Can light gun games ever make a comeback? I miss these things like you wouldn't believe

By virtue of the technology used, no. VR "may" save the genre.

Just play literally any VR shooter?

it's literal poorly trained dog behavior

The best one is IR sensor in Wii remote

What year is this? Even Quest controllers are waaaaay better than Wii motion plus. Like so much better that only someone who haven't used them would even think of comparing

Sinden lightgun as good as the real thing
I still prefer CRT lightguns because insta play no set up

I wouldn't say never, but they're intrinsically fairly infeasible due to a massive difference in terms of basic cost. An old lightgun was literally 2 dollars in parts, a light sensor and a basic microcontroller with a couple of switches.

A modern lightgun would require accurate 3D positional tracking, which does not exist (in the sub 50k market), and is a very complex field. There are simplistic ways to do it, you can have an IR array around your screen and a camera in the gun, you can track some known shape with a camera, you can shoot a laser at the screen and pick it up with a camera, or you could put multiple sensors on the gun and shoot lasers at them for timing data (and gyros to pick up the slack).

All of these have flaws and inherent inaccuracies. And they're all reasonably costly, we're talking 10-20 bucks minimum in parts, 100+ in the worst case. And none of them are plug and play.

Buy a VR headset, play vrfps games. It's like playing airsoft in your room.

Go to Dave and Busters.

Anyone who says this kind of shit is a literal retard. It's nothing like airsoft, it's nothing like an actual lightgun game, you're holding 2 stupidly shaped controllers in front of your face and trying to aim with a resolution that's sub 480p.

Lots, but IR sensors are the best.

Sinden release a lightgun.
The guy in question is a giant cunt.
Very difficult to have a conversation with.
Bought from him? Prepare to wait over a year.
Scalpers selling these on ebay at x3 times the price and not even the recoil version.
It works basically via stealing the xpadder program and making it think the lightgun is a mouse.

This is a fantastic gun but the guy who made it really is a shit

This.
VR is where light gun games are at now.

sub 50k market

A full Index kit is 10k.
How them grapes Rajeet? Maybe in 10 years you can afford a VR headset.
Mah nigga

IR sensors are the best.

No, they aren't. There is no solution to the minimum distance problem with IR (and other camera in the gun solutions), which makes it useless for arcade accuracy and beyond.

you can emulate all the old rail shooters and play them in vr with emuvr

1k I mean.

emuvr

First we get the retarded cultist spamming his dogshit webms, then we get the emuvr retard, great.

VR is dogshit, it is nothing CLOSE to a light gun experience. EmuVR is awful le 90s kid room sim software, you can play a fraction of titles on crappy fake screens. I would have more respect for you if you recommended 3DSEN, at least that vaguely worked, if only for a single system.

didn't nintendo try with some LABO cardboard gun?

T. 50k rupees guy, dunno how much 50k rupees is but must me way above 299 dollars wich is how much a quest is.

Why would you say that? Literally every console right now has an attachable camera and a way to track controller movement. Sony has had lightgun games on every home console they've ever released, unless you for some reason don't count VR games on PS5 (which you absolutely should because it's just the natural progression of the tech and genre) Also like someone else mentioned VR arcade shooters have replaced lightgun games because they're better in just about every way.

That was just gyro. The problem with gyro is that it's really accurate and fast for updating, but it's absolute DOGSHIT in terms of accuracy. You need a reference system for it to orient itself properly, or you wind up with significant drift in 20 seconds. Sony did a better job with PS move, and Nintendo did a better job themselves with MotionPlus, and both of those systems were atrocious.

Now you're suggesting inside-out tracking is anything close to 1:1 accuracy? I mean, you were already delusional when you mentioned lighthouses, but this is just sad.

Technically had this for the Wii. But most people that played FPS games during the Wii's lifecycle preferred the 360 and PS3

Nah, your life, career, bank account and future is sad.

VR arcade shooters have replaced lightgun games because they're better in just about every way.

I haven't touched my headset in at least a couple of years, and I play through Virtua Cop and Time Crisis every month or two. It's laughable how bad VR is compared to actual games.

minimum distance problem

So... not a problem?

You can already tell he's standing a bit too close for proper sensor coverage. He can aim near the middle of the screen, if he heads towards the corners he'll lose tracking. The recommended distance is 1.5x the diagonal size of the screen, which is too far for anyone with a brain. And that's gun distance, too. You'll be standing another 2 feet away.

