<News> - Dawn of the Light Gun

Main > Lightguns

<< < (2/3) > >>

lanman31337:
True that, some of those guns weigh more than me!!! Kennywood and Idlewild park used to have some of those old games, at ten cents a pop you can't go wrong!

Howard_Casto:
Couldn't be more wrong guys. Technically speaking they are a lightgun in the truest sense of the word. These guns shoot out light, literally. The things we call lightguns now detect light. Since they aren't exactly shooting anything then they can't be considered a gun now can they?

The technology is directly linked btw, but I didn't want to get into that. Basically before computers were around to track, you put a bright light in the barrel and cheap 50 cent light sensors on the various targets. This was simplier... no need to calculate position, if you tripped a sensor then it msut be a hit as it's literally mounted on the target. Modern guns put the cheap, 50 cent light sensor (basically the exact same one, sorry randy light guns are almost all software, no tech to be found in them), inside the gun itself and the screen shoots out light (well it turns really white, but same diff). The only real addition on the hardware end is some sort of timing chip/crystal to count how long it takes for the light to reach the gun. Then a very simple calculation is done in software based on the game's resolution and refresh rate, compared to the timer results and that gives the position. No fancy chips, no big leap in tech, nothing. Just the fact that computers could calculate data made it easy to use a single sensor to get the position.

RandyT:

--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on June 01, 2007, 04:42:06 pm ---Couldn't be more wrong guys. Technically speaking they are a lightgun in the truest sense of the word. These guns shoot out light, literally. The things we call lightguns now detect light. Since they aren't exactly shooting anything then they can't be considered a gun now can they?

--- End quote ---

And "lightpens" let you write with photons.....not! :)

The methodologies used to track are very different. With those old machines, you could literally knock the targets down with a flashlight. Now point that same flashlight into the end of the Time Crisis gun at the local arcade and see how well that works for you. Vastly different technology, but both shaped like "guns,"

BTW, you didn't reply to the parallels I drew with other gun technologies which use light to determine position, so I'm assuming you have no response for them. Otherwise, I'm really interested in hearing how you can include one dissimilar technology, yet exclude others under the same moniker.

And again, if you want to call those "Ray Guns" and "Light Rifles "lightguns", thats fine with me. But their "history" ended in the 60's when the last one rolled off the assembly line. Oh wait, that's not true. You are allowed to include the goofy shooting redemption games they had at amusement parks in the 80's and maybe even today. They worked on exactly the same principle. Everything else is different.

You can include airplanes in the "History of Transportation", but not in the "History of the Automobile".

RandyT

Kremmit:

RandyT:

:laugh2:

If it has a 30' wingspan, it ain't a car, and if it doesn't fly, it ain't an airplane.

RandyT

Navigation

 Message Index

Go to full version