light gun for lcd screen pricelist

The Sinden Lightgun® is the world’s first true LCD compatible Lightgun, providing all the functionality and game experience of the original CRT Lightguns without requiring additional hardware such as infrared sensor bars.

The Sinden Lightgun is always accurate even if you change position or angle which means you can ditch the crosshairs! It interacts directly with the television and doesn"t require additional hardware around the television or any calibration (some setup and calibration can be required depending on the platform.)

The Sinden Lightgun has a high quality custom injection moulded ABS shell and a custom production PCB. It features a high speed 60fps camera, a CPU, USB interface, a trigger, 4 assignable side action buttons, pump action reload, a 4 way D-Pad and offscreen reload. So far it has driver software for Windows and Linux (including Raspberry Pi), it is mapped to behave like a physical mouse for easy software compatibility. Providing the software is compatible (such as Mame) you can use 2 Sinden Lightguns at the same time. There is an optional recoil upgrade which adds a large solenoid, capacitor and complex innovative solenoid circuit to give that arcade recoil effect without needing any additional power supply.

Available now for the first time from a USA distributor! Order today for FAST and FLAT RATE shipping within lower 48 USA states! (Additional fee will be added for international shipments or to Hawaii/Alaska.)

The Sinden Lightgun® communicates by controlling your mouse cursor which ensures compatibility with nearly all Windows and Linux applications that can use a mouse including (but not limited to):

The Sinden Lightgun® calculates where you are pointing on the screen over 50 times a second and provides a complete end to end calculation in less than 20ms. As it remains completely accurate no matter how long you play or if you move positions you can turn off your crosshairs and enjoy a completely authentic Lightgun experience.

The Sinden Lightgun® software adds a thin border around your television display. The hardware is an optical based system which uses this border to visually calculate the aiming position.

The Sinden Lightgun® can also calculate the angle you are pointing at the television and also your relative distance which hopefully in the future can open up new gaming concepts and interactions.

The Sinden Lightgun® is the world’s first true LCD compatible Lightgun, providing all the functionality and game experience of the original CRT Lightguns without requiring additional hardware such as infra red sensor bars.

Last year, I spoke to Charlie Cole, who came up with a way to play lightgun games on a flat-screen TV (originally called the “LCDZapper Pro”) using the Wiimote.  His invention is now going through a “test run” and it looks like he’s added many improvements since we last spoke!

You can purchase $10 adapters for each console that simply allow you to use a Wiimote with the games.  There are currently adapters available for the NES, Saturn and Sega Master System.  Future adapters will support the PS 1&2, Guncon, Dreamcast and SNES.  In my opinion, this might be the easiest method and there are lots of “gun” adapters for the Wiimotes out there that are very comfortable:

You can purchase the $10 “universal” cable and use your original light guns by mounting a sensor inside the “barrel” of the gun.  The downside of this method is affixing the Wiimote to whichever original solution you’re using.

Overall, this seems like a great way for people without access to CRT’s to experience and enjoy old light gun games on model TV’s!  Hopefully I can follow up with a video review soon.

After this test run of 50 units has shipped and all final modifications are made, the LightGunVerter will be put into production and will hopefully be available early next year.  For more information, check out the site:  https://www.lightgunverter.com/

Yet somehow, one massive retro-gaming category has been left unmined for a nostalgic buck: the light gun genre. Nintendo never packed shooting-gallery classics like Duck Hunt into a plug-and-play Zapper, while companies like Sega and Namco have never released their legendary arcade gun games as convenient, shoot-at-the-TV collector"s editions.

Until recently, the wisdom preventing such a launch has been limitations with modern HDTVs; light gun games were largely coded for older screen technologies. But one enterprising Indiegogo project from 2019, the Sinden Lightgun, set its sights on solving the problem in a roundabout, DIY way: with a new plastic gun, starting at $110, that combines an RGB sensor with incredibly low-latency response times. After wondering how such a system works in practice (and increasingly wanting a retro-arcade experience in my locked-down home), I finally got my hands on the Sinden this week, provided by its namesake creator, British engineer Andy Sinden.

Nintendo"s Zapper is the best-known example of a light gun and the one you"re most likely to have lying around in a pile of home-console controllers and peripherals. Many arcade guns worked like the Zapper, as well: by blacking out the gameplay screen whenever you pull the gun"s trigger. This black-out lasts for a few "frames" of screen refresh and triggers a brief wave of bright-white boxes flashing from left to right. At this point, a simple binary light sensor inside the toy gun looks for a bright off-on-off flash, quicker than your eye can perceive. Whichever millisecond it notices the flash, that corresponds to whichever duck or target is blinking on the screen. (In other words, pointing at a bright light or piece of paper and pulling the trigger won"t work.)

