How light pens and light guns work NES Zapper
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- Опубліковано 30 гру 2016
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In this episode I take an in depth look into how the Light Pen and NES Zapper gun actually work with a CRT display.
Now I can finally relax after pondering this question for about 30 years
It always blew my mind
RIP my friend
Could've googled it for at least 20 of those years. Fail lol
Same I was also wondering how the heck this worked
My friend knew that, so he fired a gun at the light. In a lamp. In this way he earned a lot of points. Such a hack :D
did it also works with multiple ducks? did they die at the same time?
@@chrisakaschulbus4903 No, you will make a quick click and you will kill the ducks at the same time. The developers of this game didn't think about this hack :)
yup, was gonna make the same comment
Me too
I did that accidentally i was shooting up and than point it to screen
9:00 that right there blew my mind. After all these years, it never once occurred to me to see what would happen if I press the buttons on the second controller
I picked up the controller and tried to control the duck purely as a joke. What a surprise it was when it worked!
@@palaceofwisdom9448 that was the best part!
The wife looked thrilled to be controlling the duck.
i want a pet duck
Mouse Trap and I want to die
Agree
I had to pause the video to find this exact comment!
im triggered because you called the independent self sufficient human female "the wife"
when hardware was limited, developers were so creative and cunning when making games with the most innovative solutions. Now since hardware is not an issue anymore, lot of AAA game developers don't even care about the optimization which require advanced and more expensive hardware
Also development time. Now you can download a game engine and have access to libraries for just about everything you need for a game, and software to tell you what syntax error you have and how to fix it. Back then you had no such luxury so why waste time learning how a niche controller works when you already know how to write code for a regular controller.
That's how technology advancement works though
Top ten facts spitted so hard it sticked to the screen
Show me an AAA developer who you think doesn't care about optimization and I'll show you an overworked underpaid bastard who was given N months on a game that realistically would've needed N*2
Games these days are 100x more complex than those games. I'm sure they're innovative on many levels.
It wasn't just persistence of vision that make the CRT image appear to be moving. The phosphors lit up by the electron beam take a little time to fade out. The persistence time can be varied by the manufacturer to fit different needs. Medium persistence phosphors in old fashioned RADAR scopes kept the image on screen for several seconds until it was updated by the rotating sweep. Tektroinix developed a CRT with a persistence measured in tens of minutes. They first used it in their oscilloscopes to capture a signals image, by 1963 they had developed it into one of the first computer graphics terminals.
High speed video proof: ua-cam.com/video/3BJU2drrtCM/v-deo.html
r/iamverysmart
What the hell?!! Reading that made my head explode. I suppose next you're going to tell me the light in the refridgerator goes out when you shut the door! :-p
@@benstalls208 r/ihavereddit
@@NateROCKS112 r/okayand?
The NES light gun used a more primitive method than competing guns on other systems. The Sega Master System light phaser for example used a different method which only needed a single frame to detect position. It worked like this: 1. Blank out the screen for one frame in white. 2. While this white frame is being drawn, the light phaser reports back to the computer at the very moment it can see the white electron beam. 3. By calculating how much time has passed for the beam to be seen, the computer can calculate position and if a target was hit.
This avoided drawing white boxes around multiple targets over many frames, and was the most popular method until the end of CRT screens.
So it worked like the light pens?
I remember the light gun on my PS1/2 was very accurate and worked as a cursor on the screen as well all the time, no matter if hitting fire or not.
The video "Playing Light Gun Games on a Modern LCD TV" from chipos81 used this method with the NES lightgun. Maybe both Master and NES used the same thing? Because you need to show bullets explosions, even if not hit a target.
Nope. Not the same. Chipos81 discribed the nes light gun wrong. Funny enough he discribed the sega gun more than the zapper. It just happned to work because he is emulating a tv screen essintually.
@@yvesnyfelerph.d.8297 That's because the PS1 and PS2 GunCons used that extra cord to plug into the video signal
So in a way it's almost like the TV is shooting at you and not the other way around? #MindBlown
uhhh yeah yeh nerd.
That duck is the one shooting us?
In Soviet Russia TV shoots you!
Barnacules Nerdgasm hi Jerry aka barnaclease.
i need to learn game programming , teach me , oh godly figure of nerdism.
8:59- what!? that would have been awesome to know 30 years ago!! I had no idea you could do 2 player duck hunt!!
Chadwyk Gaming - Playthroughs, How To's and More! Who reads manuals these days
Bryan Aca We are talking for before 30 years, not now.
if u had some naughty kids who fight to share the game with ya at home, u would had known that info☺
30 years have gone by. OMG!
VS Duck Hunt is also two-player; you also have a bonus round where you can *_shoot the dog_* lolz
No way. ONE pixel at a time? It just goes so fast you can't tell?! That's mind blowing. And that effect is the frame rate syncing up with that wave length.
