light gun for lcd screen manufacturer

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.

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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.

For those who haven’t heard of it, the Sinden Lightgun is a crowd-sourced piece of hardware intended to allow modern monitor/television users to experience lightgun games.

Unlike the cathode ray tube versions of yesterday, this guy works using computer vision and a built-in camera.The Sinden Lightgun® is the world’s first true LCD Lightgun, providing all the functionality and game experience of the original CRT Lightguns without requiring additional hardware such as infra red sensor bars.

The Sinden Lightgun® communicates by controlling your mouse cursor which ensures compatibility with nearly all Windows and Linux applications that can use a mouse

There was a blank screen but that is quite usual for first boot on a new Pi image, not least because often first boot kicks off a shell script that expands the drive usage to utilize the whole SD card and so on.

It doesn’t help either that the “dedicated image” was RetroPie with lightgun games, but you still need to configure the lightgun. Without configuring Sinden you get very few games that will respond.

In use it became apparent that the trigger was sticky, while it is spring-loaded, the trigger would not return back to position correctly. Moving the trigger back and forth manually seemed to give a much better result.

Once you have a fully working unit and the correct games system set up, the Sinden Light Gun is brilliant and delivers exactly what it promises. Make sure you give it beefy hardware, and preferably something pre-configured, and it is just like being in the arcades.

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Running fmcboot and snes and genesis emulation? I am curious if this lightgun or any ps2 lightgun works on snes or genesis roms? Also ps1 titles? Area 51, super scope, lethal enforcers 2 (genesis)?

I backed the IndieGoGo (https://indiegogo.com/projects/the-sinden-lightgun…) in August. I paid £80 for the lightgun and £20 for shipping (despite it supposedly being made in a UK factory, posted to a UK address). I was order 14917. I had an estimated shipping date of November. I was excited, until...

While it lacks some of the nostalgia factor (that spring twang and stiff trigger) I"d say it works better than the original. The smooth trigger lets me spam it for some real sharpshooting, making me feel like I"m in a western or something. With this design, one can shoot both ducks in a split second. I squeezed the trigger a bit hard as a stress test, and it holds quite well on its own. The plastic"s a bit softer and thinner. Added on to the fact that it has less internal workings thanks to slightly more modern and less costly parts, it feels quite a bit lighter. But it doesn"t really feel like it"s just a cheap knockoff, in spite of it being exactly that. So, as long as you"re not taking a hammer to it, it should hold up all right. They used a slightly modified mold, so it looks near identical to the original with the exception of the stock. It"s just as comfortable to hold, too.

If you want to save a few bucks over a used original Zapper, then go for it. My expectations for this were pretty low considering the brand and price. I figured it was only 6 bucks and this thing greatly exceeded my expectations based on the reviews. I"m guessing that the worst case scenario is that you get one of the few defective ones and you"ll have to exchange it.

And no, it doesn"t work on flatscreen TVs. The way the games are designed to work make it impossible to use anything but a curved CRT. If you want to play on a modern TV, get the Wii U virtual console version and use the Wii Remote..

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus that allows interaction between a game player and a video game console system with a light gun.

The present invention relates to a video game interface technique and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for determining an X-Y shot position with a light gun on various styles of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and Plasma Displays.

Recent advances in television and computer monitors that use LCD flat panel and plasma display systems have made current Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) display light guns obsolete.

Past light guns and pen lights relied on the detection of a single horizontal and vertical retrace to detect a shoot position in X and Y coordinates. New display systems such as LCD and Plasma displays do not use a consistent horizontal and vertical retrace pulse as required by current light guns or light pens.

A CRT comprises a large vacuum glass tube in which a static charge is applied to the front of the display and electrons are released by an electron gun in the back of the tube.

The electrons are attracted to the charge at the front of the tubes. When the attracted electrons strike the phosphorous coating on the front inside of the tube, the phosphorous glows which produces visual color. The electronic pulse is generated based on the modulated alternating current from the power supply. Typical North American power supply uses 60 hertz alternating electrical current. CRT displays use this 60 hertz alternating current to generate a saw tooth electronic pulse that in turn controls the timed release of electrons from the electron gun.

