remember that the gun receives light from a large portion of the screen, the whole screen or the whole screen with all the ambient light surrounding it. The gun doesn

ZeroPoint · « **Reply #20 on:** June 21, 2005, 05:51:08 am »

You don

Smog · « **Reply #21 on:** June 21, 2005, 05:57:54 am »

Quote

You don

ZeroPoint · « **Reply #22 on:** June 21, 2005, 06:42:25 am »

Please read my analogy again and again and again until you understand it. And YES, the light gun receives light from more than just the "pixel" the electron beam draws.

I will post a oscilloscope readout later if needed.

The analogy written earlier is to explain how the hardware reacts to the incoming light and what factors that determine how hard it is to get a good readout.

I don

Smog · « **Reply #23 on:** June 21, 2005, 06:59:37 am »

I'll teel you what you will find in the oscilloscope readout if you point the gun at the screen in a fixed point and measure the current flow in the light-sensor of a light-gun.

In an Ideal gun you will see a fixed frequency (50 Hz) signal with one peak in it. The top of the peak corresponds to the instant the elctron beam draws the one pixel in front of the gun.

In reality, depending on the gun's quality, you will find a larger peak (that takes in account when the beam is in horizontal proximity of the pixel we are talking about) and other less high peaks at 15,75 Khz of distance from the higher one. Those other peaks occurs (always depending from the gun's sensitivity) because of the beam passing on a few rows before or after the pixel you are aiming too.

This is what comes from the foto-diode. The electronics in the gun filters this signal and takes it nearer as possible to the ideal solution I described above. One peak that identifies one pixel.

We can discuss as long as you want about how much is needed or not the screen flash but a lightgun detects light coming from one pixel or a very little zone around it. This is the truth.

Tiger-Heli · « **Reply #24 on:** June 21, 2005, 07:52:59 am »

I'm not going to jump into the technical side of the fray.

Please just make the hardware with the option to flash the screen light gray (or maybe deep purple, bright blue) instead of blinding white, and include some option so the flash can be enabled/disabled (preferably through software) on a per-game basis.

ZeroPoint · « **Reply #25 on:** June 21, 2005, 03:42:06 pm »

@SMOG

You don

IntruderAlert · « **Reply #26 on:** June 21, 2005, 04:11:49 pm »

ZeroPoint,
Can you post some diagrams of the two versions of the circuit that you are using?
I'm sure that some of the people here including myself would like to be involved in testing this.

Smog · « **Reply #27 on:** June 21, 2005, 07:09:05 pm »

zeropoint, I know perfectly what I am talking about man. What the hell are you saying ? Why are you talking of lines and pal or ntsc ? Weren't you up to show me an oscilloscope readout from light sensor ? I described you what you would see in that readout.

You said you could dimonstrate that the gun takes light from the whole screen showing me the readout. I am stating that in the readout you would exactly see the contrary man. If you look at that signal and read it well, you will see the current peaks that corresponds to instant when the electron beam is pointing to the gun. This just to show you that the gun "sense" the beam (just one point or a few around) and not the whole screen light.

I Know exactly how a PAL or NTSC screen painting works ... but this is not the point.

If you don't understand it I don't know what else to say... sometimes it seems you are talking of other things. I guess you misunderstood.

ZeroPoint · « **Reply #28 on:** June 22, 2005, 04:14:10 am »

I agree ! This hole thing must be a misunderstandning. We are obviously not talking about the same thing here.

I will try to come back with a graphical explanation of what I mean and help ease thing up a little.

I have no doubt that you know a lot about how these things work. This topic was meant to figure out the need for screen flashing and the technical stuff was not supposed to be here.

What do you feel about releasing this "pc-monitor" circuit to the puplic ?
I am not finished adding the screen flash circuit, so this is still the light version.

Smog · « **Reply #29 on:** June 22, 2005, 05:18:15 am »

I suppose it is a really great thing. Most ppl would like to use the gun on pc and this is the most requested feature.
Do you have a site for it that I can link from driver's site ? If you don't know where to host it do the page and I'll add it.

aljupy · « **Reply #30 on:** June 24, 2005, 04:12:27 pm »

Hello:

First of all .... I Agree to Flash The Screen.

But if you increase Brightness (Not too low either too high) You get the same ACURATE SHOTS than flashing the Screen.

TIME CRISIS ZONE from PS2 Doesn


Main	Restorations	Software	Audio/Jukebox/MP3	Everything Else	Buy/Sell/Trade
Project Announcements	Monitor/Video	GroovyMAME	Merit/JVL Touchscreen	Meet Up	Retail Vendors
Driving & Racing	Woodworking	Software Support Forums	Consoles	Project Arcade	Reviews
Automated Projects	Artwork	Frontend Support Forums	Pinball	Forum Discussion	Old Boards
Raspberry Pi & Dev Board	controls.dat	Linux	Miscellaneous Arcade	Wiki Discussion	Old Archives
Lightguns	Arcade1Up	Try the site in https mode		Site News


Unread posts \| New Replies \| Recent posts \| Rules \| Chatroom \| Wiki \| File Repository \| RSS \| Submit news