You have answered one of the questions I had throughout childhood & had completely forgotten about until I saw that gun in the thumbnail. Loved Duck Hunt when I was a kid, but nobody could figure out how it knew where it was pointed.
1:46 when I saw the Twin Towers on the TV I remembered just how old all of this technology is (and me)
WOAH 8-BIT GUY YOU'RE TRENDING!
supermario18 mama mia no spaghetti
I didn't know about controling the duck. That's pretty cool.
Also, I like how you're using other youtubers in the video. It's like a class field trip.
thank you for solving the Zapper gun mystery for me, I was always curious how those things worked
Ive started my infatuation with the world of electronics from mid 2002(my first pc had win xp) so it seems like ive missed a lot of vintage stuff that is really fascinating.
What ive wanted to say is thank you, your videos are very light harted and a joy to watch, especially because you go into pretty deep detail on the subject.
You, Technology connections and LGR are one of my favourite pastime channels, for when i want to unwind and just relax while getting learning some, lets face it pretty unnecessary yet super interresting, information
love that shirt: "I was cool in the 90s"
I think it's even more sad when you were born in the 90s.
Robin seems such a nice guy. Great video, thank you!
I'm remembering an old DEC PDP graphics terminal we had in college. It had a monochrome-green screen with a light pen, but invisible to the eye it also had infrared pixels so you could program any area of the screen as "Light-Pen Sensitive" or not. Touching the pen in places where it was supposed to work produced results, but touching it to non-sensitive areas did nothing. It was a neat concept of the time. We played Lunar Lander with it.
8-bit guy! Digital trends made an article about this video! Honestly it's a great video that helped ease my frustration with the zapper and my plasma screen, I kept turning up the backlight thinking it wasn't bright enough, thanks for the tips!
When you think you're a super big nerd, and then you see a guy who writes songs about old computers... you realize there are people WAY nerdier than you out there. Lol, that guy is awesome.
I am totally taking that as a compliment :)
Bedford Level Experiment It is :D
Hello 8-bit Guy, I have a question - if Zapper doesn't work on LCD due delay caused by LCD, would it be possible to fix it? By adding physical part to zapper or adjusting a code of the game (via emulation)?
I was thinking about the same thing.
Wall of text incoming:
1: It should be possible if you modify the button part to send the input signal with a delay, synced to the delay of the screen. I don't know what kind of precision we are talking about, though, and if the screen delay is constant or variable. If the screen delay isn't constant, you would have to constantly detect its delay somehow, and adjust the extra button delay for every frame.
2: With emulation it could be possible if you change the right part of the game code, depending on how that code works. If there is a timer in the original code that checks for a light signal on the screen after a small delay from when the button was pressed, you could probably change the timer value stored in the (virtual) ram to last longer, and detect the late signal. To do it with a physical game, you would have to properly edit the game file, like patching it, for a permanent change.
However, if there isn't a timer in the code, and the check for the signal is instantaneous, you would have to rewrite the function of the code and add such a timer. And if the delay is variable, you either hack around in emulation and somehow adjust the game code for each frame. With an actual console you would have to put all that tinkering in the actual rom, which would be insane and probably impossible.
I have a feeling that this comment was slightly more in depth than necessary xD
derkevevin
Interesting, thank you for the answer
I was thinking something along those lines as well, like adding some kind of a timer chip onto the gun, between the trigger and the connection to the console, perhaps adjustable with plus and minus buttons or something like that. But I still think it wouldn't work because of the slowness of LCD technology - the panels aren't as fast at producing lit and unlit pixels as other types of displays, there's always a delay when the LCD panel turns a pixel on, changes its color and when it shuts one off (this is always mentioned in the specs of LCD displays, eg. 5ms grey-to-grey). I'm not however an expert or a display engineer, somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
derkevevin but if the input is delayed, the screen will not flash, right? it will only flash when the console receives the input and the sends the flashing image to the screen.
I don't think number one would work. Once the flash hits your LCD it had already happened on the NES. Delaying the zapper is only going to make it worse, since opportunity long passed and now it's being delayed more.
I always find your videos relaxing- I've no idea why :) You put so much work into each one :)
thanks for sharing 8bit guy! your videos are always fun to watch.
Even though its from the 80s, this is stupidly clever.
9:09 that lady looks like she’s having the goddamn time of her life :D
Damn! This was really informative and educational.
Great video,
You really cogently and expertly convey the information in a manner is truly easily understood and not confusing.
That makes so much sense, I always wondered why when I tried to take videos of my tv monitor (back when I had an old school tv) it would show dark lines going from top to bottom of the screen! Great video!