The electronic circuit in a CRT display system that generates the saw tooth pulse is called a fly-back transformer. The fly back transformer generates a saw tooth voltage increase that in turn increases or decreases the strength of an electro-magnet. The increasing strength of the electro-magnet pulls the electron beam across a horizontal scan line that in turn produces a visual line across the CRT display. A horizontal pulse, generated by the fly back transformer, causes the voltage to drop and in turn causes the electro-magnetic strength to decrease which in turn causes the horizontal scan to start at the beginning of the line again. Each time a line is drawn horizontally, a similar process pulls the electron beam down one line that causes repeated horizontal scan lines to travel across and down the front of the CRT display. A vertical retrace pulse at the bottom-end causes the scan to start at the top-left corner of the display for a next frame.

Video games are software programs that use a video game console system to translate the game data. A controller allows a game player to move within the rendered video game program. Many video games include the use of a light gun, or a controller with a shoot button, to simulate shooting with a gun or other weapon.

Conventional light gun technologies detect the start of the vertical retrace pulse via electronic connections and have a photo-detector on the light gun, that detects the horizontal retrace line as the brightest phosphorous point on the screen. A

Current Liquid Crystal and Plasma displays do not use such electron beams to draw a screen image and therefore current light gun technologies do not work with such display systems. A need exists for a light gun that is able to determine an X and Y

The present invention comprises a method and apparatus for determining a vertical and horizontal (X-Y) target shot position on a Liquid Crystal or Plasma display screen. The invention may be adapted to connect to commercially available video game console systems such as Sony Playstation TM versions or Microsoft xBoxTM versions and allows the video game player to use the invention while playing commercially available, unaltered video games.

(b) during a second vertical refresh cycle, non-sequentially increasing the voltage to each of the red, blue and green channels in three separate screen sections to create a display split between the three colours;

(c) polling the monitor during the second vertical refresh cycle with the light gun adapted to be capable of separately detecting a blue, red or green light pulse;

(d) determining the X-Y coordinates on the basis of the colour detected by the light gun and the length of time which elapses between the start of the second vertical refresh cycle and the detection of the red, blue or green light pulse.

In one embodiment, after the determination of the target spot that the game player shoots the light gun at, electronic circuitry is used to intercept and alter the bi-directional signal output from a video game consoles system and joystick to insert a coordinate of a player movement to the X-Y target spot position.

(c) a colour separation circuit for non-sequentially increasing the red channel voltage to a first section of the monitor screen, the blue channel voltage to a second section of the monitor screen, and the green channel voltage to a third section of the monitor screen;

(e) a timer for determining the length of time which elapses between the start of a vertical refresh cycle during which the colour separation circuit is active and detection of the horizontal retrace by the light gun; and (f) computational means operatively connected to the timer for dividing the elapsed time by the length of the horizontal retrace time, and thereby determining the X-Y coordinates within the section of the screen corresponding to the colour detected.

FIG. 1 is a schematic view of the invention including the electronics circuits 40 and 50 game console system 20, television 10 and light gun 200 described herein.

FIG. 2 is a schematic view of one embodiment of the invention including the electronics circuit 40, a Sony Playstation 2 game console system 20, controller 30, television 10 and light gun 50 described in accordance with the invention herein.

The preferred embodiment is a method and apparatus that allows determination of a target spot of a light gun when used in conjunction with a video game console system connected to a LCD or plasma display panel. In a preferred embodiment, the invention allows the user to play the game with a light gun rather than, or in addition to, a controller.

In its simplest form, a device of the present invention requires a source of power to supply the electrical needs to the various components described hereafter. A

preferred electrical source is the power lead on the game console controller port however a variety of devices may be used and are readily available to supply power for the requirements of the invention. One skilled in the art will realize that alternate power supplies may employ batteries, power adapters, electrical generators or any other form of adequate power supply means.

It is preferred to use general existing light gun photo-detector techniques however, the light gun assembly requires three separate photo-detectors. Each photo-detector will have a different colour filter, thus permitting determination of the colour of a light burst.

