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| TheAdMan:
Additional comments appreciated. This question was prompted by my discussions with a company who is very interested in entering the lightgun market. Assume this lightgun would: a. be durable, reliable, and accurate b. be operable within 1-5 feet of montior (actualy about 7 feet if u include length of outstretched arms to aim gun) c. be compatible with PC and mame d. require a power (probably usb) cable f. require no LED strips P.S. I removed the camera thing so that hopefully it will ease some of the technical debate - not that it isn't welcome, but this WAS supposed to be a "What if" Question about a hypothetical product. I was just trying to give the voters as much info as possible about what this product may be like if it existed. - sorry for the confusion. Belated Disclaimer: I posses absolutely no knowledge or know-how that would enable me to build this lightgun myself, I am a complete noob, any noob ideas or suggestions I may or may have made/make are simply that - noob suggestions. |
| fjl:
What's wrong with the LED strips? I kind of like the idea of them since you can easily hide it behind the bezel around the edges of your monitor. |
| Fozzy The Bear:
--- Quote from: TheAdMan on June 07, 2007, 01:50:41 am ---Assume this lightgun would: a. be durable, reliable, and accurate --- End quote --- Not if it uses a camera above the monitor it won't be..... --- Quote from: TheAdMan on June 07, 2007, 01:50:41 am ---f. require no LED strips --- End quote --- You're trying to re-invent the wheel here....... Namco and Sega, have both been developing and using real world systems using LED IR emitters around the monitor, for several years now. Simply because they are the most accurate and reliable way of positioning the gun. The camera system you describe as being placed as a single camera above the monitor will not work because it is not multi aspect and therefore can not accurately place an object in 3D space in front of the monitor nor can it determine exactly and accurately, where the object is pointing. This is exactly why the "Sony" system that they tried to sell a couple of years ago was abandoned!! simply because they couldn't make it work. As for coming in here to get us to do your FREE market research for you, because you're either too lazy or too cheap to go do the job properly, DREAM ON! You don't apear to have made any posts except for this one and will more than likely disappear again afterwards. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear) |
| patrickl:
There are already lcd guns sold for less than $30 so I doubt you could fetch much more than that. |
| TheAdMan:
--- Quote from: Fozzy The Bear on June 07, 2007, 02:37:10 am ---You're trying to re-invent the wheel here....... Namco and Sega, have both been developing and using real world systems using LED IR emitters around the monitor, for several years now. Simply because they are the most accurate and reliable way of positioning the gun. The camera system you describe as being placed as a single camera above the monitor will not work because it is not multi aspect and therefore can not accurately place an object in 3D space in front of the monitor nor can it determine exactly and accurately, where the object is pointing. --- End quote --- actually this camera system is unique for that reason, it detects 6 ranges of motion, zoom, pan, vert & horz position, & swivel & tilt rotation. The company is Naturalpoint - www.naturalpoint.com (and I don't work 4 them, trust me I'm not getting paid for this - although maybe I should) , the developers of the TrackIR head tracking system used for flight sims - it allows you to look around while flying by just turning your head- in any direction your head can possibly move. check out some demos: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=trackir&search=Search --- Quote ---As for coming in here to get us to do your FREE market research for you, because you're either too lazy or too cheap to go do the job properly, DREAM ON! You don't apear to have made any posts except for this one and will more than likely disappear again afterwards. --- End quote --- Can you try not being a :censored: for once in your life. I'm just asking a question trying to get support for a product that I want for my own system. This is my first post, but I frequent this site - I just dont have the time or money to build my own MAME machine so I just lurk - probably should have kept it that way. :badmood: Anyway the people at Natural point have been very receptive and polite and I think they have the technology to pull it off - I thought I would find support for such a product on a forum like this since most casual users are too cheap to spend money on a quality product. Here are excerpts from my discussions with the folks at Naturalpoint (if ur interested) ----------------------------------------------- naturalpoint.com wrote: Hi, Before I babble at length let me ask you a couple questions that we'd really appreciate your insights on: - How much would be willing to pay for a precise light gun that works with any TV? What is the highest/painful upper end price point you would consider? - Any guess at the number of PC users (specifically) who are eagerly awaiting a light gun? - Can you suggest any sites focused on this, where we could discuss with the community? * Business Issues: It has been our minds for a while. But past marketing guys who've passed through our company have used light guns specifically as an example of how specialized peripherals never do well on console game platforms (not enough developers/games support them, so not enough people buy them). Plus, most console peripherals are stuck in this vicious cycle of cheapness. So they feel they need to sell it for less than $40 (because people don't trust third party peripherals). So to get costs down, they manufacture tons of them, and use the cheapest parts. (plus console guys usually have patents on the proper way to make their controller components, so third party people are forced to use crappy workarounds that don't work as well.) But only like 5 games will support the light gun peripheral. And classically, people have preferred to buy periphals on a store shelf (instead of online), because it suggests the company is legit (rarely true though). And getting your product on store shelves is a very dangerous business gamble (delivering half a million to walmart for example, and having to buy back any that don't sell). So when not enough people buy it, that company goes out of business. And the consumers feel burned, and other companies grow more afraid of trying the same thing. So from the business side of things, there is concern. But we're all about R&D so we are still interested. * Technical issues: - TrackIR currently has a range of about 1 foot minimum to 5 feet max (a question of camera resolution mostly. You'd need LEDs in the gun, which means a power source. If you try to use reflective material on/in the gun, then a serious issue with illumination pops up). Anywho, current TrackIR range means you'd have to be far too close for tv use. We have new tech (in our OptiTrack product line), with a range up to 20 feet, but we sell these cameras for over $500, so it's doubtful we can bring that to TrackIR/gaming at the roughly 100 price that gamers want. - We can do precise 6DOF tracking very well. But figuring out exactly where the user is in relation to the TV is tricky. We have to figure out how big the TV is (if I turn the gun 1 degree, that means very different amounts of target movement on a 17 inch monitor verses a 60 inch tv. And how far I am from the TV also makes a big difference. And we'd need to figure whether our camera is mounted flush with the tv screen or not. Etc.). Usaully people use extra markers to establish a "ground plane" (by laying something on the floor, or placing strips on the tv as you mention, or the old LEDs you had to strap to your tv for the powerflove, etc.) to help the camera figure out what kind of space it's dealing with. We could get around this by asking people to enter data into software to indicate exactly how big their tv is, and where the camera is mounted. (maybe simplify it down to asking people to shoot at the 4 corners of their screen so we can define it) But both of these solutions require work from the user who just wants to plug and play, and require more development from us to minimize the work from them. Anywho. We appreciate your email, and are interested in this, so I wanted to share most of our current thoughts on the idea. Please let me know if you have any other questions, comments, or suggestions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- After explaining that I was specificly talking about a lightgun for PC (and MAME) I replied: A power cable connecting the gun would not be a problem, most lightguns use cables. 1-5 feet is a perfect distance for most users, even on my 32" TV/Monitor I wouldn't want to sit more than 5 feet away, that was the major complaint with the LIK-SANG Topgun. At the moment most lightguns have to be calibrated to the monitor, usually multiple times in one sitting, this would be nothing new, the question would be how well does the gun stay callibrated. |
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