Actually knew this, first time I didn't learn something new
Techmoan and the 8-Bit Guy on the same day? Hooray!
sorry but tech moan doesnt appear here
David Sucesso no, but he released a video today as well.
Arne Schmitz ahh now i understood
This is a load of barnacles
David Sucesso
Light gun games were the best; my Master System came with the light gun, and I had tons of fun with it.
One of the things I miss the most about old school gaming!
Thanks for answering such mysterious questions; I've been wondering about this since I was 3 or 4...
Thank you for the concise explanation of how the nintendo zapper gun works. I tried explaining it to a friend for a long time who just didn't get it, and the fact that it was different from a light pen. I'll be sending this video to them :-)
What happens when you shine a flashlight down the barrel of the gun? Do you always win?
Oddity Archive pointed an Action Max gun at an incandescent lamp and managed to cheat, I'm guessing a NES gun would want a lamp that flickers in time with the TV/mains line frequency (one and the same)
i remember finding out you could cheat by just putting your finger over the tip. not sure why that worked.
Notice how when he explains the zapper that when you pull the trigger the screen first goes black so the gun can calibrate, before it displays the white box. In other words when you pull the trigger the gun needs to see black and then white at a specific time to determine if it hit anything.
It depends on the game. Some games detect the black screen to prevent cheating and others don't. Flashlghts are not likely to work but on rare occasions certain types of AC powered lights can also trick the games since they are technically flashing. The gun will see black at one instance and white the next but it depends on the type of bulb and the timing of the game.
You could cut the barrel of the zapper right in front of the sensor thus giving the sensor line of sight on the entire screen.
Man... duck hunt was huge when I was a kid!
It was like being at the arcade.. in your house.
Love the guest speakers you had on! What a historic video!
Fascinating.
You are rapidly becoming my favorite channel.
Thank you.
#15 on trending. Good Job 8 bit guy.
Matthew Kinney now it's 10?
We don't need him trending to know that he makes a good job 🤔
Love your videos and have a happy new year's!
I've been wondering how the zapper worked for a long time. Controlling the duck blew my mind. Thanks for some awesome content!
This is mind blowing! I always thought lines on a tv screen were drawn one line at a time, but you are saying it is one pixel at a time.... incredible.
Later light guns (such as the Playstation one) worked like light pens did. Unfortunately these were also rendered unusable on LCD screens :(
SteelSkin667 never heard of a light gun for PS 1
Vladimir Stajilov Namco made the GunCon, also sold under the name G-Con 45 in Europe. I still have mine, as well as copies of Time Crisis and its botched sequel Project Titan. But I don't have a CRT TV to use it with anymore :(
those games were so awesome!! I always dreamed of a giant CRT to play on because mine was only 10 inches diagonal :-D pick up one from classified ads or craigslist, they come for free or very cheap!
There was also the Konami Justifier gun for the PS1, as well as a ton of 3rd party lightguns (mostly compatible with GunCon games). Some even had recoil, just like the arcades!
+Felix Dietz as wlllppwpwpppqwpp my
I didn't hear you mention it in the video, but the method that the electron gun/CRT uses to display the image on the screen is called "raster scanning".
and you are a raster-sandwich with potato
@@chrisakaschulbus4903 uh what
@@mischiefthedegenerateratto7464 woooosh
Thank you for mentioning the lack of LCD screen support for both of these devices. You have saved me some money on my retro gear budget. Great video!
Even as a kid I also wondered how this works. Thank you for the vid.
10:47 - Weight and balance. There are a few benefits: there's a perception of quality in a weightier object (early Beats headphone models had dead weight for this reason), the weightier gun is less prone to jitter, and having it balanced just behind the trigger guard makes it easier to aim and your wrist less prone to fatigue. If you remove the weights, you'll find the gun is much less pleasurable to hold and use.
Ya, that seemed pretty obvious to me. Anything that doesn't neatly fit into a hand (like normal controllers) usually needs to be either balanced or so light that it doesn't feel like one is holding something. Otherwise there would be risk of fatigue or even injury from using the product. As someone with a joint disease in my extremities I am keenly aware of this lol.
An interesting thing to point out is that the light gun that was made for the Sega Master System works the same as the light pen. It can transmit what the small area of screen it is pointed at pixel by pixel, the software does math to determine the estimated pixel it was aimed directly at, approximately. That's why the Sega light gun based games just did a single screen flash when you pulled the trigger, mainly to highlight the screen to avoid the black or darker areas of the screen not registering.
Very great job! Keep doing these history of technology videos, they are amazing.
Out of the 3 videos I've watched, this is the best explanation I've encountered on how duck hunt game works.
Damn, youre trending! Amazing job as always
In the late 80's we have the Zapper and some games for the famicom (I'm from Mexico), I agree with the Obsolete Geek, the games were fun for about 20 minutes, but that's all... we didn't play with the Zapper most time.
