WOW New LightGUN Info !!! Woot!!! :)

[ErikRuud]

I have not unpacked the second gun yet.

If I get time I'll try it tonight.

Is there a particular game I should try?

[Farmboy90]

My wife just told me the guns arrived.  I will try to go home sick from work (shame on me), and then I will let you know.

I care only about 2 player as well, so that is what I will try to get working.

[ahofle]

I have not unpacked the second gun yet.

If I get time I'll try it tonight.

Is there a particular game I should try?

Area51 or Maximum Force would be great.  Or you could just go into MAME and under input settings for all games, go to lightgun 2 and try pressing the various buttons on the guns and see what MAME recognizes them as.  Thx!

[RandyT]

Just saw this thread... nice to know that after nearly 7 years of me saying infared is the ONLY way to have a universal lightgun some company thought of the free advice I've been giving out.  (Yes I mean you act-labs... I literally told you how to design the frikkin gun and you went with traditional technology anyway.  )

People have been making IR tracking guns for much longer than 7 years.

For the pc?  No they haven't.  They have made ir 3d devices before, but they are hardly a gun due to the odd method of aiming used.  (3dzonemaster comes to mind)  Not sure what you meant by that comment. At the time when the act-labs guys popped in with their pc gun idea (horrible idea btw considering most of us use tvs or arcade monitors and at best it's psuedo compatable with the latter) I told them to do what namco did in the arcades and make an ir device so it would work on all monitors. I was promptly ignored and scoffed at by everyone.

Howard,

Look through the patent database.  They have been using similar methods for military target simulations for about 16+ years.  The concept of using a "free space" pointing device using camera tracking and triangulation, which is all this really is, has also been around a very long time.  It has also been very expensive and complicated to implement.

Just saying something should be done a certain way and being able to actually achieve it with appropriate performance and cost levels are two very different things.  The fact that decent quality CCD cameras and fast embedded processors are finally down to a cost appropriate for this type of device is what has allowed it to become a reality.  It's been knocking around in someone's head long before this.

RandyT

[darthbane2k]

thanks to all who have submitted pictures - very helpful!

Can we now begin to share suggestions as to how we cant neatly mount these on our existing cabs?

I see there is a mounting hole on the back - if the hole was on the side, it would be more useful.

[ErikRuud]

I will probably use small small blocks of wood or L-brackets so I can mount the stands to the inside edges of my cab using the existing mounting holes.

[tonycougar]

Hey guys,

I got play-asia.com to get my account upgraded to wholesale status.  Ufortunately the price only drops by $2 per gun.  However, shipping is MUCH cheaper.

I believe I could order 30 of these for $1000 (including shipping).  So about $33 a piece.  That gets them shipped to me.  To ship them to you I would think it would cost about $5-$8 per gun to ship within the US.  So it might be about $40 per gun.  (Anyone know how much it costs to ship 2.5 lbs within the US?)

If you bought on your own it is about $47, so in short you all could save about $7 per gun.

Anyway, just thought I would let you know.

Hey Farmboy90,

Did you get a final quote on these? How much was the shipping total?
I was curious because I work for Fedex and get a substantial shipping discount (75%). I emailed playasia last night & they allow shipping with your own account. Maybe somethng can be worked out for a bulk shipment?

Let me know

Tony Belton

[RandyT]

thanks to all who have submitted pictures - very helpful!

Can we now begin to share suggestions as to how we cant neatly mount these on our existing cabs?

I see there is a mounting hole on the back - if the hole was on the side, it would be more useful.

If you want to permanently mount them to something, consider going to the auto store and buying some of that grey 3M double-sided tape with the red backing.  As long as the surfaces are relatively clean, it'll hold like nails.  If you want to remove it eventually, don't use too much.

As for where to mount it, I have a strong feeling that those who chose to do the dark plexi thing will be able to hide them inside your cabs next to the monitor.  The IR goes through that stuff like it is clear glass.

RandyT

[Farmboy90]

Wow 75%!  Sheesh, that is insane!

I just added 30 guns to my cart.  It is giving me only 1 shipping option - UPS.