This method of light-flash recognition relies on the specific refresh speed and direction of cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs. In the Zapper"s case, a CRT"s left-to-right refresh directionality could be interpreted to more precisely define where the Zapper is being aimed at a certain moment, though this method wasn"t necessarily used in NES games. Take away the specific refresh rate and pattern of a CRT, and you take away these light guns" working methodology. That"s why they don"t work on modern TVs like LCDs and OLEDs. Advertisement

Some arcade light-gun systems released after 1985"s Zapper used different methods. Terminator 2: The Arcade Game relied on a potentiometer (pages 2-12 and 2-13) to measure the precise angle that a bolted-down gun was aimed and send X/Y data to the game accordingly, while many Sega arcade games used the "Type II" gun system with a Wii-like array of infrared bulbs. Thus, neither had to measure flashes as rendered on a CRT and could conceivably work on modern monitors, but neither is cost-effective or convenient to swoop in as a 2021 solution.

Meanwhile, the Wii"s infrared sensing bar, which powered a number of satisfying arcade shooter games in the "00s, has a huge caveat: it delivers relative aim, not precise. You can"t look down the sights of a Wiimote or the Wii "Zapper" and expect precision—and that"s exactly why most Wii light gun games include an on-screen aiming reticule at all times. (Plus, this requires attaching a wired infrared sensor bar to your TV, which isn"t everyone"s home-theater cup of tea.)

The Sinden Lightgun"s black version, complete with its incredibly long 15-foot cord and some nice plastic molds in the grip for fingers to slide into.

As an aiming peripheral for modern TVs, the Sinden Lightgun is simpler than some older options—but that"s a low bar to clear, and it"s certainly not a Nintendo-caliber, just-works kind of gun.

The first restriction is that this is primarily a PC peripheral. Hence, you can"t plug this gun"s USB Type-A port into an Xbox or PlayStation and expect it to function. But Linux does work with the Sinden, as does the Raspberry Pi platform, so if you"re the kind of gamer who typically dumps your retro collection to a device outside the Windows ecosystem, you"re in luck. (However, I only tested on Windows 10, so I cannot speak to how your favorite distro will react to the Sinden.)

Sinden"s physical setup is the simplest part, since it"s an all-in-one gun. Hook its cable"s USB Type-A port to a compatible device, and that"s it—no infrared sensor bar or other attachments required. If your ideal retro gaming room is particularly massive, that"s OK: the Sinden"s cord is over 15 feet in length. If the cord ever has any issues, however, you"ll need to remove the Sinden"s Philips-head screws and fiddle with its internals, as the cord"s other end is built into the gun"s innards.

In terms of physicality, the 1.21-pound Sinden is up there with Namco"s classic Time Crisis guns in terms of construction and heft. In particular, the trigger"s action is satisfying, and the grip includes welcome plastic ridging for adult fingers to press against. But this gun doesn"t include faux-gun material like metal or leather—which is arcade-appropriate, of course, but worth noting that your minimum $110 purchase, before shipping and other charges, isn"t going into higher-end build quality. A few of its aesthetic flourishes are tinged with the kind of plastic shading you"ll find from higher-end 3D-printed filament, but otherwise, it has a clever all-around style, feels solid in the hand, and screams ""90s arcade" in all the ways that I appreciate. Advertisement

Once you"ve plugged in the Lightgun, download the Sinden software suite and boot it. This software is required to trigger and identify the Sinden"s key component: its 480p, 60fps RGB sensor (in other words, a webcam). Before doing this, the software will also ask you to phone a Sinden server and check for a hardware firmware update, then pick through menus to confirm the exact size of your TV or monitor. According to Sinden documentation, this real-life measure is combined with the gun"s ability to estimate its distance from your TV for a more proper estimate of where you"re aiming.

The "default" Sinden Lightgun white border, which the built-in webcam uses to track your aim and angle. It adds a black border to increase contrast, as well, but this can be removed in your own custom border settings if you want.

The last crucial step before turning the Sinden"s webcam on is to enable the ecosystem"s secret sauce: a white border overlay that fills out the edge of your visible desktop. The Sinden Lightgun"s webcam then translates whatever bright white box outline it sees into an aiming grid, proven out by a preview display where your monitor becomes a clear, blue box. At this point, the gun becomes a mouse pointer with a variety of keyboard and mouse buttons built in. Yes, it"s faking like a standard-issue mouse—but, you know, with a gun"s trigger and pump-action built in.