For example, a red filtered photo sensor, green-filtered photosensor, and a blue-filtered photosensor may be used to allow detection of a coloured light burst, and determination of the colour. If the screen image is rendered in different colours, the determination of colour permits determination of a specific area of the screen, the light gun is pointing at.

In a preferred embodiment, the invention includes the alteration of the video signal sent to the display device after a user presses the light gun shoot button. The invention employs an electronic circuit that causes the display device to first turn off all pixels to black through a screen refresh period . Turning the pixels black increases the contrast ratio of the refresh pattern on the following refresh cycle and thereby increases the accuracy of the light gun target spot detection. On the second refresh cycle following the trigger event, the invention causes the pixels in one section of the screen to red, the pixels in a second section to green and those in a third section to blue.

Differing display devices may require this aspect of the invention to cause the display device to use differing colors across different sections of the display device. However, in a preferred method, the screen is split into three substantially equal vertical stacked sections, each with a different and distinct color. The light gun is then used to detect the separate colors, with the use of the light gun red, green and blue filters.

The invention 100 is intended to be used with a television or video monitor 10 which may comprise a CRT, LCD or Plasma display screen that employs an interlaced vertical scan, progressive scan, sectional scan or synchronous scan refresh mechanisms.

The invention 100 comprises a light gun 200 that has three photo-detectors in the front of the light gun, each with a coloured lens or filter.. In one embodiment, the first photo-detector may have a red filter 210, a second may have a green filter 220, and a third photo-detector may have a blue 230 color filter, permitting determination of the colour of a light detected by the photodetectors. The light gun 200 has a trigger 240 that the user may press while pointing the light gun 200 at the display device 10. In one embodiment, the light gun 200 is connected to the video game console system 10 via a wire to the controller 30 port circuit. It should be apparent that a variety of different color filters could be used as well as a variety of differing methods of connections between the invention 100 and the light gun 200 without departing from the spirit or the scope of the claimed invention 100.

Light gun 200 is connected to the television 10 via the video game console 20 RCA video out port. It should be apparent to one skilled in the art that video signals can be sent to the display device via S-Video, USB, Coaxial, wireless or any other variety of video formats that contain the required video signals without departing from the spirit or the scope of the claimed invention 100. Light Gun 200 electronic circuit 50 detects the television 10 vertical retrace and horizontal pulse which are used to calculate the X-Y

target shot position of the light gun 200. AC household powerprovides a modulated 50 or 60 hertz alternating current which the video game consoles and display devices use for horizontal and vertical retrace timing pulses. The vertical retrace pulse can therefore be detected within the bi-directional data stream. As a result, the light gun 200 controlling electronic circuitry may be in between the controller and console system, designed within the controller, or inside the game console system.

Many modern video games employ a camera technique that allows the game player to move their game character inside the virtual world with the use of a controller, sometimes referred to a first-person or first person shooter games.. Typical programming methods that are used to create a game world recalculate and reconstruct the game scene each time a player moves. Typical data streams are sequences of data that correspond to a controller button press. For example, on the Sony Playstation II, the buttons known as Right stick cause the look-at position of the player to be adjusted. By inserting data bits in the corresponding Right stick data stream, the game console renders an appropriate image.

In a preferred embodiment, the invention 100 utilizes an electronic circuit 40 between the light gun and the video game console that intercepts the coded signals sent from the video game console 20. Electronic circuit 40 receives power needs from game console system 20. Electronic circuit 40 uses a programmable semi-conductor chip that contains written instructions to decode the data stream sent from the game console 30 and inserts calculated and compatible code back into the bi-directional signal that adjusts the video game players "x" and "y" position according to the users light gun 200 established shot position on the television 10. Electronic circuit 50 is connected to the video game console system 20 and electronic circuit 40.