The total for the guns was $840 and shipping was $191.60 (so about $6 per gun instead of the usual $15 or so when you only buy one or two).

So the total would be $1031.60, or $34.39 per gun.  The normal price when you buy and ship one is about $46.

Now once they get to my house I need to ship them to you guys.  Then I would think I could use FedEx.  How do I get your discount though?

[edge]

Read my earlier post on page 4 of this thread.

I had issues with the drivers, and I am currently using Acorn's driver.  I did not get it to work correctly in MAME due to the resolution changes.  Can somone remind me how to configure MAME to use only one resolution?

For the life of me, I could not get anything to recognize gun movement.  All the gun buttons worked fine, but I could not get XP or MAME to recognize movement.  I will try again tonight.

If I get it working for one gun, I could test out the 2-player option as well.

ErikRuud (for anyone else who got it working):
(1) Did you install the LCDTopGunDriver from the CD or website?  
(2) Did you try the LCDTest.exe tool (found on CD in DOCS dir)?  If so, when you run FIRE test, is your gun accurate?  Mine was off my at least an inch or 2 (even after calibrating and tweaking the gun sliders).
(3) With Acorn's driver, are you able to move the mouse cursor around your windows desktop?
(4) What resolution is your desktop running?

Thanks for the help.  Looking forward to trying more tonight.

[RandyT]

Edge,

I don't have one of these yet, but how close to the screen are you?  The gun needs to "see" both of the LED boards for it to work.

Maybe try stepping back a couple of steps and see what happens?

RandyT

[edge]

RandyT,
I am about 6 feet back.  I am able to see the laser pointer.  I am able to calibrate.  But XP/Mame do not recognize any movement, wven though the red laser pointer is moving properly.

[Farmboy90]

Have you enabled mouse support in Mame?  It is off by default.   

Does windows see the guns as mice?

Mame won't be able to work until you get it working first in Windows.  I will try to get home soon and try things out and let you know what I find.

[ErikRuud]

For the life of me, I could not get anything to recognize gun movement.  All the gun buttons worked fine, but I could not get XP or MAME to recognize movement.  I will try again tonight.

If I get it working for one gun, I could test out the 2-player option as well.

ErikRuud (for anyone else who got it working):
(1) Did you install the LCDTopGunDriver from the CD or website?  
(2) Did you try the LCDTest.exe tool (found on CD in DOCS dir)?  If so, when you run FIRE test, is your gun accurate?  Mine was off my at least an inch or 2 (even after calibrating and tweaking the gun sliders).
(3) With Acorn's driver, are you able to move the mouse cursor around your windows desktop?
(4) What resolution is your desktop running?

Thanks for the help.  Looking forward to trying more tonight.

I tried the drivers from the CD and the Lik-Sang site.  They are the same as far as I could tell.  I was not able to get any tracking movement ouside of the firing test.  In the firing test, left to right calibration seemed to work well, but the closer I got to the top or bottom the worse the up/down calibration got.

After uninstalling all of the EMS software I tried Smog's Guncon2 Driver, but It gave me a registration error and would not recognize the gun.

Acorn's Wingun worked perfectly, but I did have to calibrate the gun using it's built in calibration first and the use the Wingun calibration as well, before the cursor would track properly.  There was a small amount of lag if I swept the gun across the screen too fast, but the cursor did catch up again.

I ran the LCDTest.exe from the entry "Start/Programs/EMS/LCD Topgun"

With Acorn's driver, I was able to use the gun as a mouse in windows, and it worked well in Chicken Hunter which is normally a mouse/keyboard game.

My desktop is set at 1024X768.

By the way, the laser pointer will turn off if the gun cannot see the LEDs.

[HOTR6]

I wasn't going to get a gun for my cab! I figured it would be fine without one. Well I am terrible with peer pressure! I bought 2! They should be here in the next day or so judging by the people who already got them.
Keep posting on the setup of them. I am sure I will have lots of questions when I get mine!

[Necro]

Once everything with these gets resolved (drivers, def. way to get it working, etc) I may have to buy one.  Given, it will end up in me getting a divorce since I just spend 100+ on a spinner...but still

[Silver]

Ok, I've opened up the box and had a little play....