Before booting any games, I tested the Sinden by enabling the white border (which can be toggled on or off with a built-in button on the Sinden"s side) and clicking around with my trigger as the mouse"s left button. Sure enough, Windows treated it as a mousing device, and a highly responsive one, at that. Even when I had a massive white-background window filling out my desktop, it worked fine, and whatever input lag might be inherent to Sinden"s translation of webcam data felt minuscule—arguably slower than a CRT-reliant light gun, but as I already explained, those guns must inherently buffer a few frames to confirm what you"re shooting at, so the comparison might be a wash.

Even with ideal lighting, Sinden"s on-screen pointer is usually a bit shaky, twitching around just a bit, and that"s arguably reflective of holding a toy gun in your hand. It"s enough to make clicking on pixel-perfect Windows desktop elements a bit of a pain, but not enough to make me miss sizable targets in an arcade shooter. I adjusted the Sinden software"s "anti-jitter" compensation sliders, but this was never enough to make me want to use the gun as, say, a normal computer mouse. I didn"t get the urge to roll hard on my desktop and pop caps to pick through spreadsheet cells.

Without ideal lighting, however, Sinden"s usefulness can vary. I struggled to get it working on a 24-inch monitor on a desk in the middle of a well-lit room, even after using Sinden"s software to modify the white border and add a surrounding black edge to better establish contrast. My 55-inch TV, set up directly against a wall, has consistently worked better. Think about how finicky the Nintendo Wii"s sensor bar could be in well-lit rooms and estimate your gaming room"s Sinden-friendliness accordingly.

If you’re an older gamer like myself, you’ll remember a time when a shooting game involved an actual gun. However, outside of the now rather rare arcades, light gun games are all but gone. The main issue is those modern TVs don’t work in the way old tube TVs did. They can’t use the same IR scanning technique for instant target location from the guns sensor. That’s a real shame, and the dominance of modern TVs wiped out the light gun market pretty much instantly… or did it?

You may remember a few weeks back, early in lockdown, I built an arcade machine with my kids. We play it daily, and nightly, and it’s right beside me as I type. But there’s one thing missing, a light gun.

There are actually quite a few options to do this. Sinden light-bar free gun launched this week, but at £80 for the basic model, it may be a bit much for some and there’s a waiting list. There are two competing methods for this type of mod though. Samco and JayBee went down similar routes. However, I pulled away from the JayBee lightgun technique as it required difficult to acquire IR LEDs and a power delivery system that rapidly over complicated the project and would have gone wildly over budget in my opinion. Samco, on the other hand, relies on knock-off USB Wii Lightbars… that’ll do me nicely. Check out the video below.

Getting the gun is the first and most important part. There’s no shortage of them though, a quick look on eBay will turn up a wide range of used lightguns.

The GunCon 1 and 2 are great options, but for me, I chose the GunCon 1 from the PlayStation 1 era. The Saturn, Dreamcast and a bunch of other guns are viable too though. Heck, I even considered making mine from a Nerf gun!! Just get something with space for the hardware.

As per the Samco guide, you’ll need to cut the wires on the interior of the gun. However, you’ll be keeping the button for the trigger switch. Or will you? More on that towards the end. That long PCB is no good though, so that’ll come out too.

I didn’t use the Samco PCB to complete my project, and I even opted for a much cheaper Arduino than he recommended. Boy do I wish I spent the extra ten quid on one though, as I had to learn more about Arduino than I thought I would have to. All things considered though, it wasn’t that hard. Once you know about the stupid Bootloader timing at least. That and having my friend Stephen explain all of it to me, thanks buddy!

Plus the pins had a different name but you’ll find a board map on their site telling you how to translate the Samco guide to your board. Don’t forget to add the boards to your Arduino IDE install too, so it knows what it’s communicating with. The DFRobot has a sticker on it telling you which pins it needs too, straight forward enough. Upload the appropriate code from the GitHub. I stronglysuggest you download the test code and upload that. This will allow you to test the orientation of the DFRobot camera.

There’s a very annoying issue with DFRobot cameras where they’re not aligned properly. There’s a sticker that says “top” but that turned out to be 90-degree off. The true “top” was actually where you see the VCC/GND on the side. It fits in the GunCon without modification too, and the clamp screws will secure it. However, I suggest a few dabs from a hot glue gun on the camera and the USB cables, etc, to keep it all from coming loose.

You could measure up your wires, even trim down some of them to make it fit better. I didn’t feel the need to do either so it’s a little messy in here. However, all we’ve really done is wire up a USB camera, and connect all the standard buttons of the gun to a USB interface.