When a user presses light gun trigger 240, a signal is sent to electronic circuit 50 whereby a polling starts for the video vertical retrace pulse. When a vertical retrace pulse is detected,a blanking circuit connected to the video out port of the console, receives notice of trigger press, and sends a ground signal to the RCA video-out - this ground signal turns the screen pixels black (off). Thus, with the first vertical retrace pulse is registered 1~

The blanking circuit registers the vertical retrace and when it is received, begins a timer that is used to count the horizontal retrace pulses. On second pass of the vertical retrace pulse, for one section of the screen the green and blue are turned off while the voltage to the red channel is turned higher. For another section of the screen the red and blue are turned off and the green is turned high. For yet another section of the screen the red and green are turned off while the blue is turned high. Each of these three sections, which preferably are equal 1/3 sections, are drawn concurrently, or at least non-sequentially.

This pattern causes 1/3 of screen to be bright red, 1/3 of screen to be bright green and 1/3 of the screen to be bright blue. Typically but not essentially, these ternary sections may be stacked vertically.

Certain TTF and LCD monitors have a dual horizontal or mufti scan horizontal retrace that occurs simultaneously. As a result, the light gun detection sequence is able to determine which section of the screen the light gun is pointed at. The blanking circuit may optionally have a mode switch that allows for 50-50 split screen that is red-green in each half. Other refresh patterns such as single line patterns can be incorporated into the blanking circuit as well.

At the same time the screen is being redrawn in red-green-blue 1/3 sections, the light gun photo-detector is aimed at the target spot on the screen and registers a high current in one of the red, green or blue photo-detector diode as the horizontal retrace passes through the target spot, producing a light pulse. When the horizontal retrace is detected by one of the photo-detectors, the colour of the detected light pulse is recorded and a calculation is done based on the elapsed time of the vertical retrace pulse. Light gun poll time is equal to the time to complete a complete vertical retrace for each 1/3 section of the display screen less the time of horizontal retrace pulse. The poll time is then divided by the time it takes each horizontal retrace to scan across the screen. The whole number quotient gives the X (vertical) position of the light gun target spot, while the remainder of the calculation gives us the Y (horizontal) position of the light gun targetspot.

The X position is determined by the colour separation on the screen and the colour detected by the light gun. For example, if the bottom section of the screen is blue, as shown in Figure 2, and the light gun detects a blue horizontal retrace and the timing circuit calculates that the X position is 200 rows from the start of the vertical retrace, then the true X position on the entire screen is 200 rows down from the start of the blue section.

In one embodiment, a combination of the methods employed allow a video game player to use a bi-directional light gun rather than a joystick to play a video game on a Liquid Crystal or Plasma display. In this case, the device may employ an electronic method of decoding signals from a controller and recoding the data stream sent to the video game console system. In its simplest form, the invention can be connected to a game controller. In a preferred method, the joystick buttons and feedback features of a typical joystick or a game controller are incorporated into a light gun. One skilled in the art will realize that the joystick features such as button and feedback motors can be built into a light gun and not require a controller to control the game. The light gun of the present invention can be incorporated as an added feature to a past, existing or future video game console control device.

A programmed electronic chip may contains the functions to decode, modify and encode the controller signals by specifically altering each X, Y or Z component of the bi-directional data stream sent to the game console, in a manner that adjusts the game players new X, Y or Z desired position within the game coordinate grid. It should be obvious to one skilled in the art that a programmed electronic chip array and electronic circuit can be placed in between the controller connecting wire and the video game console system however the circuitry and algorithms can also be incorporated as part of controller electronics. Our claims for methods and apparatus are not limited to being placed between the controller and game console system.

In one embodiment, once the display device 20 screen coordinates are calculated for the target shot position, they may be passed back to the electronic circuit 40 where they are encoded and sent back to the game console system 10 as a player move in x and y game coordinates. This causes the video game to recalculate the players game position as a movement and render the game according to the look at position where the user pointed the light gun 200. Therefore, starting with the third vertical retrace cycle after the trigger press, the game will re-render the game scene according to the supplied coordinates at which time a shoot signal is sent to the video game console 10. Alternatively, the shoot signal may be sent to the video game console before the player look-at position is shifted.

