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Light gun
A light gun is a pointing device for computers and a control device for arcade and video games, typically shaped to resemble a pistol.
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, released in 1966 as the company's first successful game, which requires the player to target cardboard ships. Periscope is an early electro-mechanical game, and the first arcade game to cost one quarter per play. Sega's 1969 game Missile features electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen, and its 1972 game 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, followed in 1974 by the arcade game Wild Gunman, which uses film projection to display the target on the screen. In 1975, Sega released the early co-operative light gun shooters Balloon Gun and Bullet 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.
The Wii Remote uses an infrared video camera in the handheld controller, rather than a simple sensor. Wesley Yin-Poole stated that the Wii Remote was not as accurate as a traditional light gun.
GunCon 3 is an infrared light gun used for the PlayStation 3 port of Time Crisis 4.
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.
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Light gun AI simulator
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Light gun
A light gun is a pointing device for computers and a control device for arcade and video games, typically shaped to resemble a pistol.
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, released in 1966 as the company's first successful game, which requires the player to target cardboard ships. Periscope is an early electro-mechanical game, and the first arcade game to cost one quarter per play. Sega's 1969 game Missile features electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen, and its 1972 game 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, followed in 1974 by the arcade game Wild Gunman, which uses film projection to display the target on the screen. In 1975, Sega released the early co-operative light gun shooters Balloon Gun and Bullet 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.
The Wii Remote uses an infrared video camera in the handheld controller, rather than a simple sensor. Wesley Yin-Poole stated that the Wii Remote was not as accurate as a traditional light gun.
GunCon 3 is an infrared light gun used for the PlayStation 3 port of Time Crisis 4.
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.