Zapper and modern TV's?

[oRBIT2002]

Can the Zapper be modified to work with modern LCD/Plasma TV's?

[Quietust]

It could certainly be modified to work on a CRT HDTV, but I suspect getting it to work with an LCD would be impossible.

[SkinnyV]

The zapper work on my HD CRT so no modification required for that. But LCD is another story.

[lidnariq]

If the TV imposes any frame delay: certainly not. All games require that the light be seen within 1 vsync (20ms or 16ms, depending).

After that, it's conceivable that some games might work with a different zapper-like thing could be build that would basically be a highpass filter and a photodiode. The game would specifically have to do the thing that duck hunt does where it shows a black screen, and then 1 bounding box per vsync. Any game that uses timed code to extract a Y coordinate won't work.

[mikejmoffitt]

The zapper work on my HD CRT so no modification required for that. But LCD is another story.

You are actually pretty lucky in this regard - a lot of HD CRTs work internally like modern digital HDTVs in that they render to a framebuffer and then output that to the display rather than affecting the beam in real time. For example, my friend's HD CRT won't let him play duck hunt for this reason; despite the source content being 240p, it is being scaled to the TV's internal resolution, and the NES's scanlines no longer corrospond to those of the television.

[rainwarrior]

What if you built your game with a tunable detection delay? Maybe you could put an option in the menu to specify some number of frames to wait between showing the detection targets and actually testing the zapper? Perhaps you could have an interactive calibration screen.

[lidnariq]

Indeed; I understand that Guitar Hero included a light sensor so that it could make sure your button presses aligned to what you saw. (It may have also included a microphone to compensate for audio delay, I forget)

So, yes, I think a new light gun could be manufactured, and new games could be written to allow for that.

However, this does make for a nice idea for an emulator that would work on HDTVs with this delay: when the trigger is pulled, rewind and simulate the Zapper's reaction based on where the modern lightgun is aimed.

[LocalH]

What if you built your game with a tunable detection delay? Maybe you could put an option in the menu to specify some number of frames to wait between showing the detection targets and actually testing the zapper? Perhaps you could have an interactive calibration screen.

I would think calibration could be automatic. Have the player pull the trigger with the gun pointed at the screen and count frames until the gun activates. There's your "lag calibration" as they call it in the plastic instrument genre.

Offtopic: It was Rock Band 2 that came with a guitar that included a photosensor and microphone for automatic lag caliration. RB2 also had a better manual calibration screen where you strum/hit a drum pad separately to a visual and aural metronome-type stimuli. GH series has a good audio calibration technique but a poor video one, especially in GH5 and 6.