We drill a hole in the gun, obviously! It went easier than I expected too, I was really worried about doing more damage to an otherwise brilliant gaming relic. Phew!

The gun now looks pretty legit, I think you’ll agree. The only thing I haven’t done is that I could wire another long cable to the Arduino for an external footswitch. I think I’ll save that for another rainy day though.

The USB lightbar is simple enough, just give it power from a USB port, phone charger, power bank, or whatever. As you can see, a phone camera can see the IR lights, but they’re otherwise invisible to the human eye. Secure this above your screen, place another below the screen if you’ve purchased two and are using the 4-LED code. Use the 2-LED code with a single light bar.

I have one lightbar right now and I have to stand 6-feet back from the monitor. Not too bad if I’m honest, but when we move this over to the arcade machine, it’ll be too far. Thankfully, the 4-LED bar system halves the distance needed for tracking accurately.

You can follow some other projects to add things like a solenoid or motor to add feedback. It put the gun out of my timeframe and budget, and frankly, my skill. There’s not a lot of room in the GunCon 1 for this. However, you could convert a gun that already has space or even a solenoid for kick back and work around that. There’s a LOT of choices out there.

My main modification was swapping out that pokey little switch for the trigger. The trigger is on a tension spring, with a lot of travel to it, then a little button at the back with a bit of a dull click. I found Magic Trashman on twitter who 3D prints all kinds of kick-ass trigger mods. He may be in the US but it was less than two weeks to get it to the UK via USPS and only $13.50! Obviously, his prices are variable and to your requirements, but I think it’s a great deal either way.

The new 3D printed component sits much further down in the gun and uses the existing gun shape to secure its self. I’ll use a little hot glue to keep it fixed though. The end result is a trigger with no travel, just a short and snappy mechanical “click” and it’s bloody fantastic.

So as you may have figured, the light gun basically emulates a mouse. With the trigger as left-click and so on. This is fine, as that’s what most emulators like MAME understand for those roms. Plus Retroarch has an option to set the gun as GunCon, meaning PlayStation 1 games like Point Blank work perfectly with it. I’d have done a video on this, but once again, Samco did a great job and credit where credit is due. Don’t worry, you can hide your mouse cursor too, so it’s not going to look or feel like dragging a pointer around, it’s aim and shoot as you would expect.

Well, now I go and play my gun games. I’ll be installing the lightbars on the arcade machine and adding a holster very soon. Beyond that, I don’t want to go much further into where to get the games and how to tinker with those, as there are far better guides already out there and we all know the grey area of acquiring games to emulate. Will you be building a light gun now? What could I build with the kids next? Hmmm.

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Vita schmita. This red mushroom-themed portable NES is the latest gaming tribute from modder LovableChevy, combining the original Entertainment System"s innards with a 3.5-inch LCD screen, built-in controls and a rechargeable battery. The tinkerer has taken the time to include an AV out, headphone jack and an extra USB port for either a light gun or a second controller. However, the old tech involved takes its toll: the whole thing weighs in at around one pound (sans game) and offers up only three hours of play from a single charge. Think you can handle this portable heavyweight? Then check out the video after the break.

If you"ve ever been in a video game arcade before it"s almost guaranteed you"ve seen a specially large cabinet featuring a fake “light” gun which could be used to aim at a screen displaying the game, one example being Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Thanks to the efforts of various developers and hardware manufacturers, it is now possible to bring that experience to the home using Batocera! This also includes the various home ports of such light gun games such as the infamous Duck Hunt.

The game list will also indicate which games are light gun compatible with a small theme-specific icon next to the name (this can be optionally disabled):

You might come across few games that are not gun games … and you are right! They have optional light gun support for easter egg, specific scene, mini-game, etc. In Batocera v35, they are not configured automatically by the system. However, it is possible to manually configure them if you know what you are doing.

So first and foremost a light gun is needed, possibly multiple if intending on doing multiplayer (be careful of having enough physical space for both collision avoidance and tracking). Various light guns have entered the market and each offer their own advantages and disadvantages. If not specified, the light gun is compatible with all displays. Click the light gun to go to its section.

White border on display★★★☆USB cable (480 cm)Recoil can optionally be disabled. Requires shrinking the game screen to display the white borders. Has limitations on how many guns can be used per USB hub.

When a light gun is connected, a light gun symbol will appear in place of the controller activity icons (if that is enabled and the theme supports it). In addition, a new menu item will appear in the CONTROLLERS & BLUETOOTH SETTINGS menu specific to the light guns that are currently connected. This can be used to adjust settings specific to that light gun.