I too have issues with the bundled driver+gun2mouse program - does not seem to work. Although may be to do with the fact that I had Acorn's Guncon2 driver installed previously, and xp autodected the gun as a guncon using his driver.

I can calibrate using acorns guncon2 and use a mouse absolutely fine in windows. Tracks perfectly, and appears accurate.

I've played a bit in mame, and "kinda" played t2 and area51. The issue with both is that it seems very hard to calibrate the guns. I'm forcing them to run at desktop resolution, but they all the movements are accelerated. This is having gone into the analogue controls menu in mame and reduced sensitivity to 1%. ie in t2, using the on screen site, I can use the gun to control the cursor but not in relation to where the gun is actually pointing (make sense?).

Trying to determine if this issue is me, mame, refresh rate change, the guncon2 driver (not the ideal solution, but bundled driver appears to fail) or something else. I don't think I have any mouse acceleration on in windows, but I can track perfectly in windows anyway......

suggestions?

[ErikRuud]

I did not have the Guncon drivers installed before I tried this, so there is definately a problem with their driver.

[mark6437]

Could someone post where to get the Smog's Guncon2 driver, Acorn's WinGun, and gun2mouse please? I just ordered two of them and want to get all the files I need ready.

Has anyone tried two player Mame or House of the Dead series yet?

THX
Mark

[Silver]

Has anyone tried two player Mame or House of the Dead series yet?

Yes. 



dodgy quality, but quick blast of me saving (or not) damsels in distress in PC version of HOTD2. Works like a charm, very accurate IMHO. I've left laser/pc sight on to show it tracking a bit. (all the random flying all over the place is shooting off screen to reload. Please note, I am rubbish at this game).

(Around 11meg WMV file). This is using acorns guncon2mouse driver.

[Dr Gori]

Ive been able to get WinGun working and the other GUNCON2 driver working, but have had no success with the drivers they provide.  Both the other drivers gave similiar results. 
I only have one gun, as the first one I ordered hasn't arrived yet.  I've still been having fun playing on my little 17 inch LCD monitor on my regular computer, and can't wait to try both guns.  Still working on my cab, but it seems like we might have the two player answer soon from some of the other people who ordered.

[Farmboy90]

Man I can't get anything working.    I installed the two things off their CD.  Holding both A and B doesn't do anything.  No calibration mode.  The gun has power but not much else.

I unistalled their stuff and installed the guncon driver, and for a second had a very badly tracking mouse in windows, but now that is gone too.

I just unplugged the USB and plugged it back in, and now I have an extremely dodgy mouse tracking issue in Windows.

So far no luck with anything 

[Silver]

Ok - Mame working nicely.... well t2 and area51.

Heres a (low quality) vid of T2 in action..



tracking and all, while holding button, with no flashing. Works well.

Mame issues - I had mouse selected. What I had to do was enable lightgun (lightgun) and then set lightgun_device to lightgun. All in mame.ini.

I've also had partial success with 2 guns. Partial in that I've seen evidence that both will track at the same time on screen. Using the info dialog in Wingun, I monitered gun2 - and watched all the values change nicely. At the same time, I could control the windows mouse with gun1. No problems at all.

However - mame is proving tricker. I've enabled dual_lightguns, but this seems to disable tracking for both guns - only seems to pass/monitor data when the trigger is pressed for an instant. Seems like this is by design in mame - something to do with trying to run 2 lightguns through 1 mouse perhaps? (I seem to recall something about it only reading 1 x and y co-ord, and then decided after who shot at the co-ord depending on whether p1 fire or p2 fire was pressed. Any dualmice experts here?)

[edge]

Man I can't get anything working.    I installed the two things off their CD.  Holding both A and B doesn't do anything.  No calibration mode.  The gun has power but not much else.

I unistalled their stuff and installed the guncon driver, and for a second had a very badly tracking mouse in windows, but now that is gone too.

I just unplugged the USB and plugged it back in, and now I have an extremely dodgy mouse tracking issue in Windows.