In one embodiment, the x and y position are calculated to be relative from the center of the screen. For example, if the screen is 1000 x 1000 pixels, then the center of the display is X=500, Y=500, and the three coloured sections start at line 333 and 667. If the light gun shot target X position is 700 it means that we need to move the game position may be moved 200 pixels down. If the light gun shot target Y position is 300, the game position is moved 200 pixels left.

In one embodiment, the method can include the step of restoring the player"s original look-at position before taking the shot. For example, after the fifth vertical retrace pulse detected by electronic circuit 50 after the trigger press, a signal can be sent to the video game console 10 with the original user X-Y coordinates to restore their position prior to the light gun shoot sequence.

In one example, using a Sony PlaystationTM, the controller protocol is bi-directional and polls the joystick buttons 60 times per second. This protocol is in the form of a data stream that checks if any buttons on the controller are pressed and if they are, the various buttons are registered in the data stream as "on" in the appropriate packet of the data stream. Typical video games that are rendered in 3D, and allow the player to move in a first person perspective through the game normally use the left small joystick paddle to move left, right and forward and backward. The Sony PlaystationTM uses industry standard SPI protocol packets that contain "0" if a button is not pressed and "1" if a button is pressed. The SPI interface circuit causes a data packet circuit of the present invention may be given the amount of counts to send a "1" into the SPI data packets, which is sent to the Sony Playstation game software. In one example -a " 1" is sent into the SPI data packet - left joystick button press, a total of 20 times which moves the look-at position of the game player 20 steps to the left. The SPI data packet - down joystick button press may be senta total of 20 times which moves the look-at position of the game player 20 steps down.

The result after the moves are registered into the SPI data packet, is that the original target position of the light gun is moved to the center of the screen. We then send the SPI

and Y game position back to where it was before the shot was processed. This results in the game player not losing their position in the game and allows the game player to shoot at all areas of the screen.

It further allows our light gun to support video games that do not need to be custom built for a light gun and further gives the game player an advantage over complicated and difficult controller maneuvers.

The xBoxTM uses a USB industry standard protocol rather than the SPI protocol that the PlaystationTM uses. The methods and system are the same between the two video game console systems. One skilled in the art may easily modify the electronics for the data packet circuit to adapt to the USB protocol or future data stream video game console protocols. Other proprietary game consoles use protocols that one skilled in the art may easily recognize and adapt the present invention for use with.

Following up on Yorik"s answer, I went ahead and checked for the repair manual for this game. As mentioned, older light guns had to figure out what happened when the trigger is pulled by the way of technical trickery. In particular, most older games had to hard-code in the timing of light boxes (in relation to a CRT) to figure out if a hit was made, and which target was hit.

Moving on from there, There"s many other ways to track and trigger on-hit detection. For this version of Rambo, I"ve found the following PDF installation and repair manual for it. What"s interesting to note is that the DX version uses a SAMSUNG 56"DLP, (Which looks to be like a micro projector, but the manual uses the term CRT often.) but the two guns can be tested and tracked in real time. Likewise, there"s a warning on having similar cabinets near each other due to interference, but there"s a FREQ setting to help remedy issues. (This is the first sign of the answer as Infrared emitters are not "on" all the time, but can be set to a wavelength for a sensor to pick up on.)

First up, the gun itself uses the SEGA TYPE II GUN SENSOR (JPT-2030). There"s not enough information I can find about this sensor, but we know that the gun"s position is tracked on the screen in testing. Looking though the rest of the manual, I find that there"s a IR Hood and Senor on the bottom of the screen. There does not seem to be any other technologies (like gyroscope or cameras) in use for tracking, so I"m going to have to assume that this game uses Infrared emitters for everything.

It"s the same technology that"s used for the Wii in just about every way. The only difference is that without a gyroscope, the gun can only detect if it sees the emitters or not. If there"s no sign of the emitters, then it assumes it"s off-screen to reload.

