How do those light guns work?

[Volcanon]

So how do they work? I must know!

[Nitrosport]

When you pull the trigger, the gun will detect certain patterns of light on your screen and register a hit or miss.

[Haoie]

Check out the Wiki article, it was really useful!!

The term lightgun is really misleading. It makes you think the gun shoots out a beam of sorts, but it does nothing like that.

[8bitCaged]

here is a good video on how it works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3st83O_LdZE
you see a white square. the lite gun sees the square and it know you hit the mark
skip to 6:41 in the video

[jb143]

It's sortof like a light pen (if you rememnber those) but with a lens. The lens focuses light from the screen onto a light sensor. Then what everyone else said. Or read the wiki article.

[Timstuff]

Basically, the light gun is typically a camera. In most old systems, it looks for flashing patterns of light on the screen when you pull the trigger, and it can tell wether or not a target is in its sights. With newer guns, they often use an infrared camera, and you put a sensor bar with IR diodes on it. The gun tracks the position of the diodes as the player moves the gun around, and it calculates its position in relation of the screen. During the 16 bit days they tried making light guns that fired an IR signal at an IR camera that sat on top of the screen like with the Super Scope and Menacer for the SNES and Genesis respectively, but unfortunately these guns worked very poorly, which resulted in a decline of light gun games in the 16 bit age.

[jb143]

Basically, the light gun is typically a camera. In most old systems, it looks for flashing patterns of light on the screen when you pull the trigger, and it can tell wether or not a target is in its sights. With newer guns, they often use an infrared camera, and you put a sensor bar with IR diodes on it. The gun tracks the position of the diodes as the player moves the gun around, and it calculates its position in relation of the screen. During the 16 bit days they tried making light guns that fired an IR signal at an IR camera that sat on top of the screen like with the Super Scope and Menacer for the SNES and Genesis respectively, but unfortunately these guns worked very poorly, which resulted in a decline of light gun games in the 16 bit age.

I was always under the impression that the Super Scope and Menacer were standard lens & light sensor setups...and the IR was just to wirelessly send the hit/miss signal to the console instead of using a cord. If it was as your describing, then they would work just as well with HD TV's.

Also...They didn't use cameras. It was a simple photoresistor or photo-diode. The resistance changes depending on the intensity of light hitting it.

[The 1 2 P]

I'm still wondering why they don't work on hdtv's.

[MrSparkle]

refresh rate, or given certain types of tvs lcd and plasma completely different method of refresh.

[demen999]

I hear they don't work on Rear Projection tv's is that true?

[jb143]

I hear they don't work on Rear Projection tv's is that true?

I don't know for sure but I can see how that might be the case. Some of those TV's focus the image from 3 different CRTs onto the screen(1 for each color). So the light gun might get confused.

[demen999]

I got some light gun games and don't use them downstairs (RP HDTV), just upstairs on my trusty 14 yr old sony 26' tv.