CRT Lightgun not detecting or being spotty on 2 edges of TV. TV or gun issue?

[LightFun]

So I recently picked myself up a Pistole P99L Laser logic3, after enjoying my AimTrak so much.

Top sliding recoil (looks cool) + auto recoil (adds immersion to machine guns in TC2, TC3 and CZ) is brilliant, those are the main reasons I got it.

Now while the accuracy is mostly ok, on the calibration screen the reticle disappears on the very edge of the TV. Specifically the left and top edges.

What could be causing it? Faultiness of the gun? TV? The TV is 15 inch. PAL TV and the games are PAL versions. Turning up the brightness of the TV to max helped a little bit. Perhaps if I turn up the in-game brightness as well?

[Titchgamer]

This is one of those odd things that seems to effect different guns and tvs in different ways.

My spare tv has a 1” dead zone along the bottom.
My normal TV is a little dead on the left edge with the same guns!

Other than turning up brightness and contrast not much you can do.

Oh and make sure the screen and lenses are clean

[LightFun]

This is one of those odd things that seems to effect different guns and tvs in different ways.

My spare tv has a 1” dead zone along the bottom.
My normal TV is a little dead on the left edge with the same guns!

Other than turning up brightness and contrast not much you can do.

Oh and make sure the screen and lenses are clean

Thank you for your reply.

Sounds like it could be a bit of everything then! When I get a chance I'll try it with other CRTs via family and friends as well, only have the 1 at home at the moment.

I'll try cleaning in addition to increasing the in-game brightness. I'll also look into PS2 hacks to see if there is a way to decrease the screen size so it fits the game screen into the detectable area of the TV (although this might confuse the light gun?).

Thankfully it's not a BIG DEAL. While observing the enemy placements it almost feels as if the developers intentionally knew of this potential problem and let it inform their enemy placement design.

I'm actually quite happy with the AimTrak on my 50 inch LCD TV.

My main motivation with this CRT lightgun experimentation was I wanted to feel what top sliding recoil and auto recoil feel like. While top sliding is nice, it isn't a deal breaker (very noisy!!!), but I'd love to mod my AimTrak (or mod AimTrak internals into something else) to have the auto recoil functionality. It makes such a difference when using machine guns in TC2, TC3 and of course CZ. But I'm not brave enough to try modding...yet!

There's also the auto-fire feature which turns all guns into machine guns, which feels like cheating, but is so fun! Auto-Reload is another as well, but it didn't work properly the time I tried it (I think I need to unplug the Reload Pedal for that to work properly).

[Titchgamer]

There is a piece of software that will allow the AT to perform like a MG.

But be careful with it or you will burn out the noids!
They get pretty hot anyway.

[LightFun]

There is a piece of software that will allow the AT to perform like a MG.

But be careful with it or you will burn out the noids!
They get pretty hot anyway.

Thank you for sharing, I assumed it was something determined by hardware, didn't think there would be software to force it.

I'll play around with it, but will be cautious.

While it feels nice to auto-fire the P99L, the sound can become annoying quickly. I don't think the AimTrak's recoil sound is as annoying, so I'll see how I go.

Also by the way I managed to solve the deadzones on the CRT...curtains open and letting daylight in seems to have helped lol.

[LightFun]

I don't know if its unrelated and I'm just getting better calibrations, but with RGB Scart and closing the curtains (ensuring no outside light is hitting the TV) I'm nearly totally rid of this issue and am able to sight all 4 edges.
e
I wonder if playing an NTSC-J game (Gunvari Collection) on PAL TV is helping matters? I'll test with other games too.

[Titchgamer]

I don't know if its unrelated and I'm just getting better calibrations, but with RGB Scart and closing the curtains (ensuring no outside light is hitting the TV) I'm nearly totally rid of this issue and am able to sight all 4 edges.
e
I wonder if playing an NTSC-J game (Gunvari Collection) on PAL TV is helping matters? I'll test with other games too.

Yeah you always want to play in the dark
Dunno about the NTSC/PAL differences though.