Depending on the light gun, global calibration may be required. All global calibration can be performed at any time, even during gameplay, however this sort of calibration will always be for global calibration (it is not saved per-game, it"s only needed to be done once). Refer to the section relevant to your light gun below for instructions.

There must be one proper controller pad connected in addition for each light gun connected. So for example, if you have one light gun connected, you will need to have one regular controller connected; if you have two light guns, then two controllers connected, etc.

The controllers duplicate the mapping of the gun in port order. So for instance, if the light gun is missing a coin button ([SELECT]), then this can be pressed on the respective controller to activate that light gun"s coin button.

The Wii was revolutionary for its motion-based controls when it released back in 2006. This technology can now be used to emulate a light gun in Batocera, useful if you happen to have an old Wiimote and sensor bar laying around that is unused (though for convenience, buying a USB-powered sensor bar may be necessary). This is recommended over using the Mayflash Dolphinbar as the direct connection has far superior accuracy.

This is a special mode for the Wiimote when connected to Batocera. This will be referred to as the Wiimote gun from now on. Requires Batocera v35 or higher.

Unfortunately, its face buttons (the D-pad, plus, minus and number buttons) have no function while in Wiimote gun mode. This may change in the future.

Set up the powered IR bar by taping over one side with solid tape and positioning the remaining LED at the bottom/top center of the display. Counter-intuitively, this setup works best when only one IR LED is visible (otherwise the cursor on-screen may “jump” when aiming at the edges).

Connect the Wiimote directly as a regular Bluetooth device. A notification will appear indicating that the Wiimote has connected in its gun mode, with a little light gun icon appearing (if the theme supports it). Once connected, press and hold the [Home] button for three seconds. A target will appear in the center of the screen, aim the Wiimote at it from your neutral shooting position and press [B]. Then a target will appear at the top-left; aim at that and press [B] again.

Dolphin can emulate the pairing function of the emulated Wii system, allowing for direct connections to the Wiimote. This is independent of what Wiimote gun settings are used in EmulationStation.

The Mayflash Dolphinbar is a third-party accessory that was initially designed to allow Wiimotes to be used as a cursor for PCs, or to allow for direct passthrough of the Wiimote to the Dolphin emulator (hence the colloquial name). Batocera can use it to emulate a light gun.

Unlike the direct Wiimote connection method, modes 1 and 2 do not utilize any special Wiimote gun mode in EmulationStation to function, instead the Dolphinbar itself emulates being a mouse and keyboard to the machine. When in these modes, it does not allow for global calibration, meaning that it will not likely match your display one-to-one (just like the original Wii did). It is also the only available option for light gun play on v34 and lower.

Dolphin can emulate the pairing function of the emulated Wii system, allowing for direct connections to the Wiimote. This is independent of what Wiimote gun settings are used in EmulationStation.

The Namco GunCon (known as G-Con in Europe) is a PlayStation peripheral first released in 1994, with the GunCon 2 for the PlayStation 2 following it up in 2001. If you have one of these and a compatible analogue TV, you may be able to utilise it with Batocera. This cannot be used on a modern digital display. Requires Batocera v36 or higher.

Connect both the light gun and the IR bar via USB. Then, hold main trigger for five seconds to launch the global calibration process. Shoot the top-left, top-right and bottom-center targets as they appear.

DO NOT use a supply with a current capability of greater than 4 amps as the mechanism relies on the current-limiting feature on the supply to prevent overload. If using two or more guns you will need one supply per gun.

The Sinden Lightgun is a light gun which uses a regular camera looking at a white border to perform its tracking. Batocera will automatically enable a white border when the Sinden Lightgun is connected, as well as shrinking the content of the games to accomodate for this. Requires Batocera v35 or higher.

A hardware bug prevents the use of multiple Sinden Lightguns on a single USB hub on some boards. Computers will typically use a single hub for groups of the same ports accessed via the IO panel. The best way around this is to plug one light gun into the front facing ports, and another into the IO panel. If your machine has a mixture of USB 2.0 (black tongue) and USB 3.0 (blue tongue) ports, they will usually have separate hubs.

A table showing which emulators and cores support light guns (must be switched manually for systems using a default core not compatible with light guns).

Games which are light gun compatible will belong to the light gun genre in EmulationStation. Some themes support showing this tag to make it easier to quickly identify which games are light gun games. It is also possible to enable the light gun category as a selectable system.

Although most light gun games will be plug and play, certain titles/emulators require extra actions (typically calibration in the emulated game itself). These are limitations of the software, but will be automated in the future (v36) for games that require it.

