Seems like you are intolerant of opinions that differ from yours. Calling the process "masturbatory and unnecessary" seems a bit anal. If you had provided this product, would you be so critical of those who like the performance of this product even if it isn't perfect?
If you can't or won't take the time to read and understand information others have literally taken days to to compile and have
already posted here, then you are simply waiting for some magic sign from above that may or may not really help you know if you made the right decision.
If it was my product, this "process" you endorse would tick me off. It's no fun answering the same questions over and over and have potential customers sitting on the fence because they want to see what the guy sitting next to them is going to do. It's even less fun when someone, based on someone else's endorsement, buys a product expecting it to do X, and having them be unhappy because they wanted to do Y.....and then drag it through the mud. If it sounds good to you, after reading all that has been written, buy it already.
FWIW, I spent several more hours last night with it and it's really growing on me. It requires some fairly strict discipline in keeping the gun level to the screen, and may not be the answer for someone with a friend who "don't take to tellin' too good", but the reward is really good accuracy (after calibrating six times
). I found myself doing very well with Point Blank, cursor on for diagnostic purposes, but being ignored 95% of the time. But I am experiencing a new issue, unfortunately. Halfway through a game of T2, I noticed my trigger going inactive for short periods of time. So I went to the control panel and noticed that sometimes the trigger would register as Button 1 and sometimes as Button2, indicating that the gun seemed to be loosing the IR markers. This weirdness persisted through reboot. This morning, I plugged it in, and now it doesn't seem to be doing it.
The other issue seems to be a Point Blank thing, but it may be related to something in the way the gun firmware is interacting with it. Sometimes, almost randomly, the cursor loses it's mind and goes full left and then full right, flickers back and forth like that for a second or so, and then it's fine again. It never does this vertically, only horizontally. Anyone seen this behavior and have a solution? It's the only thing standing in the way of a real, positive test with that title.
This came in while I was typing, so another monster post, I guess....
Optical:
These are largely immune to distance and other positional issues but are inherently inaccurate, especially at screen edge. They rely on the screen scanning a black frame then a white frame when the trigger is pulled in order to sense the CRT beam position. This means they dont have any tracking ability at all. Wont work on LCD .
Sorry Andy, but that's "bollocks" (did I use that correctly?
) Yes, they do suffer from some issues at the screen edge, but "inherently inaccurate" is an intentional attempt to make the technology look worse than it is. If you believe that, you haven't played on a system with working hardware. My PS2 setup is very, very accurate using this technology (with the exception of screen edge), doesn't care how close you are, how tall you are, how or whether you tilt the gun, etc. You get the idea. But no, it does not work on LCD's, and there is no real "plug and play" analog on the PC for the arcade optical system. That is an important consideration.
Early image sensing:
The Sega system. This used a very expensive large camera and lens in the gun and a number of switched LEDs around the screen. Despite the complexity and cost (check out the cost of the gun for this system on Happ!) this was never a very reliable nor accurate system, especially when used with CRT screens. It also suffered from frequent failures of the LED boards.
Not surprising. This type of approach needs fast hardware and small cameras with high resolution. It stands to reason that early attempts would be bulky, expensive and not reliable. I remember the time when I was dealing with a group of scientist folks who were pioneering optical gesture recognition and the systems were clunky, very expensive and they only sort of worked. That's ancient history in the technology timeline.
Time Crisis system:
This uses a similar setup to the Aimtrak but has LEDs positioned at each side of the screen. This is accurate but I have only tried this system once, and the gun was located at a fixed position a long distance from the screen, so it was not possible to check accuracy after movement but I suspect it would become inaccurate. I also suspect this system has a large minimum screen distance.
It's no further than where I need to use the Aimtrak on my setup, and I think the TC screens are larger. It's also much more tolerant to tilt because of those extra emitters and the code that is processing their positions.
Don't get me wrong, I like the product. Once the niggling little issues get sorted, I think it will suit the needs of 70% of the folks out there who have been looking for a solution. It just doesn't have the "anyone can pick up and play" aspects that real arcade systems lay a lot of importance upon. The accuracy is there (after some fiddling and a learning process) but not the "user friendliness", IMHO.
RandyT
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Topic: Cut the crap - Is the Aimtrak any good? (Read 37561 times)
