Light gun on LCD TV

Does anyone know a method to make light guns work on LCD TVs? I've Heard of a scan line generator called SLG3000.

 

As far as I know it can't be done, believe me I've looked as I had light guns for PS1 and PS2. I gave up and got rid of them (to a friend) as they were taking up space.

 

A scan line generator just draws black lines across the screen, it doesn't help light guns work.

You can get a gun for the xbox and ps2 that work like a wiimote. http://www.amazon.com/LCD-TopGun-Light-Gun-XBOX/sim/B000VWAE8U/2

They are a pain to setup and seem quite fragile, I was given one by someone who had given up on it and it worked for a couple of days before not even recognising when it was plugged in.

 

Nothing will help you make a conventional Light Gun work on an LCD TV. It's just the way Light gun works requires a CRT screen with NTSC or PAL interlaced resolution. You can go look it up on Wikipedia, it's fairly well summarized for everyone to understand.

What you need is are special light guns that use IR tracking (like the Wii remote). You must add IR emitters around your TV (ugly) to make it work. Google for EMS TopGun. Version II or III are almost the same except for the latter being wireless. These guns work on PC, Xbox1, PS2, PS3 but does not support GunCon games on playstation.

That's the only alternative to purchasing an old CRT TV (and don't try a CRT HDTV, my Toshiba didn't work with light guns, even at 480i) or an old VGA CRT monitor.

 

This is incorrect. Firstly, NTSC or PAL are not required for lightguns to work. RGB and component work just as well. The image also doesn't need to be interlaced, although it can be. There are many 240p games that use lightguns. I've also read that CRT computer monitors can support lightguns over VGA, though I've never tried this myself. But you're right that it does require a CRT.

Light guns work by detecting the light emitted by a CRT, typically during a "flash" when the trigger is pulled. CRTs don't render the entire image at once like an LCD or plasma display - they "scan" the image horizontally and vertically at a speed faster than the human eye is capable of perceiving. The light gun can detect how much light is coming off of the display at that particular point in the scan, and together with the game data, it can calculate the orientation of the gun. So, all you need to use a light gun is a CRT. This completes tape 1 of gaming lessons by Professor la-li-lu-le-lo.

One other bit of advice: using a scaler or scan convertor to connect an RGB or component source to a VGA monitor does not allow you to use a lightgun, sadly. I've tried it.

 

The only "light gun" that might work on an LCD is those old hokey '12087234097623746234 in 1!!!' TV home shopping channel game consoles. They blank the screen for a frame, with a white square over the "target", and the gun just decides whether it's pointed at a white patch or a black patch.

As long as your LCD's input lag is low enough, that should work.

Not the synchronised light guns though, such as G-con 45, as la-li-lu-le-lo explains.

 

Isn't that what the NES zapper does too?

 

None of them work, period. Not enough even in rare exceptions to be worthwhile.

 

Uhh, it has nothing to do with NTSC, PAL, SECAM, RGB, composite, component or any video terms other than CRT. Don't forget that NTSC and PAL are video standards, whereas RGB, composite etc. are video signals. You can have NTSC video over RGB. Oh, and CRT television screens were always interlaced.

Yes, a lightgun only works with a CRT because of its raster. Effectively, most lightguns work by timing how far along the scan line the gun is pointing (or using a composite adapter to read the image, as with GunCon). LCD raster doesn't work with a scan line, so it's never going to work.

This did cause problems with 100Hz televisions, but that was fixable and there ARE 100Hz compatible guns. I think you'd have problems still on rear projection televisions, though.

In theory, the IR method should be capable of making a pretty decent gun. Look at GunCon 3, for example. However, they tend to fall short. Likewise, the Wiimote uses IR, albeit in a more advanced manner.

 

I must say that I disagree with you. NTSC and PAL are drawing standards for TVs. They define a "resolution" for every (or most because there are always exceptions!) non-HD TVs. Invariably of a source, on NTSC, an image is draw on 525 horizontal lines at a combined rate of ~29.97fps and it will always be done in an interlaced manner. Even if your CRT TV can take RGB in with a 480p signal, you'll still get the same output resolution on the screen. So, by extend, NTSC or PAL standard is required for a light gun to work on a TV as everything is a essentially a question of timing. This particular 2 following sections of wikipedia are somewhat relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_gun#Cathode_ray_timing


CRT HDTV do work differently, they'll either draw in a true progressive way or double the refresh rate to draw in an interlaced manner and still hit ~60fps.

CRT VGA monitors do work with some systems (I personally tried it with the Dreamcast). Simply because the system takes into account that you hooked the console with VGA and adjust it's timing for a resolution of 640x480 instead of NTSC standard. It still draws like a TV but does it in a progressive manner.

I don't know what would be the effect on a Professional or broadcaster grade TV.

My point exactly, the system outputs a Component or RGB signal and assume you hooked it up to a TV, which would display it using NTSC/PAL standard but you hook it up to a VGA monitor which will support and draw in progressive, messing up the timing. Maybe the original Xbox light gun would work in such configuration because the system was designed with support for progressive scan HDTVs.

I'm not saying I'm a light gun guru but I did study alot on TV & broadcasting standards.

 

Correct, but won't work anyway. It reacts to the CRT TVs. Computer monitors, LCDs etc won't work....

 

It's all based on screen refreshing, which modern TV's are nowhere close to how that functions on the old CRT's. The cheapest and most reasonable method is to keep an old CRT around.

 

Interesting.

Didn't those type work (in the earliest games) if you pointed them at a light bulb and pull the trigger?

 

So essentially we're back to square one...

Ether buy a CRT especially for this or give up the idea altogether. I gave it up because sometimes you can't have it both ways (I'm not rich). I just didn't have the room nor the inclination for a CRT.

I wish you all the best in whatever decision you make.

 

Think it only worked with the grey zappers. Never worked with an orange one for me.

 

It's very possible to rig up a system that would work, just not with the original zapper hardware.

If you could fit a camera and a reasonably powerful ARM board inside the zapper, you could do some simple image recognition to detect the flash of a black screen and search for a white square. Then it's just a matter of sending the correct signals back to the NES. Of course, you would have to have this running at a very fast speed. This recognition job should be simple enough that you might even be able to do it in an FPGA (though I don't believe any sane person would try this) if an embedded computer isn't fast enough.

It's a good bit of work, but there's definitely a reasonably significant market for a device like this if someone were to design and sell it.

 

Perhaps there's a reasonably significant market for a device called CRT TV?

They will pop up, I believe. Just like LP sound systems...

 

And laserdisc...

 

There is a solution but it's just a theory I came up with though but first I'll explain why light guns don't work on lcd's, most crt televisions I've seen use glass screens, this allows the lets call it a laser to bounce of back to the gun. Also the screen will go black for a fraction of a second and the target will turn white, the laser will bounce back to the light gun allowing it to detect whether it's pointing at its target. But lcd's usually use plastic so the laser can't come back to the gun. So here's my theory, measure your tv's screen length, then find a sheet of glass that is that length, then have a professional take out the plastic and replace it with the sheet of glass. Also if u wanna just get a crt but in hd but can't find one replace the graphics processor with a more advanced one.

 

Thats not going to work