Most arcade games won"t need recalibration. If they do, this is done in the service menus of the game once launched. This only needs to be done once, even if switching light guns later.

For most games, press either [F1] or [F2] on the keyboard to access the service menu specific to the game. Some games may require additional keys to be held while pressing the service keys (eg. Point Blank requires pressing [9] while holding [F2]). Navigate the menus by repeatedly pressing [F1] or [F2]. The calibration process is different per-game.

House of the Dead 2 has the credit button of player 2 bound to the service menu. This is a known issue. As a workaround, only enter credits and press start via player 2"s controller (not the light gun).

In v35, a few games have an offscreen reload system which does not work well with the Wiimote. The system can be forced to perform a manual reload action with a press of the primary button (in the Wiimote"s case, [A]):

Commodore 64 games were released in various mediums. It was very common for all tape ROMs (TAP files) light gun games to also feature a joystick version on the other side of the tape. In order to use light guns, the light gun version of the game is needed. Disk images usually support both.

If the game"s video resolution is changed (such as changing display or by using the “video mode” setting), per-game recalibration is necessary for this system.

All PSX emulators are only compatible with GunCon ROMs (with exception to libretro: mednafen, which should be compatible with all ROMs but a bug prevents the use of any light guns), so any non-GunCon ROMs require the Nuvee patch in order to function with light guns in the emulators: https://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Nuvee-PS1-PS2-input-plugin-supporting-lightguns-by-Shalma. Instructions are in the .7z file, respectively for each patchable ROM.

Veteran users may recall the controller type option in the advanced system settings for each system needing to be set to a particular light gun (specific to that system) in order to play light gun games. As of v35, this is no longer necessary, as Batocera will automatically use the appropriate controller type if a light gun is connected. The crosshair option will also be automatically disabled for the light guns - except if you play with the Mayflash Dolphinbar, which will be automatically enabled.

SHOW LIGHTGUN CROSSHAIRS: Opt to manually show the crosshairs (perhaps to assist with aiming in general), manually remove the crosshairs or let Batocera decide for you.

The Wiimote works by sending a video feed of its IR camera to the machine. This sensor is very poor, and can fail to see the IR LED if too far away. So, there"s a “sweet spot” for each display where you are both far enough away to see the IR bar when aiming at the extreme corner opposite the IR bar, while still being close enough for the IR camera of the Wiimote to pick it up.

Avoid using a USB hub when connecting both guns. Use different USB speed port for each (ex.: USB 2.0/USB 3.0) or different pair (ex.: one in front of the PC, one in the back).

(IDG) -- Everybody loves the look: a large, skinny screen that occupies only a sliver of your desktop or hangs like a picture on the wall. And whether you typically work on page layouts, juggle multiple windows, play games, or watch DVD movies, you"ll find that a large screen makes most work easier and most play more fun.

But while 15-inch LCDs have become more affordable in the last year or two, very large flat-screen displays--whether for a desktop, a boardroom, a reception area, or a state-of-the-art home theater--have continued to command astronomically high prices that leave them out of reach for all but businesses with specialized needs, or the super rich.

LCD monitors won"t compete in price with their CRT counterparts anytime soon. But the same price drops that have already brought many 15-inch displays under the $1000 mark are beginning to make larger LCDs more affordable--less than $1500 in the case of two 17-inchers we review here.

There"s good news about the really big screens used for so-called digital signage (such as gate information at airports), presentations in large boardrooms, and dramatic-looking wall TVs, too. Once priced at $20,000 and up, more and more superlarge, 40-inch-plus plasma displays are dipping below the $10,000 mark. No, they won"t replace standard TVs--or rear-projection systems--in the near future, but upscale consumers who love home theater are already taking them seriously. According to industry observers, plasma"s audience should broaden by 2005, when prices could sink to $4000 or less.

By then, we will probably have new display choices that solve problems today"s offerings don"t even address. Technologies such as organic light-emitting diodes promise to unite energy savings and a CRT-quality display in a superthin--possibly even flexible--panel. Meanwhile, advances in ultra-high-resolution screens and microdisplays may offer eye-soothing performance and render extremely clear text in a way that today"s monitors can"t even approximate.

So who needs to go larger? Anyone who"s ever tried to write a report in a word processor while doing research in a browser, running a spreadsheet, and keeping an eye on e-mail will appreciate a roomier screen. We looked at four of the latest large LCD models from Eizo, NEC-Mitsubishi, and Samsung, all offering terrific-looking displays and good value. Text looks so sharp and crisp that most people will feel no eyestrain at these models" 1280 by 1024 native resolution--although 17-inch LCDs benefit from a larger font size.