I don't think a lot of people understand that the screens actually got SMALLER after the switch to LCD in the arcades. You could never make a deluxe TC3 cab today, a 50 inch screen at those distances? Wouldn't work, you'd need to clear 8 feet of space in front of the cab for the guns to track.

if he heads towards the corners he'll lose tracking.

No?

No way Jose.

You're so full of shit lmao. If they released those same games in VR you'd be singing their praises. Seems like rose tinted glasses to me. There isn't a single aspect in which traditional lightgun games are better than VR shooters. You slap your controllers in a gun shaped shell that costs a fraction of what an actual lightgun peripheral costs these days and it's literally the same experience, but better and more immersive.
Have you ever seen a time crisis machine in real life? Why do you think kids always want to physically duck behind cover even though it's just a simple foot pedal mechanism? Why do you think later machines started adding upper body tracking and encouraging you to physically dodge? Because anyone with half a brain knew that further immersion and meaningful movement was the natural evolution of the genre.
Post a time stamp of your dusty VR headset that's been sitting for years anon. Go ahead.

Just moved to a new city and found out that the retro bar nearby has a TC3 machine. I haven't seen one in 20 fucking years.

Anon-kun, I don't think you remember what the real arcade light gun experience was like. The majority of games had you standing like 10 ft away shooting at a tiny 28" inch screen. And we all still loved it.

Why do people who lack basic reading comprehension post so confidently?

Unless you live in the arctic circle or africa there are still arcades with light gun games. To get there you're going to need a car, then a driver's license. You're in for an adventure waging lil bro!

Could really go for a game of Time Crisis 2 or 3 right now

If they released those same games in VR you'd be singing their praises

I wouldn't, I'd be annoyed that they locked the game behind wearing a cumbersome headset with an awful resolution.

You slap your controllers in a gun shaped shell that costs a fraction of what an actual lightgun peripheral costs these days and it's literally the same experience, but better and more immersive.

The weight is all wrong. You're acting like I haven't tried these things, I've got a fucking PPgun 2 feet away from me. They're shit, they're nothing like a bog standard 10 dollar light gun, and they're a comical joke compared to something decent like a Namco arcade gun.

Why do you think later machines started adding upper body tracking and encouraging you to physically dodge?

The difference here is that Police 911 is actually fun. VR isn't, because of the cumbersome design. Pistol Whip is the closest VR gets to a light gun title, and it's a dull moving corridor game that's ultimately not half as fun as Police 911 was.

I'm sorry you had to play shit machines. That one has fucking Happ guns in it, what a bad joke. I don't know why anyone would be satisfied with tiny screens in the modern day. And before you go "b-but he's got a 40" screen hooked up!", he's standing so far away it's no better than that 28" one, because the further away you are, the less of your FOV the screen takes up. You could get a 120" screen, but use a Sinden/Gun4IR on it, and it's still worse than an old 50" rear projection cab.

No. Light guns require CRT screens for tracking. We've got motion gun games with stuff like VR and the Wii but the lack of recoil feedback makes it feel lacking

The wiimote is a light gun

lightgun

here's an idea for any dev. Make an eye-tracking rail gun game where you aim with your eyes. Add an effect which blurs every part of the screen you arent currently aiming at.

Old light gun games were designed for small screens, so your comment about "arcade accuracy" is already wrong. The experience is not the same (and I'd argue worse) if you're trying to sit close to a 50" screen.

How did light gun tech work? Say Duck Hunt, how did the nes know where it was pointed at a crt screen? Never understood that.

I miss my arcade's HOTD cabinet. I emulated it recently but it's just not the same...

Games are more fun on a bigger screen. It's more fun if you have to move more. Ideally, sure, I'd have a 100" screen and stand further back, but I enjoy my 43" screen at 3 feet away just fine.

CRTs draw a line in a zig zag down the screen. The gun detects white light and how long it took for the gun to see white, which gives you a position when you know exactly when the frame started to be drawn.

yeah i just downloaded it just to make sure and it works perfectly
i tried time crisis on the ps1 and had 0 issues
so yeah sucks to be you i guess

i tried time crisis on the ps1 and had 0 issues

That's cute, have you tried the real version of TC1? You know, the arcade one that works fine in MAME now? Oh, what about TC2? Or TC3? Or TC4? Because I can play all of those through emulators.

Ppgun

bad resolution brought up again

So your VR experience basicly boils down to sticking a phone in a cheap plastic headset, gotcha.