So far no luck with anything 

I had same issues.  Here are a few things to look out for:
(1) Be sure you have the LED strands on the proper sides of your LCD/CRT/etc.  The one with 3 sets of LEDS goes on the LEFT.
(2) Be sure you connect the LED strands to your LCD gun cable.  I know this one sounds weird, but I did try to hook the strands up to my PC USB directly -- that's a no-no.
(3) Use the little USB power adapter that they supplied.  Use it at the end of the gun cable to plug into your USB.
(4) If you are not using an external power supply, you should be using 2 USB slots.
(5) When you calibrate, be sure to stand far enough back from the screen.  Too close and it won't work.  Point the gun away from your cabinet (ie, point it at side wall).  Hold down A&B for 3 secs.  If the gun is properly hooked up, you will now see the red dot on the wall.  You are in calibration mode.  There's no screen associated with calibration mode (unlike the video on their site).  If you do not get a red dot, you have a wiring issue (or maybe driver issue).

Hopefully that helps out a bit.  I will tackle the driver issue tonight as well.  Let's hope we figure it out soon.  I want to shoot stuff this weekend.

[Farmboy90]

I tried what you said above and still nothing.  How do you get the trigger and buttons to send anything to mame?

I loaded T2 and went to the Input This Game menu from mame.  When I try to set the player 1 button, I pull the trigger and nothing happens.  Mame see no input.  I tried all the othe rbuttons on the gun too.  Nothing.

Then I exited out and opened the Gun2mouse thing they offer.  the app looks like it will let you assign keys.  So I edited only one button (the D button trigger).  I mapped it to "ctrl".

Loaded T2 again and still nothing.  Mame doesn't see me pushing any buttons.


*** EDIT*** This reply pertains to Silver's post, not yours Edge.  I will verify your stuff now.

[Farmboy90]

I had same issues.  Here are a few things to look out for:
(1) Be sure you have the LED strands on the proper sides of your LCD/CRT/etc.  The one with 3 sets of LEDS goes on the LEFT.

Check

(2) Be sure you connect the LED strands to your LCD gun cable.  I know this one sounds weird, but I did try to hook the strands up to my PC USB directly -- that's a no-no.

Seems correct.  I have two usb slots gone from my hub now.  I had to unplug my spinner and flight stick actually to make room for this.

(3) Use the little USB power adapter that they supplied.  Use it at the end of the gun cable to plug into your USB.

Looks good.

(4) If you are not using an external power supply, you should be using 2 USB slots.

Yup

(5) When you calibrate, be sure to stand far enough back from the screen.  Too close and it won't work.  Point the gun away from your cabinet (ie, point it at side wall).  Hold down A&B for 3 secs.  If the gun is properly hooked up, you will now see the red dot on the wall.  You are in calibration mode.  There's no screen associated with calibration mode (unlike the video on their site).  If you do not get a red dot, you have a wiring issue (or maybe driver issue).

Hopefully that helps out a bit.  I will tackle the driver issue tonight as well.  Let's hope we figure it out soon.  I want to shoot stuff this weekend.

I am using inly their software at this minute.  I load their little test program and I can see a big red dot following my pointer (albeit off an inch or something).

I cannot mouse the mouse in windows with the gun however.  I also cannot get mame to recognize anythings - buttons and pointer.

I switched my lightgun_device to say lightgun (I tried mouse as well).  I set mouse = 0 as well.

Still no go. 

[slycrel]

HOTD 3 on xbox worked great, and is very accurate.  Using it on a 32" lcd screen, and with the laser on, I was shooting right where I pointed.

Now, I just have to figure out what the deal is with my PC connection.  Looks like I have an afternoon of tinkering ahead of me.

The gun is very solid, and it doesn't really vibrate.  It feels more like recoil to me.  The part on top that slides back when you fire is probably why.  So far for Xbox, I give it a 10.

I'm sure people who have done reviews before will do a much more thorough job of explaining all this.

This should with mamedox(mame for xbox) ? ? Anyone with a modded xbox please try and post result !!

Yes, please...  anyone have a modded xbox to try this on?  I have an xbox in my cab and if these worked I'd buy 2.

