A question (light gun game related)

[Muscelli]

Hey I was wondering if light gun games would work with projectors on the wall? My new house will have a bigass wall and I think it would be amazing to play a life size time crisis.. I am assuming it does? Because my light gun games work on my rear projection T.V. (using dreamcast and saturn, I dont have any sony systems)

Also, are thereany wall projectors that work with gaming that are relatively cheap? I am not that concerned with quality, but I dont want it to look like im looking through a shower door :/

[davidbrit2]

Hey I was wondering if light gun games would work with projectors on the wall? My new house will have a bigass wall and I think it would be amazing to play a life size time crisis.. I am assuming it does? Because my light gun games work on my rear projection T.V. (using dreamcast and saturn, I dont have any sony systems)

If it's an LCD front-projection, the answer is almost definitely no. The light gun depends on the highly predictable timing of the CRT scan, and LCD screens are completely different in that respect. Also, a good number of CRT HDTVs won't work with current light guns.

Rear projection is different, in that most of them actually just use extremely bright CRTs to create the image, and so the gun can still interpret the scan timing correctly (assuming it's not some kind of HDTV, of course).

[pacmanhat]

I don't believe so. The way light guns work doesn't allow for certain TV's to work, let alone projections. Now that I think about it, I have a friend who tried HotD III on one and it didn't work at all.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. :/

[Drexel923]

I'd talk to Kid Ice (Jeff) about this. He has a nice wall projector setup and he also has smaller TVs elsewhere (specifically for light gun games). He may be able to give you suggestions.

[Muscelli]

shoot, I can still dream :( Thanks for the responses guys

[youruglyclone]

I recall reading about a lightgun that can work with non CRTs I'll see if I can dig up that site again...

[njiska]

Lightgun games like duck hunt should still work, in theory with rear projection LCD tv's because it uses a simple method of determining a hit. Simply replace the object needing to be shoot with a white block and make the background black.

However i don't think any will work with front projection because there's not light being shot at the gun.

This should explain a lot to you:

From WIKIPEDIA:
How light guns work

The "light gun" is so named because it uses light as its method of detecting where on screen you are targeting. The name leads one to believe that the gun itself emits a beam of light, but in fact all light guns actually receive light through a photoreceptor diode in the gun barrel. The diode uses light reception to do its targeting, in conjunction with a timed mechanism between the trigger of the gun and some rather smart graphics programming.

There are two versions of this technique that are commonly used, but the concept is the same: when you pull the trigger of the gun, the screen is blanked out to black, and the diode begins reception. All or part of the screen is painted white in a way that allows the computer to judge where the gun is pointing, based on when the diode detects light. The user of the light gun notices nothing, because the period in which the screen is blank is very short.

Method one

The first detection method, used by the 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), that is the target the gun is pointed at. Essentially, the diode tells the computer whether or not you hit something, and for n objects, the sequence of the drawing of the targets tell the computer which target you hit after 1 + ceil(log2(n)) refreshes (one way to determine if any target at all was hit and ceil(log2(n)) to do a binary search for the object that was hit).

An interesting side effect of this is that on poorly designed games, often a player can point the gun at a light bulb, pull the trigger and hit the first target every time. Better games account for this by not using the first target for anything.

The second method, used by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System's Super Scope and computer light pens is more elaborate but more accurate.

Method two

The trick to this method lies in the nature of the cathode ray tube inside the video monitor (it does not work with LCD screens, projectors, etc.). The screen is drawn by a scanning electron beam that travels across the screen starting at the top until it hits the end, and then moves down to update the next line. This is done repeatedly until the entire screen is drawn, and appears instantaneous to the human eye as it is done very quickly.

When the player pulls the trigger, the game brightens the entire screen for a split second, and the computer (often assisted by the display circuitry) times how long it takes the electron beam to excite the phosphor at the location the gun is pointed at. It then calculates the targeted position based on the monitor's horizontal refresh rate (the fixed amount of time it takes the beam to get from the left to right side of the screen).

Detection

Once the computer knows where the gun is pointed at, it can tell if it coincides with the target or not. However, many guns of this type (including the Super Scope) ignore red light, as red phosphors have a much slower rate of decay than green or blue phosphors.

A game that uses more than one gun reads both triggers continuously and then, when one player pulls a gun's trigger, the game polls that gun's diode until it knows which object was hit.

Hope that helps.

[Joker T]

I recall reading about a lightgun that can work with non CRTs I'll see if I can dig up that site again...

I just found one on IGN.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/689/689009p1.html

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c15/JoKerT617/lcd-top-gun-20060215044850536.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c15/JoKerT617/lcd-top-gun-20060215044902801.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c15/JoKerT617/lcd-top-gun-20060215044912082.jpg

Looks a little to real, the wires even disconnect off the bottom @_@

[GameSlaveGaz]

Also, are thereany wall projectors that work with gaming that are relatively cheap? I am not that concerned with quality, but I dont want it to look like im looking through a shower door :/

For inexpensive, there's the ZoomBox. I think the suggested retail price is $300 or $350. You can get them at Toys R Us and most likely Wal-Mart, Target and the like. It's average quality, from what I can gather. It's intended for home entertainment use and it has a built-in DVD player and AV jacks to plug in almost anything -especially consoles. However, you can plug a console into nearly any projector. Really good projectors, like the inFocus brand, can cost you $800 or more. You could probably get away with the ZoomBox though, since you don't need to project a massive cinema-sized image, just a big wall-sized image, which it's intended for (you can also project on the ceiling, if that suits your fancy) and it's in a reasonable price-range However, I don't know how clear the picture is since I haven't seen one in action. So I don't know if you'll get the "shower door" look or not.

[unwinddesign]

If you want a decent, relatively cheap projector, check out the Dell 2100 MP. You can grab one for around $700. It supports HD (though it's upscaled) and it looks great. Mine is at the center of my home theater and it projects a 70" image with no problems. Games like Halo 2 in multiplayer are fantastic with everyone's screen being the size of a normal CRT.

[EnzoSangiorgio]

If you want a decent, relatively cheap projector, check out the Dell 2100 MP. You can grab one for around $700. It supports HD (though it's upscaled) and it looks great. Mine is at the center of my home theater and it projects a 70" image with no problems. Games like Halo 2 in multiplayer are fantastic with everyone's screen being the size of a normal CRT.
Nope, the 2100MP is not HD. It's an SVGA projector (800x600), and it's 4:3 aspect ratio. What you meant to say is probably downscaled. It'll play HD sources, but they won't be IN HD (not by a longshot).
The InFocus SP5000 is WXGA (1280x720...HD) and is $900 with a free 76'' screen. I have one now and couldn't be happier, for the price.

[Bleetness]

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c15/JoKerT617/lcd-top-gun-20060215044850536.jpg

So thats what leon's gun looks like.