No headset made in the last 5 years is going to have this bad resolution you keep going on about, and even within the past decade you'd have to be buying some pretty cheap shit to have a noticeably bad resolution.
There's nothing cumbersome about vr setup, it's literally plug and play in most cases and if the extra step of strapping on a headset is genuinely so cumbersome to you that it ruins your entire day, I find it hard to believe you're arguing in good faith here.

Release Time Crisis or Area 51 remake on the PS5, include a high end physical gun controller with all the bells and whistles, and make it playable both flat and in VR. I can 100 fucking % guarantee you that everyone who tried both would say VR mode is the better experience, and you'd be lying to yourself if you said it wasn't.

Because I can play all of those through emulators

as soon as someone puts mame into retroarch i can play those in emuvr

Anon just play vr and get some gay gun attachment. Its better than a light gun

a phone in a cheap plastic headset

Do you not even know what the ppgun was? It's a rifle with a vive tracker on it, retard and some light shoulder recoil, retard.

I can 100 fucking % guarantee you that everyone who tried both would say VR mode is the better experience,

You think a buggy 3D port of TC1 would trump solenoid recoil? Yeah, you're a cultist to the extreme.

No headset made in the last 5 years is going to have this bad resolution you keep going on about

They all do. You don't comprehend resolution, 4k per eye is laughably low compared with a regular screen. Higher FOV coverage translates to less actual resolution where you need it.

No, you'd (maybe, depending on the version) be able to play TC1. You'd need PS2 emulation for TC2 and 3, RPCS3 for 4 and you'd need Teknoparrot for TC5. You can't even play a decent version of Virtua Cop in that garbage.

A 50 inch screen at those distances? Wouldn't work

Bro they solved this shit back in 2005 what are you talking about

you not even know what the ppgun was

A cheap plastic peripheral designed for mobile games lmao

solenoid recoil?

Like I said, the controller would have that. Try reading, retard.

They all do

You're just further proving you've never used a modern VR headset. You talk about Vive like it's the industry standard and not just shy of a decade old, in an industry with new bleeding edge improvements every year.

I get you want to die on this hill and refuse to think objectively, but you're gonna die alone.

Games are more fun on a bigger screen.

Not really otherwise everyone would game on a projector.

Anyways I haven't tried out anything but Sinden, but for my use case there's no issue playing light gun games with them on my 40" TV which is all I need.

Sadly no. Arcade games as a whole died in the mid 2000s. Lightgun games were a core arcade staple. Even fighting games are on life support now. That kind of game design is just not in anymore

Did you ever wonder why they switched to a machine gun for that game? Because the tracking was shit, you have to aim with the bullet spray, not down the barrel.

A cheap plastic peripheral designed for mobile games lmao

It's also the closest thing to a light gun that has ever been adapted for VR. Go on, show me your magical solenoid VR gun? Oh, right, it'd break every form of tracking, ouch. And nobody would ever make one anyway, VR is a money pit with no userbase.

You talk about Vive

The TRACKER, you sperg. Talk about dishonest.

bleeding edge improvements

8k per eye would be the bare MINIMUM for usability. 16k if you want reasonable sight picture parity for guns. Yes, these are absurd numbers. But that's how absurdly premature VR is.

People don't game on projectors because they're a hassle to set up. Obviously there's a limit to how big you can make a screen before it takes up too much of your visual field and becomes cumbersome to use, but for light gun games I'm very happy with a 50 degree horizontal field of view, which you can't physically get with sinden.

Did you ever wonder why they switched to a machine gun for that game? Because the tracking was shit, you have to aim with the bullet spray, not down the barrel

I never had a problem with it, nor HotD Ex, TC4 or 5 which all feature semi-auto weapons and 50"+ screens

I genuinely think you're just a sperg

I wish.

CRTs draw a line in a zig zag down the screen

Crazy, did not know that.

The Wiimote is perfectly fine at being a lightgun, in fact modern lightgun arcade games use basically the same tech. It may be beaten in the wagglan department nowadays but for pointing that's irrelevant.

People don't game on projectors because they're a hassle to set up

Not only is that wrong, even looking at PC gaming there's a reason why people don't typically go bigger than 27".

VR games

Because the tracking was shit, you have to aim with the bullet spray, not down the barrel.

