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aimtrak guns installed, nearly satisfied with the results.
dkersten:
I got my aimtrak guns in yesterday, so I tore into my cab to install them.
I already had 2 external USB's with the idea of only plugging in the guns when I need them. Not so sure that will work as each time I unplug and replug them in they get assigned new ID's in mame. I am up to GUN5 and GUN6 right now, and I had to unplug GUN5 once and when I plugged it back in, GUN6 became GUN5 and now my P1 gun is GUN6... Each time I have to reconfigure things in mame..
So I had to cut a slot for the sensor. I chose to leave it in the little case it comes in instead of decasing it.. So I needed a 6.25" wide by 1/2" tall slot. I pulled the monitor out of the cab, got the PC out so I could lay it down, removed the inner bezel for the monitor, and then marked it out on the front of the outer bezel. This is the most visible surface on the cabinet, so I was going slow. Thing is, I had little room, so I couldn't use a router or a jigsaw.
So I drilled it out first with a 3/8 drill bit, then used a pneumatic airsaw to slowly cut it to the marked edge. This went fairly well with the exception of the sides.. they are only .5" wide and the blade is over .25", so getting a nice straight cut that had good square corners was not really possible. At 2 feet it looks fine, but any closer and I am not happy with the results. Thankfully the paint is black, so a black sharpie filled in any visible wood and overall it looks decent. A lot of filing to get it right, and the sensor fits nice and snug and protrudes about 1/8" from the surface, just the look I was going for. I did a pressure fit and it is not going anywhere.
I hope that this is not part of the problems though. One problem I have is on the P2 gun, the bottom right corner is really tough to hit. Even after several calibrations in windows, I have to be over 6 feet from the sensor to get that corner of the screen.
So at first I couldn't get them to calibrate. Then I got one to calibrate but the other had stopped working as a mouse and while it was read as a sensor, it wouldn't move the mouse making calibration not work. The aimtrak tool would crash over and over. I then rebooted and then the aimtrak utility wouldn't even launch completely.. it would be memory resident but the application would not come up. By removing both guns I finally got it to launch. I then ended up changing the device id number and then changed them back on each, and after that they worked. I got them calibrated in windows, turned off the 5 second calibration, and got into Mame.
I use Mala, so I edited the mame config from there. I checked light guns, changed the light gun control to mouse, and checked the "dual light gun" option. The last one was the culprit for the next hour. Mame simply wouldn't allow it to configure with this option checked. I could control the UI with each gun, but when I went to add it to the lightgun x and y axes, it simply wouldn't come up. I could do it with mouse, analog joystick, trackball, or spinner, but not the guns.
Finally I turned off the dual lightgun checkbox and it came up on the next try.
Came up as Gun5 and Gun6, but after plugging and unplugging the guns so many times, it didn't surprise me much. My u360 joysticks come up as joy1 and joy2 if the ipac isn't plugged in, but adding that makes them joy2 and joy3.. haven't figured that one out yet..
So I fired up Lethal Enforcers. Couldn't get it to reload off screen. Read a little here and others seemed to have the same problem, while some didn't. FIgured maybe it was a mame version issue or something, so time to move on. Area 51. P2 could reload, P1 couldn't. I checked configuration and it was identical. No option in that game to program the Gun5 B1 to reload, it apparently just senses the gun being off the screen and allows it, but maybe that is the problem.. Maybe since the aimtrack no longer sends B0 on trigger pull off the screen (it sends B1(right click), I have to change the aimtrack to send B0 (left click) even off screen.. Matter of fact that makes sense now because I could get it to reload if I shot at the black part of the left or right screen. I will try that tonight, and I bet it works.. But then that will screw up the games that DO work.. *sigh*
So then I fired up Carnevil. After calibrating in the game via the f2 menu, it seemed to work well.. I had to turn off the MAME crosshair as it was off from the game's crosshair after calibration. This comes down to a problem I can't get around at this point. If I am even a couple inches from where I calibrate in windows, the corners of the screen can be off by 2 or 3 inches. I think this is because I am off axis from the sensor. Also, and this is my #1 complaint, if I am less than 3 feet from the sensor, it pretty much doesn't work at all. It will sometimes read a little but jumps all over the screen and it super glitchy. Matter of fact, the sweet spot seems to be 5-6 feet from the sensor, but again even being 2 or 3 inches from where I calibrated and the corners are off by an inch or more.
The P2 gun gave me a TON of problems here too. I could calibrate over and over, but even at 5 or 6 feet back where it was the best, I had a hell of a time with the bottom right corner of the screen. The in game calibration is looking for a shot at 255 255, and you just can't seem to hit it when off axis to the right of the sensor. I think the gun is going off screen at this point, and again the aimtrak firmware converts that into a right click instead of a left click and it won't register..
