Light Guns As Fast As Possible

Remember the light guns we used to play games like Duck Hunt? How do they work, and how come they've disappeared from the console scene?

[LazerLord]

Yeah, I've played duck hunt with a light gun recently, and it's actually pretty impressive how accurate they are. We could be standing 20+ feet away from a 26 inch screen, and it would still properly register the hits.

[ZombieDancer]

I still have a CRT just for duck hunt. My 5 year old son was blown away and thought it was amazing.

[stellarfirefly]

While the idea behind why modern light guns don't work as accurately anymore is generally correct, it is a bit misleading. The real reason, at least with the popular cathode ray tube timing (CRT timing) guns like the Nintendo Zapper and the PlayStation GunCon series, is because the sensor detects phosphor *decay*. That is, it notices when a CRT phosphor representing a pixel dims before it is lit up again on the next screen refresh. Modern LCD/LED panels do not have their elements dim or decay noticeably in between refreshes, and thus the old CRT timing guns no longer work. Having faster refresh rates actually compounds this issue, and would have given older light guns problems instead of improving them as the video suggests.

The newer controllers use different methods. For example, the Wii Remote and the GunCon 3 simply senses two or more infrared diodes (in that black bar you place next to your TV) to determine the controller's position and orientation. A newer method has the gun controller actually take an image capture of the screen and analyzes it to determine where the player has shot, but I don't know of any popular controllers yet that use this.

[Quetzalcoatl]

so CS GO competitive gamers should by CRT monitors, consider that some of them think that low resolution 4:3 is better.

[yahyakebbe]

One of the greatest childhood mysteries explained! Thank you!

[KNnY_G]

3:50 "We've got a guy with a pretty dank super scope... Looks pretty lethal"

Pretty good..

[AltarenGalil]

One of the better fast as possible videos in a while now. Great topic!

[Derpressionator]

LOL The orange hands from the "LTT Edition" build. XD

[ozzynite]

thank you so much for explaining this. me and my friends were just debating about this guns few days back and now we have an answer. thanks a lot. really appreciate your work in research and easy explaining to us.

[LunaWuna]

Do Linus Tech tips as fast as possible.

[samk]

If the lightgun is looking for white pixels to register a hit, would you be able to put a piece of white paper in front of the gun and trick it into thinking you're hitting with every shot?

[ethanwasme]

3:51 can't believe you did that bro

[nassimback]

NEO GEO, Duck hunt, VCD 300 games, Dune 2000, fifa 1998, Metal Slug, Contra, NFS II SE....Best days of my life <3

[treknology]

There were variations in "light gun" technology. Some of them simply relied on the brightness of the CRT hoping that only the target dot was visible. I used to test these machines by pointing the gun at a fluoro-tube. I'm referring to the really early machines that were single-chip variants of "pong".

The next smartest was as you describe, a brief screen refresh showing only precise target locations to see if any registered on the gun. Again these could give 100% scores by pointing at a fluoro.

The highest level was equivalent to that used by the IBM light-pen port (yes, go back through your old hardware. Every graphic card prior to VGA had a 5-pin light-pen connector, although the actual pens were few and far between). In this case, a complete "white screen" refresh was done and the actual CRT scan trace that was detected by the pen/gun gave a "pixel-accurate" calculation.

Given the increasing quality and resolution of cheap camera sensors, I would imagine that a hand-held "gun" could achieve such accuracy because it "sees" LCD better than our eyes do, and image recognition has advanced so far (think about an optical mouse), that newer games consoles could determine a shot with extreme accuracy.

[anikun]

The Wii Remote (including Wii Remote Plus) used IR sensor to detect, not like the old light guns which had a light sensors to detect difference in light levels

[gloege]

linus has been working them hips lately

[asenrankov]

i dont play CoD but the hit marker cracks me up every time you use it in a video!

[Pesmerga]

that animation at 3:12 made me laugh so hard XD

[ShawnK]

Why so yellow hands tho?

aaannd







Daaaamn Linus, back at it again with them brown Saaandeels

[merk]

i love those old retro game like duck hunt, legends of Zelda and Mario... and wow can't Believe the way it has became...