What types of games have suffered a painful decline to the point where the genre barely exists any more? Brawlers, perhaps - Final Fight’s characters now live inside Street Fighter, and attempts to revive Golden Axe have stalled - though one could argue a certain breed of 3D character action game is descended from them, and last year we had a solid revival in Streets of Rage 4. Arcade sports games feel to have fallen out of the mainstream - indie efforts appear from time to time, but I wonder if we’ll ever get a game like NBA Jam, Red Card Football, or NFL Blitz ever again.

But, no. The most suffering of all genres is the light gun shooter - and it isn’t even completely the fault of the games. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.

It is fair to say that the games were partially to blame. In the mid-2000s titles like Time Crisis 4 and a slew of Wii light gun shooters were released - but at a time when games were bloating in size, length, and complexity, the hour-long rollercoaster of an arcade light gun game with some extra bonuses seemed a less than generous value proposition. Some games stuffed in extra modes to try to make up for it - slightly rubbish first-person-shooter style extras that arguably dragged the rest of the package down. The release of a bunch of all-timer FPS games can’t have helped, either - things like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 were providing the cinematic thrills that were previously the purview of arcade shooters.

It wasn’t all the fault of the games, however. The other factor was technology. As the world switched to flat-screen LCD and LED displays, light guns had a problem: the traditional mechanism by which the gun registers where you’re pointing on-screen flat-out doesn’t work on modern displays. That’s why, if you bought one of the rare PS3 light-gun games, you had to dangle a bunch of crap around your TV to play. That’s why the genre was so prevalent on Wii, where a sensor bar was an integral part of the console setup. That’s why in actual arcades, modern shooting machines such as the newest House of the Dead have enormous bezels around the screen - it hides the sensors.

Sales of light gun games in that generation proved the dark truth. People couldn’t be bothered with that stuff. I barely played Time Crisis 4, a game I’d clocked in arcades many times, because I was too lazy to mess around with sensors. In many ways TC4’s PS4 release seemed to herald the end, showcased perfectly in the hideous design of Namco’s GunCon 3 accessory, breaking a streak of iconic PlayStation light guns with a hideous design that welded a Wii Nunchuk onto the front of the gun, a concession for those previously-mentioned add-on modes designed to pad out the package.

Over on Wii, however, the genre was thriving. Endless plastic gun-shaped shells for the Wii remote filled every bargain bin in the land. But the Wii Light guns had an open secret: they weren’t quite right. The Wii solution worked like a mouse pointer, which meant that rather than aiming on instinct, you dragged a cursor around the screen. The cursor wasn’t even that accurate to where you were actually aiming, and that meant the magic light gun feeling of being a sharpshooter, a veritable Clint Eastwood - was gone. You were a guy moving a laser pointer around.

For years a solution has seemed out of reach. But finally, we have one: the Sinden Light Gun. This solution comes from one light gun fanboy in the UK, who after slaving to create a prototype of his idea took it to Kickstarter. That Kickstarter (which, full disclosure, I backed) raised £239k, and since guns began shipping, a further £1.75 million has been raised for further production runs via IndieGoGo.

The Sinden has raised so much cash because it bloody works. It feels like black magic. In many instances, it actually feels more accurate than the CRT-based light guns it’s aiming to replace. It’s no longer crowd-funding - it’s a fledgling business for its creator. The guns now exist in multiple colors (red, blue, and black) and can be had with or without arcade-style recoil when you pull the trigger or yank its pump-action reload.

Here’s a basic explanation of how it works. Rather than a mere sensor, the barrel of the light gun actually contains a camera. On the game side, a small border is drawn around the game"s visual output - depending on the conditions you’re playing in, this could be as little as 1% or 2% of the screen. When the gun is pointed at the screen, rather than the game, it looks for the border - and then uses smart image recognition and some software trickery to figure out where exactly within that border you’re aiming. It then feeds that back to the game, and… down goes that target, militia soldier, duck, or alien.

No cursors (unless you want them). Very little lag. Minimal to no game-specific calibration. It"s a dream. Yes, the first setup was a little fiddly - the Sinden config app throws a whole lot of options at you in a very raw, unfiltered and as-yet unpolished way, so I was left poring over the official wiki and soliciting advice from the lovely Discord community that"s sprung up around the gun. Once I got past that however, everything was smooth. I’ve been experimenting with my Sinden light guns, pushing them as far as I can, and, well - they just work. Simple as. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.