The chief strength of NEC-Mitsubishi"s MultiSync LCD1700M ($1499) is its exceptionally wide viewing angle--160 degrees horizontally and vertically--coupled with decent built-in speakers. Samsung"s new $1199 SyncMaster 170T has both an analog interface and a newer DVI digital interface; the latter will become useful as more graphics adapters that support digital video output (which offers superior quality for LCDs) appear. Both of the units carry 17-inch screens.

Once the screen sizes exceed 17 inches, prices rise steeply: Some 17-inch monitors are half the price of their 18-inch counterparts. (Blame lower yields for 18-inch screens for this disproportionate price differential.) For example, Eizo"s 18-inch FlexScan L675 screen costs $2900--which is still an improvement over the $3000-plus prices 18-inch LCDs used to command. In the Eizo"s case, you"re also paying for such high-end features as an ultrathin bezel and a screen that can be rotated for landscape or portrait-style viewing.

Even some of the largest screens cost less than they used to. We were impressed by NEC-Mitsubishi"s 20-inch MultiSync LCD2010X, which goes for $3899--not cheap, but far better than the $8000-plus price tags on comparable-size displays of the last few years. And the LCD2010X can handle both analog and DVI digital hookups.

Rhoda Alexander, an analyst with display market research firm Stanford Resources, expects prices to continue falling through the rest of 2001. By year"s end, some 17-inch displays will likely sell for less than $1000, with average prices resting at that mark or slightly higher. But don"t wait beyond then if you"re serious about buying: By early 2002, supply is expected to get tight again, and then prices will stabilize or rise once more.

There"s no getting around it: Plasma displays have an undeniable wow factor. Match a high-resolution, 50-inch plasma display with a DVD like Toy Story 2, and suddenly you"re in home entertainment heaven. The on-screen colors are pure, the detail is breathtaking, and the visual impact is jaw-droppingly spectacular.

But plasma screens aren"t just for fun. Scott Evans, product manager for the NEC-Mitsubishi plasma monitor line, estimates that only about 20 percent of the 50,000 to 60,000 plasma displays sold last year went into the homes of the wealthy. Most are used for public displays and corporate multimedia presentations in such high-traffic places as airports, corporate office lobbies, and trade show exhibits.

Plasma is subject to image burn-in, however, much as early CRTs were (remember the days when screen savers were more than a personal statement?), and it does lose brightness over time. Display manufacturers have been hard at work on that problem. Craig McManis, vice president of sales and marketing for the industrial displays division of Pioneer New Media Technologies, says that it takes 30,000 hours for his company"s plasma displays to lose half their brightness. An always-on display in an airport might need replacement every three years or so, but that translates into a lot of TV viewing at home.

Plasma screens remain very expensive for mainstream home theater use, but vendors like Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, and Sony all now offer sub-$10,000 panels. Most of these displays work at a resolution of 640 by 480, however, and may not satisfy your image-quality standards.

Pioneer"s 40-inch, 640-by-480 PDP-V402, which costs less than $7500 on the street, is a case in point. At a normal TV viewing distance, our Top Gun DVD looked quite good, but videophiles would doubtless have found the images a bit grainy. Unless viewed from a fairly long distance, Windows applications also tend to look unattractive on such a big, low-resolution screen; and the unit lacks HDTV support.

In contrast, Pioneer"s new, top-of-the-line PDP-502MX, with its 50-inch screen, 3.5-inch thickness, and 1024 by 768 resolution, looks great--and this unit does support HDTV.

Few of us have that kind of money for home entertainment, however. So while you wait for the prices of plasma screens to come down, Stanford Resources analyst Paul Semenza suggests a good alternative: a $2000 rear-projection TV with a large 50- to 60-inch display.

If you want to purchase a plasma display now, note both the resolution and size: A 40-inch panel might be fine in a boardroom or reception area, but larger rooms will probably need to have a bigger screen. An on-site service warranty is a definite plus. Plasma displays, though thin, weigh more than you might expect and are no fun to cart around. And finally, McManis says that users who want to display data should confirm the screen is Windows Hardware Quality Lab-compliant.

It"s true. Running modern games on a vintage CRT monitor produces absolutely outstanding results - subjectively superior to anything from the LCD era, up to and including the latest OLED displays. Best suited for PC players, getting an optimal CRT set-up isn"t easy, and prices vary dramatically, but the results can be simply phenomenal.