Also snaake, I have only recently found mamedox, is there a website or forum somewhere that I could get some more info/discussion on the program?  I'd love to hook up my ultimarc trackball to my xbox, but I was under the impression that it didn't work.  is this not the case with mamedox?  Have they added mouse support?

[Silver]

Dont even bother with mame till you have some kind of success in windows with it acting as a mouse - normal mame just looks for a mouse.

There is a tiny switch on the base of the handle of the gun (labelled X/P) This needs to be in the P position for PC/PS2 (X for xbox).

So far it seems NO one has had anything working with the default drivers. I can't even use the LCD test program - no tracking, no buttons. All the button placements on the screen are white for me - but once they were green when I had the 2nd usb port plugged in (for recoil power) but I can an a system warning that the USB bus has experience a Power Surge, and the USB device drew too much power (I'm thinking external powered USB hub for recoil).

[ErikRuud]

Ok, I got one gun working in DuckHunt.

I had to turn on switchres and Lightgun.

If you have lightgun set to 0, then the mouse controls are in relative mode which does not work.  Relative mode is why you need the troubleshooter for PC games like HOTD and VituaSquad2

I plugged in the second gun and Wingun picked it up right away.

I discovered I didn't have the .chd for Area51.

I tried to get two guns workin in T2, but I guess I need to find the correct config set up.

At the moment I have the LED stands powered from the USB adapter without going through the plugs on the gun cord.

This meansthat the recoil is not working, but the laser still does.

[Farmboy90]

I got sort of a working set up as well now.  Unistalled the EMS crap and once again tried the acorn driver.

This time I was able to calibrate gun1 through the guncon driver and played Police Trainer.  It worked pretty well I guess.  I not sure if I am at a good distance.  I must be 8 feet from the screen (27").  I will try recalibrating at different distances as it is hard to aim from that far away.

I plugged in gun 2 but can't get a successful calibration in guncon2.

And so of course things don't work well in mame now either.

But progress has been made.  Anyone email ems about the problem yet?

[mark6437]

Bummer. Maybe we should not have all rushed to buy two of these things.

Has anyone played House of the Dead 2 player yet?

Mark

[Silver]

Bummer. Maybe we should not have all rushed to buy two of these things.

Has anyone played House of the Dead 2 player yet?

No, just 1 player. If you mean PC, its only possible to play with 2 lightguns using "The Troubleshooter" which does not seem to work for these new guns as its designed for act labs guns. I am not sure what lightguns HOTD and HOTD natively support (in non-mouse mode, they appear to have an option in the config for lightgun).

[SNAAKE]

HOTD 3 on xbox worked great, and is very accurate.  Using it on a 32" lcd screen, and with the laser on, I was shooting right where I pointed.

Now, I just have to figure out what the deal is with my PC connection.  Looks like I have an afternoon of tinkering ahead of me.

The gun is very solid, and it doesn't really vibrate.  It feels more like recoil to me.  The part on top that slides back when you fire is probably why.  So far for Xbox, I give it a 10.

I'm sure people who have done reviews before will do a much more thorough job of explaining all this.

This should with mamedox(mame for xbox) ? ? Anyone with a modded xbox please try and post result !!

Yes, please...  anyone have a modded xbox to try this on?  I have an xbox in my cab and if these worked I'd buy 2.

Also snaake, I have only recently found mamedox, is there a website or forum somewhere that I could get some more info/discussion on the program?  I'd love to hook up my ultimarc trackball to my xbox, but I was under the impression that it didn't work.  is this not the case with mamedox?  Have they added mouse support?

I dont think there is trackball suppport but I know lightguns work for mamedox.

[Silver]

Update:

I have now played HOTD2 in 2 player - works well. I had to reconfigure the troubleshooter - you must select ActLabs TV lightguns, not PC USB lightguns. Then I had to put player2 button2 to mouse1button4 in Wingun.

This does not track the guns permanently, only when you fire, but this has no impact on this game at all (same as arcade).

I have also now played 2 player in MAME successfully with area51. Works great, nice and accurate. Again, there is no tracking of the cursor (so you will want to turn off the mame target) but then you dont want one anyway to play properly.

mouse 1, lightgun 1, dual_lightgun 0, lightgun_device lightgun. (in mame.ini)

Then in area51, both players are lightgun1X and Y, with P1 button1 as mouse button 0 and P2 button1 as mouse button 2.