This is unironically a skill issue on your part, or maybe your cab was not configured properly. I have literally never had a problem with TC4 bullets going where I needed them to.

hasn't tried VR

it's not that expensive anon

Woops I clearly meant HotD4, but now that I mention it even when using the MACHINE GUN in TC4 I had zero issues with tracking either.

I just wanna play Point Blank again bros

wiimote and psmove

I wish I played it when I had the chance in 2000, same with Police 911.

No one uses peripherals any more

I'm playing it with my shitden fine

I thought the Switch has a few games that use gyro for aiming.
The Wiimote and PS Move were probably the last real controllers.

the best ir sensor tech is that combines multiple lights and a very high poling rate. something that is not used in most devices.

I hope.
I've only found a handful of original and ports of lightgun/rail shooters for the Switch.
I was hoping to attempt to try to make one.

Gyro in joycons was good enough to make a working gun housing so if you have a 3d printer and nothing enough to do you can make your own
they would never exist as a ready product again since nobody is buying a separate meme controller for a handfful of games ever again

you'd love VR, those games are nothing but light gun shit

wrong shill
vr is a retarded gimmick for furry erp anyway

Light gun games have specific gameplay, typically enemies and obstacles popping up while you go between one location to another with no free movement.

so basically let me break your modern options down

Sinden

Camera in the gun, the software puts a border around the gameplay but so long as the gun sees the border it will never lose tracking. It gets the job done, but is kind of expensive, PC-only without extra hardware for other things or some obtuse setups on emulation boxes. Biggest problem is the camera is 60FPS, which sounds good up until you realize that this means it feels like it has some noticeable "input lag" that's just the camera catching up, making them feel sluggish in more hardcore games.

Gun4IR / Wiimote

Set up IR sensors on/around your display, then you get the corresponding thing set up to the computer/machine. I dunno much on setup software wise, I imagine there's probably special programs for this. Guns can't get too close to a large display or it loses track of the sensors and loses tracking. However, this is way faster than Sinden, and if you've got a good setup is basically your best physical option. There's a variety of controllers out there, DIY or pre-built, if you don't just buy a Wiimote to do it instead, though that's not very ergonomic for lightgunning.

EmuVR

I dunno what console generation it stops at, but EmuVR lets you set up TVs, consoles and games inside a 90's style bedroom, takes a bit of fine-tuning in the program and probably some community documentation research. From there, you can emulate lightgun games and get models for the lightguns themselves. Literally, VR simulating lightgun games. Basically breaks any need for physical materials and limitations, but you need a solid enough VR setup to pull it off which is still a couple hundred dollars minimum, only viable if you're planning on other things with VR.

any other options, others can probably better elucidate

close range to 25" CRT is huge. specially if 4:3

the motion clarity is better because they don't updade what's needed but the whole screen tons of times per second refarless of framerate.

DOGS OF THE AMS
TIME THEYMADETHEMOVE

I only ever considered buying a crt tv for time crisis 2

I spent so many hours playing HotD2 on Dreamcast with the lightgun controller

You are stuck with shitty IR equivalents with a fuckton of lag and inaccurate controls. Having played some lightgun games on the "superior" PS Move I’m quite upset that they remotely compare. Especially in something like Dead Space Extraction I found myself regularly recalibrating the controller and it was unplayable without the reticle (something that I refuse to use on a REAL lightgun game like HotD)

The guy in question is a giant cunt.

one year

Is it really that bad? Does the guy at least give you a fair product warranty?

That's not close range.

Not even modern arcade light gun games use that outside of specialty/flagship cabs.

I didn't even say a number.

That's not close range.

I know. that's why I said it.

I assumed you replying to my image, but if not then I don't know why you even replied desu.

I wonder if you could mod House of the Dead games to work in VR so you're standing competely in the 3D scene, that would be awesome. I guess enemies would spawn out of thin air if you look 'offscreen' tho

not sure what are you expecting either?
point-blank shot?

So you replied without even knowing what you meant? Again not sure why you did that.

They could just do monster closets and such, or do like Gun Club VR where enemies will pop up or spawn in when you jump from scene to scene.

at this point I doubt you ever played LG games.

Replies to a post with nebulous subjective opinion

Gets passive aggressive when called out

Typical Anon Babble.

responds to something I didn't even mentioned.

calls me wrong.

yeah... typical Anon Babble

yeah if you were making a game from the ground up you would do that, but I was thinking modding HotD in emulator, so it'd use the existing level setups

Replies to someone with non-sequitur

Gets asked to clarify, then starts shitting his pants uncontrollably