When I say I’ve been pushing them, I mean seeing how much further they can go than traditional light guns or pointers. For instance, 3D tracking tech built into the software means that the gun is still pin-point accurate when you’re standing off at an angle from the screen. So long as it can see the border, it works it out. I played the first few stages of Time Crisis standing at a nasty 45 degree angle - it worked great. Moving around mid-game won’t lose your calibration. In general, you can stand further back, at angles, and actively move around more than with the alternatives.

I tried different displays - a 50” 4K OLED, an older 24” LCD display that sits behind an arcade machine’s protective plexiglass front, and a larger, curved LED screen. All worked. All of this was possible with two guns and players, too. I even got it working on a projector, which meant House of the Dead on a 100-inch screen, which is, y’know, the dream. (Incidentally, the 3D tracking has me wondering if Konami arcade shooter Police 9/11, which had a full body-sensing setup, could be somehow emulated with this gun).

The Sinden Gun is most at home on a PC or Raspberry Pi, but it’s actually compatible with a range of older machines including PS1 and PS2, though you will need a Raspberry Pi or similar as a ‘middle man’ machine to run the software. Some of the PC light gun games that were built to be played with mouse just work with this gun, like the old abandonware versions of House of the Dead 1-3. There’s even a decent number of light gun shooters hiding away on Steam. And, of course, the gun pairs perfectly with emulators or dumps of modern or classic arcade shooters - so long as you have the right to play them. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.

Anyway. I’m astonished by this thing. It’s an incredible piece of technology, and what’s particularly exciting is that in many ways it’s still early days. Production is still very ‘indie’, and the software is still being regularly updated to bring more functionality, settings, stability, and features. I was perhaps predisposed to hope it works; I’m a light gun fan, I own a couple of arcade cabinets, I’d used many functional but less-satisfying Wii-style guns for emulation, and I did back the kickstarter. But it has already generously exceeded my expectations. The biggest downside, though subjective, is probably the price, which is reasonable but not exactly cheap - £80 for a gun without recoil, £130 with, and £155/£250 for two-player packs with or without recoil. But one hopes, if these things take off, that mass production could drive the price down.

And that leads me to the ultimate point of this article. Video game publishers - I’m calling you out. Bandai Namco, Sega - you pair in particular - there is no longer an excuse. Light Gun Games can now work on modern displays. It’s time for Time Crisis, Point Blank, House of the Dead, and Virtua Cop collections on modern hardware. We"ve heard word of remakes of HOTD 1 & 2 already - but honestly, these games don"t need to be remade or even remastered. They just need to run, and be compatible with this new technology - which is already the case through emulation on PC. If a developer is building a port and it doesn"t support similar technology to this, they should bin it. There’s also a range of newer light gun games that have been trapped in arcades - Time Crisis 5, House of the Dead 4 and Scarlet Dawn, and many arcade shooters from other publishers have no home ports at all.

The Sinden Gun tech is owned by its creator, but he has already proved willing to work with third parties. Mini arcade cabinet producer Arcade1Up has used Sinden tech for the guns on its Big Buck Hunter machine, which is out now, and all-in-one retro console Polymega is releasing an officially licensed Sinden-powered gun for players to experience classic shooters on their machines. Sinden’s software could easily run in the background on PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch - and the PC solution already exists. All we need are official releases of the games, and for publishers to pick up the phone and license this technology.

Basically: it’s time for the GunCon 4, powered by Sinden. One can dream, right? And even if that doesn’t come to pass, at least we now have a reliable, accurate way to play the classics.

The first light guns were produced in the 1930s, following the development of light-sensing vacuum tubes. In 1936, the technology was introduced in arcade shooting games, beginning with the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite.

