Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

Mother of... Sinden Lightgun (60fps camera-based lightgun - no more sensor bars!)


nathanddrews

Recommended Posts

So this is a thing that I'm sure many of have thought would work, but never accomplished. My wife and I just backed this Kickstarter (the 2-gun pack for ~$240 USD). It works on any screen - CRT, LCD, OLED, PDP, even PROJECTION! 5ms tracking/image processing time on top of any obvious screen latency. But dat accuracy... dang! 

Right now, the only downside that I can see is that it requires a white border around the game content in order for the camera software to "see" the bounds of the screen. However, that's a small price to pay for ZERO calibration, being able to move around the room/couch, rotate the gun, etc. Seems super versatile and crazy accurate!

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sindenlightgun/the-sinden-lightgun/description

 

Edited by nathanddrews
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/23/2019 at 6:17 AM, DOS76 said:

You guys are extremely brave. I'm hoping that this turns out to be a great product but until its been made I'm too skeptical

 

Me too, although it looks reasonably legit. My only concern would be whether or not they finish the project to completion. I've seen a lot of Kickstarters run a good sprint but then fail to go the distance. But I think a generous discount should be given to all who donate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/22/2019 at 1:41 PM, nathanddrews said:

So this is a thing that I'm sure many of have thought would work, but never accomplished. My wife and I just backed this Kickstarter (the 2-gun pack for ~$240 USD). It works on any screen - CRT, LCD, OLED, PDP, even PROJECTION! 5ms tracking/image processing time on top of any obvious screen latency. But dat accuracy... dang! 

Right now, the only downside that I can see is that it requires a white border around the game content in order for the camera software to "see" the bounds of the screen. However, that's a small price to pay for ZERO calibration, being able to move around the room/couch, rotate the gun, etc. Seems super versatile and crazy accurate!

 

I want to learn more about this. Does the white border get created by this lightguns drivers, or is it something we have to generate for each game? Exciting nonetheless. I am a lightgun FREAK. My favorite genre, hands down. But I am disappointed in every offering on the market to the point I use a mouse for all my lightgun needs. I look forward to the day an accurate, intuitive lightgun hits the market that costs under $50 USD. If I had the skills I would make it myself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From what I understand right now from watching and reading all the content about this gun - the white box around the game is an overlay created by the gun software. It runs independent of any other game/content on the display. If you haven't already noticed, the white box in the demo covers up health bars, etc. at the edges of the screen. I believe that if this lightgun makes it to market and gains traction, there will have to be some changes to how games are scaled (98% resolution scale?) in order to see the entire game screen within said white box.

I messaged Sinden about a few questions that I had and here is his response. I'm super excited now!

1. What sort of focal length/field of view does the 60fps camera have? Another way to ask this is: "What distance away from our 120" projection screen do we need to sit to be able to use these guns?"

2. Will the white border be adjustable to accommodate displays susceptible to burn-in (CRT, Plasma, OLED)? I imagine options to change the color and brightness of the border will be needed by some users.

Quote

 

Sinden Technology

Hi Nathan, a general rule of thumb is 1.5 times the width of your display, you need to stand back. That's width not diagonal. So if you are playing a 4:3 game on a 16:9 display you can stand a bit closer too because the width is smaller.

It does work a little bit closer but it starts to make assumptions and eventually you get too close and it stops working.

I researched burn in previously and found that even the most passionate lightgun gamer is unlikely to clock up enough time to do any damage however I'm going to add a feature to the Sinden Lightgun software so that the dynamic border actually cycles pixels so each individual border pixel is only on for short periods of time.

You can also change the colour and brightness of the border so for example a dull grey reduces the brightness a bit which also helps.

Thanks

Andy

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...