Then on top of this, the P2 gun kepts stopping in the middle of a game. The player would move closer or further away, left or right, and after a random amount of time it would start working again. Not sure what was helping or not as we were in the midst of a game. THIS is a huge issue because if I can't get it to work at least reliably consistent, I don't want it.
A third issue came up with it but I am sure there is a setting somewhere for it.. The p2 in carnevil was stuck on some kind of unlimited ammo thing.. he always had 6 rounds available and never had to reload. Since I only changed the mame controls and the gun calibration in the service menu, I don't know how this got changed or even if there is a setting or if it is a bug in the rom.. ??
So from there I went on to try Terminator2 and RevolutionX, but I guess you can't run those with these kind of guns.. bummer. I could configure them just fine, but once I launched the game I only got the crosshair in the top left of the screen and nothing else. Maybe if I configured one as a joystick in mame it would work?
And finally, one more huge issue: The sensor seems to be picking up random IR noise and translating it to right and left clicks, which royally screws up windows and my front end when out of a game. I put the guns totally out of sight of the sensor and they don't move, but even without touching the computer or control panel, just sitting there I can watch windows try to pop up, menus come up, among other annoying things. WTH?? Anyone else run into this and have a solution? I walked away last night after messing with this for 7 hours straight, and 20 minutes later I came back and my MaLa was minimized, and a half dozen menus were on the screen. If I can't come up with a fix for this, these simply aren't going to work..
Ideally I would love to have the trigger and front buttons keyed to something other than mouse clicks.. Mame sees them as GunX B0 and B1, why can't windows see them as joystick buttons?
Any advice or insight here would be great.
dkersten:
OK, worked a couple things out..
The reload workaround is to add a offscreen_reload 1 to mame.ini. I saw this but couldn't find where to add it to the ini, so I will try just putting it wherever and see if it works. This prevents me from having to change the config for certain games. Yay!
I will try reassigning buttons so I don't get random clicks while out of games.
Finally, I guess from reading it looks like the sensor bar is simply an IR transmitter, not a receiver. This means that even when the guns are not pointed at the screen, any stray IR they pick up will cause the cursor to move. However, this doesn't explain why I am getting random clicks even when not touching the computer. Hoping that by changing the buttons and trigger to regular joystick buttons instead of mouse clicks it will fix this since joystick clicks won't affect windows or MaLa.
Also thinking that since the sensor bar is just an IR transmitter, pushing it so it is sticking out further will give better results closer to the screen (ie closer than 3 feet from the sensor).. and maybe improve the accuracy in the corners.. Might have to try that, but I will have to tear into it again to remove the tape I wrapped around the body of the IR bar so I can push it further out..
Slippyblade:
Yeah. the "sensor bar" on that type of gun is little more than a series of IR LED's. The gun is effectively a camera that triangulates position based on where the lights are. You can actually get away with using almost ANY light source as long as it's paired.
dkersten:
Well, I went home at lunch to check out a couple things..
First, I can point the gun all around the room and most places I point it at I get "mouse" movement. Lots of IR interference then..
Second, I enabled the offscreen_reload and still get the same results. Soon as I shoot off the screen doesn't work. But on Lethal Enforcers if I target the very top right corner I can get it to reload. On Area 51 it is still just the dead monitor space between the game screen and the edge of the monitor. Off screen still doesn't work.
The only thing I can think of is that offscreen_reload ONLY works with mouse clicks. I changed the buttons to joystick buttons when I enabled the mame.ini switch. So tonight I will turn the buttons back to mouse clicks and try it again.
Third, I am pretty convinced that the glitchy mouse clicks going on are not from the guns. I am pretty confident right now that the ipac is causing the problems. The reason being that A) the mouse clicks from the guns are a button, so if I am not pressing them, they shouldn't be going off, and B) I changed the gun buttons to be joystick buttons and still have this crazy behavior. I was trying to get into the mame config from Mala and it kept closing on me while not touching anything.. It is acting like I am mashing buttons all over, all the time. I recall seeing some weird stuff like this last night before I got the guns even installed. I think the usb hub I got is maybe causing issues with the ipac. I will move it to a dedicated port on the PC tonight and see if it changes the behavior instead of sharing the ports with the guns.
Slippyblade:
USB hub? Powered or no? If it's an unpowered hub you might be starving the devices. If that's the case then moving to the PC ports should fix it. Also try just using a powered hub.
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