These games evolved throughout subsequent decades, culminating in Sega"s Periscope is an early electro-mechanical game,quarter per play.Missile features electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen,Killer Shark features a mounted light gun with targets whose movement and reactions are displayed using back image projection onto a screen.Nintendo released the Beam Gun in 1970 and the Laser Clay Shooting System in 1973,film projection to display the target on the screen.co-operative light gun shooters Balloon GunBullet Mark.

The first detection method, used by the NES Zapper, involves drawing each target sequentially in white light after the screen blacks out. The computer knows that if the diode detects light as it is drawing a square (or after the screen refreshes), then that is the target at which the gun is pointed. Essentially, the diode tells the computer whether or not the player hit something, and for n objects, the sequence of the drawing of the targets tell the computer which target the player hit after 1 + ceil(log2(n)) refreshes (one refresh to determine if any target at all was hit and ceil(log2(n)) to do a binary search for the object that was hit).

A side effect of this is that in some games, a player can point the gun at a light bulb or other bright light source, pull the trigger, and cause the system to falsely detect a hit on the first target every time. Some games account for this either by detecting if all targets appear to match or by displaying a black screen and verifying that no targets match.

Rectangular positioning is similar to image capture, except it disregards any on-screen details and only determines the rectangular outline of the game screen. By determining the size and distortion of the rectangle outline of the screen, it is possible to calculate where exactly the light gun is pointing. This method was introduced by the Sinden Lightgun.

The positional gun is common in video arcades, as a non-optical alternative to a light gun. The positional gun is permanently mounted on a swivel on the cabinet, as an analog joystick for aiming crosshairs onscreen. This is typically more expensive initially but easier to maintain and repair. Positional gun games include Console conversions may use light guns.

A positional gun is essentially an analog joystick that records the position of the gun to determine the player"s aim on the screen.Sega"s Taito"s Nintendo"s

Ashcraft, Brian (2007-06-13). "Reload: How The Time Crisis 4 Light Gun Works". Kotaku.com. Archived from the original on 2010-02-12. Retrieved 2011-06-01.

Morgan McGuire & Odest Chadwicke Jenkins (2009). Creating Games: Mechanics, Content, and Technology. A K Peters, Ltd. p. 408. ISBN 978-1-56881-305-9. Retrieved 2011-04-03. Light guns, such as the NES Zapper or those used in the House of the Dead series, are distinctly different from positional guns used by arcade games such as SEGA"s Gunblade NY. ... Light guns differ from positional guns, such as in Gunblade NY (bottom), that are essentially analog joysticks. ... Positional guns are essentially analog sticks mounted in a fixed location with respect to the screen. Light guns, in contrast, have no fixed a priori relationship with a display.

Yo-Sung Ho & Hyoung Joong Kim (November 13–16, 2005). Advances in Multimedia Information Processing-PCM 2005: 6th Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia, Jeju Island, Korea. Springer Science & Business. p. 688. ISBN 3-540-30040-6. Retrieved 2011-04-03. The two routes to conventional gun control are light guns and positional guns. Light guns are the most common for video game systems of any type. They work optically with screen and do not keep track of location on the screen until the gun is fired. When the gun is fired, the screen blanks for a moment, and the optics in the gun register where on the screen the gun is aimed. That information is sent to the computer, which registers the shot. ... Positional guns are mounted stationary on the arcade cabinet with the ability to aim left/right and up/down. They function much like joysticks, which maintain a known location on screen at all times and register the current location when fired.

The key component for this project isUltimarc’s AimTrak Light Gun OEM Electronics Kit, which is available in both wired and wireless (Bluetooth) versions. This kit contains the infrared LED light bar as well as a controller board with a built-in camera sensor. This board also has connections for your trigger button, reload button, and up to five other buttons — though only the trigger and reload are needed for this project. BrittLiv put fitted that board inside of a Nerf Zombie Strike Doublestrike Blaster, but you can use other models if you prefer. All you have to do is figure out how to mount the controller board inside the Nerf blaster’s plastic housing and connect the buttons. Some trimming will probably be necessary and3D-printedmounts can help a lot. But once that’s done, you’re good to go! No drivers are needed, since the controller board looks like a mouse to whatever computer you plug it into.