This is all with Wingun.


The only outstanding issue I have now, is that I can't play 2 player games that need 2 player tracking - so any of the "fake" lightgun games (T2, opwolf,revx etc...) only work well in 1 player mode.

This is, I believe, a mame limitation and I suspect the only way round it is to use a modified version that supports something like Rawinput, CPNmouse driver or simliar. NoName did this, Advancemame does this, analog+ did this. I don't currently have any versions of NoName/analog+ to test. Advance mame I am struggling to configure (I've activatied the SDL driver for graphics so I can run it in XP just fine, but can anyone give me the advmame.rc settings for cpnmouse or lgrawinput?)


For anyone struggling/getting these, my current advice is forget the EMS CD. Install Wingun or Guncon2PC (I hear both work).

1) Calibrate gun FIRST (info in the online manual)
2) Calibrate in Wingun - I just autocalibrated.
3) repeat 1) then 2) for gun2 at this point
4) Button config in Wingun. Make sure gun1 trigger is left mouse, gun2 trigger is middle mouse. (Think these are defaults).

You should be controlling the mouse with gun1 in windows at this stage.

If so, config mame.ini as above, then run your game at the same resolution as your desktop. (-r 1024x768 in the command line).
In game, hit tab, setup analogue controls so you have lightgun1 X and Y selected to control, THEN turn on the test dip switch to run in the in-game calibration.

Hope that helps!

[ErikRuud]

This just in from EMS

Dear Erik Ruud,

Thank you for your email.

Really sorry, the latest gun2mouse program (V2.1) we have released has
a bug
such that it fail to work in some computer. Please try this old
version.
Thank you.

Regards,
EMS Henry
www.hkems.com

The older version of the LCDGun2mouse software does work with their LCDGunDriver. and I can track the mouse in windows.

However it only support mapping mouse buttons to gun buttons.  It does not support mapping key to gun buttons.  I'll post the exe up on my website a little later.

[HOTR6]

Alright you guys seem to be getting the bugs worked out! Cool!
Can one of you post a link to the proper drivers? So when we get these don't even bother with the disk they supply with it? Install the other drivers?

[Zero_Hour]

I have also now played 2 player in MAME successfully with area51. Works great, nice and accurate. Again, there is no tracking of the cursor (so you will want to turn off the mame target) but then you dont want one anyway to play properly.

I think I'm sold for sure now. 

[ErikRuud]

Here is a link to the older version of LCDGun2Mouse.

http://erikruud.freeservers.com/arcade/LCDGun2Mouse.zip  You still need the driver.exe as well.

At this point it still looks like the WinGun or Guncon2 driver give us the most functionality.

I tried to get the PC version of VirtuaSquad2 working using the Wingun and Troublshooter, but I could not get it to work with both guns at the same time. Only one or the other would work.  The controller configuration in VS2 would only let me set one player to be mouse controlled.

[ErikRuud]

Update:


The only outstanding issue I have now, is that I can't play 2 player games that need 2 player tracking - so any of the "fake" lightgun games (T2, opwolf,revx etc...) only work well in 1 player mode.

This is, I believe, a mame limitation and I suspect the only way round it is to use a modified version that supports something like Rawinput, CPNmouse driver or simliar. NoName did this, Advancemame does this, analog+ did this. I don't currently have any versions of NoName/analog+ to test. Advance mame I am struggling to configure (I've activatied the SDL driver for graphics so I can run it in XP just fine, but can anyone give me the advmame.rc settings for cpnmouse or lgrawinput?)

Maybe what we need is a Gun2Joy or Gun2Analog (Gun2Pot just doesn't sound right) driver for these types of games.

[Silver]

Yes could be. Thinking about it more, I'm probably wrong saying the limitation is mame. Its actually the OS, hence the need for clever drivers (CPN) or directX inputs (rawinput). And mame does not support these directly obviously.

So use, a "gun2Analogjoy" would be great, as windows does not limit those kind of controllers I believe.... only mice.

Patience is a virtue.