Act Labs Gun questions(choosing the right gun for my cab)

[bent98]

Forgive me if this information was discussed but for some reason the search feature on this forums is not working today.

I am interested in adding light gun support to my cabinet. I know there are many solutions out there ie. (top gun, act labs, ulitmarc). My setup is a bill labs arcade monitor 27" VGA hook up running Win Xp 32.
My cabinet has smoked plexiglass and an artwork bezel around the monitor.

Since I have the artwork bezel arond my monitor I have no way of mounting a sensor bar.  It appears the only light gun solution that doesnt require a sensor bar is the Act Labs PC USB.(http://www.act-labs.com/gun1.htm)

How does the Act Labs compare vs other guns systems out there? Will I have any calibration or preformance issues with Act Labs and my 27" arcade monitor and smoked plexi glass? Any issues running two guns at the same time? Is there any better solution out there?

[swamprat96]

With smoked glass you have an issue. Only Ultimarc's Aimtrak is capable of dealing with this. Put the sensor bar behind the smoked glass and turn up the gain. Two guns not a problem. Being a brand new product there may be some teething issues but Ultimarc have great support.

Act Lab guns have not been reported well in this forum - tracking issues etc. I also tried Topgun 2 behind smoked glass with no luck. In fact they don't work behind any glass well. They work fine with the bar in front of the glass- only problem is the shooting distance is longer than arcade

[bent98]

My problem is I have no place to put the sensor bar. I have artwork bezel around monitor.

[swamprat96]

But you have glass above the bezel yes? So if the strip was behind the glass in front of the bezel mounted horizontally it would hardly be visible. Without seeing your cab its hard to predict but on most upright cabs the monitor is right under the marquee - so the top of the bezel is not really that visible?

[bent98]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=77634.0

My cabinet is in this thread. Not sure what you mean. Take a look.

[Ginsu Victim]

Considering you have to angle the LEDs down toward the gun, I think the Aimtrak will work with your cabinet. The smoked plexi will pretty much hide it, and it looks like it would work.

[jasonbar]

I had ACT-Labs guns that worked fine on the Windows desktop.  I had trouble setting them in MAME, and when I installed my smoked tempered glass, they didn't work at all.

I got a pair of EMS TopGun IIs & thought hard about how best to mount them, but I haven't mounted them yet.  I tested them by taping them to the front of my monitor glass.  They work pretty well.  My final mounting plan was to attach them to hinged brackets on the fronts of the side panels of the cabinet.  Then I could swing them over to be in front of the monitor when playing a gun game & get them as close as possible to the left & right edges of the monitor, blocking my bezel art only when playing gun games.  I'd have preferred to mount them between my internal plastic monitor bezel & my monitor glass, but the artwork would've blocked the bars if I moved them out far enough to where they weren't blocking the tube.

Your cabinet is really full of artwork, so there's not much room to mount a bar or two...

If you use the Ultimarc product & need just 1 top bar, perhaps you can hang it from your speaker panel or integrate it into your marquee lower retainer?


Good luck,
-Jason

[swamprat96]

Yep thats what I meant. The bar is so thin if you mount it above the glass behind the speakers you will hardly notice it.

Aim Trak is by far the best solution for guns currently

[doctorhifi]

With the Aimtrack looking like a real solution to all the light gun woes of the BYOAC community, the Actlab guns will soon be a distant memory; and a bad memory for some.

Personally, I have had good results with the Actlab guns but can also confirm with Swamprat96 that tinted glass or plexi will give you trouble.  I should mention that I am using a 27" CRT.  Not saying you shouldn't try hard to make the Aimtrack work (once it is sufficiently peer reviewed) but you don't have to dismiss the Actlabs especially if you can get them somewhere cheap.

[Loafmeister]

Bent98, I can't see ypur cab pics from work, they're blocked out but I will check at home and let you know.

Just to clarify: the topgun I have works just fine through my tinted glass so this might be dependant on just how tinted the glass is.  Also, one of my LED's is mounted behind the tinted glass, the other is mounted underneath the marquee. Hard to explain, I'll post pics tonight but my point is, your LED does not have to be exactly on top of your monitor, this is why LED's work with various different size monitors/TV's.  I believe this means you could have the LED bar of the Ultimarc solution right on top of your cab.

It's all in the calibration which determines where you point, you shoot.  This is the reason why for some who are having trouble calibrating/hitting corners, the solution has been "when you calibrate, point further away from the corner of your monitor (for the topgun, and this helps with accuracy immensely!).  This is true of the topgun, I'm assuming its true of the Ultimarc solution as well.  The only potential issue I see, if you have the LED bar too far from the monitor, this would mean you'd have to stand back further.

Please correct me if I'm wrong folks, my experience is limited to the topgun only.

Rob

[bent98]

I wish someone would come out with a cordless guns.

[swamprat96]

they have- topguns come in cordless- but still need the two bars fitted

[bent98]

Is there a way to retrofit the top gun RF with ultimarc solutionn

[swamprat96]

Hmm. The rf solution from Topgun uses their own software/frequency so I think a retrofit would be difficult. I guess you don't want USB /gun cables? Wireless USB is still in its infancy but would be one solution. But the technique I used for the last cab using Topgun2 (not the RF model as they poll too slow for my liking and aim trak did not exist then) was I put a USB port discreetly on either side of the cabinet which were wired back to the internal PC. That way you only plug the gun(s) in when you want to use them. One downside is that you have to boot the PC with the guns plugged in or it gets confused