The advantages of CRT technology over modern flat panels are well-documented. CRTs do not operate from a fixed pixel grid in the way an LCD does - instead three "guns" beam light directly onto the tube. So there"s no upscaling blur and no need to run at any specific native resolution as such. On lower resolutions, you may notice "scan lines" more readily, but the fact is that even lower resolution game outputs like 1024x768 or 1280x960 can look wonderful. Of course, higher-end CRTs can input and process higher resolutions, but the main takeaway here is that liberation from a set native resolution is a gamechanger - why spend so many GPU resources on the amount of pixels drawn when you can concentrate on quality instead without having to worry about upscale blurring?

The second advantage is motion resolution. LCD technologies all use a technique known as "sample and hold" which results in motion rendering at a significantly lower resolution than static imagery. Ever noticed how left/right panning in a football match looks blurrier than static shots on an LCD? This is a classic example of poor motion resolution - something that simply isn"t an issue on a CRT. Motion handling on CRT is on another level compared to modern technologies in that every aspect of every frame is rendered identically, to the point where even a 768p presentation may well be delivering more detail in motion than a 4K LCD.

Then there"s display lag, or rather, the complete lack of it. Imagery is beamed directly onto the screen at the speed of light, meaning zero delay. Even compared to 240Hz LCDs I"ve tested, the classic mouse pointer response test feels different, faster. The advantages in terms of game response - particularly with an input mechanism as precise as the mouse - need no further explanation.

On a more general level, there"s a sense that games and hardware have "grown" into CRT technology over the years. Visuals are more realistic than they"ve ever been, and there"s something about the look of a CRT presentation that further emphasises that realism - aliasing in particular is much less of an issue compared to a fixed pixel grid LCD. Secondly, PC hardware has evolved now to the point where running at higher refresh rates than 60Hz is relatively simple - and a great many CRT monitors can easily run at much faster frequencies, up to 160Hz and even beyond, depending on the display and the input resolution. This is all pretty good for a technology that essentially became obsolete soon after the turn of the millenium.

And that"s where the negatives of CRT gaming start to hit home. The technology is outdated, which presents many pitfalls. The most obvious concerns form-factor: CRT displays are big, bulky and weigh a lot. I invested in a display widely considered to be one of the greatest CRTs ever made - the Sony Trinitron FW900 - a 16:10 24-inch screen. As the video hopefully demonstrates, picture quality is immense, but so is the heft of the screen. It weighs 42kg and with a 600x550mm footprint, the amount of real estate required is not insignificant.

Then there"s the input situation. CRT monitors use VGA, DVI-I or component RGB BNC inputs - and pretty much the most powerful modern GPU still to offer support there is the GTX 980 Ti or Titan X Maxwell. Thankfully HDMI, USB-C and DisplayPort to VGA adapters are available, but you"ll be spending a lot of time online looking for the right one to handle high pixel-rates if you intend to go past 1920x1200 at 60Hz. Very few widescreen CRTs are available and even the Sony FW900 has a 16:10 aspect ratio, meaning that console gaming isn"t really a good fit for CRT displays - 4:3 screens, even less so. Yes, you can run consoles on a CRT, but my feeling is that for many reasons, this is a pursuit best suited to PC users.

Finally, there"s the cost - which can cut both ways - along with the quality of the display you"ll actually get. The FW900 is a legendary screen with massive asking prices to match. However, John Linneman"s 19-inch 4:3 Sony Trinitron G400 cost him just 10 Euros (!) and still looks amazing. However, the fact is that in both John"s case and mine, the screens weren"t in optimal condition when we bought them - which is to be expected for screens well into their second decade of life. Suffice to say, getting image quality to the expected levels can take a lot of time, effort and plenty of research. And on a more basic level, CRT screens are made of glass and glare can be an issue. In shooting the video on this page, I had to film at night in order to show the screen in the best possible light.

There are plenty of pitfalls then - but the end results while gaming are highly satisfactory. Modern titles on a CRT can look sensational, you have the benefits of high refresh rates if you want them, you can turn up all the eye candy and you don"t need to worry so much about resolution as a major defining factor of image quality. Today"s premium-priced gaming LCDs are trying very hard to recapture CRT"s major benefits - low latency, high refresh rates and reduced input lag - but as good as many of these screens are, for our money nothing beats a good old-fashioned cathode ray tube display for desktop gaming - not even the very best LCD screens on the market.

I also have an AimTrak that I bought for tinkering with recoil. It"s ok, but I"ve never been able to get it calibrated good enough for my taste. If I were putting it in a cab, I would have to leave the onscreen crosshairs on. Otherwise, there are too many missed shots because I can"t get it calibrated good enough to use the gun sights. If you don"t mind having the onscreen crosshairs on, they"re fine and you can even use them for the positional gun games.

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