This is awesome. Seeing this reminded me of the awesome Zapp Gun, totally inspired me to do a Zapp Gunn MOD into a sci-fi prop gun. So cool.
I’m literally re watching all your videos. They’re just so interesting to watch haha
seeing that dog giggle at me again gave me vietnam flashbacks and ptsd
Wtf are those "jokes". Un oroginal and just making fun of death. Useless generation
@@RicoLee27 wtf is that spelling
@@RicoLee27 What is that grammar
Kinda funny how it is, the NES was built "cheaply", yet it lasted longer then some electronics today that are built "cheap"
Wasn't Nintendo the expensive option, too?
@@jameswalker199 I think so, i heard somewhere it was built "cheaply" at least its cart connector is.
Zx spectrum or Amstrad cpc were much cheaper
Maybe the Famicom but the American NES is notoriously faulty due to the inane design with the cartridge loading mechanism and the unreliable lockout chip.
Interesting. Enjoyed the in-depth review you and research you done in this video.
Such a great way to explain these amazing accessories. Thanks dude
You mean you have to use Your hands, That's a baby's toy.
michael1234252 I see what did there
back to the future
+T Orrent
I noticed, but didn't comment on it because I figured everyone noticed.
Guess I was wrong about that...
+michael 123452 you must be into bondage then
What?!?!
1:56 "It's hard to capture" I was about to ask how you were capturing it so well.
Cool video man. Thanks. I was 6 when my dad got our commodore 64. Now 38 this is some pretty cool stuff to learn about that old cutting edge technology. Lol
Thank you! you answered one of my childhood questions. I think these two technologies are not very complicated or advanced but they are truly genius for that time
Wanna know the real reason why 8-bit Zapper gun exclusive games didn't sell? Cause at some point, no one had a working Zapper! These things broke like nothing! And as a kid, I took real good care of all my game consoles! I used to yell at my brother if I found a NES cartridge just lying on the floor and not inside it's black sleeve and placed back in my game cabinet
But anyways, my point is, I also used to own a Sega Master System. It was the first console my parents bought me and they eventually bought me a NES a year later. The SMS came bundled with a black Zapper gun and I only owned 1 game for it... the bundled game which had both Hang-On and Safari Hunt. Safari Hunt was the SMS' Duck Hunt but so much more fun! You had jungle levels and so many different animals and objects to shoot and I played that game so much................. so much that eventually my Zapper just stopped functioning. My mom actually called Sega Customer Support for me cause it was still under Warranty, sent them the defect Zapper and I got a new one in the mail. And guess what happened? It broke again! I remember it breaking even sooner than the first one. But she didn't ship it out this time around and when I think about it today, it's probably because the 3 month or 1 year warranty had expired for accessories and Sega was demanding for money to repair it.
And the reason I know these SMS Zappers were crap is because my cousin also had a SMS Zapper and I remember going to his place one Xmas, he had RAMBO ON SEGA MASTER SYSTEM, a game I had always dreamed of playing with a Zapper, but when I asked if we could play it, he told me his Zapper was also broken and we could only play the game using a controller.
Anyways, at some point my parents got me a NES with the Orange Zapper bundle. I kept renting Hogan's Alley all the time and eventually THAT ZAPPER BROKE TOO!!!!!!!!!! Like I would press the trigger, I heard the shooting sound effect but I it wasn't registering any of the shots! Then at a Flea Market I bought another Zapper for like $5 and when I got home, this one didn't work either! This one didn't even do any sounds at all! It was just dead!
Like wow... these Lightgun Zappers were so poorly designed. Everyone I know that owned a NES Zapper also had defective ones or were unprecise or didn't register 100% of all the shots. So of course no one bought Lightgun-only games cause none of us had working ones.
Many games, like Bayou Billy had lightgun levels but could also be played with a controller cause they knew these things broke all the time and they didn't want to punish players by not being able to complete the game cause they don't own a lightgun!!!
It wasn't until the PSone when we finally had the ultimate game gun! The Namco Guncon! Man did that gun look badass, and on top of that, it worked and was actually precise!!! Why is it that ever since the PSone we never had good gun accessories for consoles?
Sure you had the Wii and PS Move controllers that could be hooked up to a plastic gun accessory and play rail-shooters like Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles and House of the Dead, but I can't aim it like a real gun! I can't aim using the sights that are on the plastic gun because the Wii Sensor Bar and PS Camera doesn't exactly know where I'm pointing the gun at on my TV! It just detects the movements! So rather than aiming using the plastic gun's sights, I'm starring at my TV and moving the crosshair with my hand movements...... it's hard to explain but if you try it for yourself, you'll understand what I mean!
IMHO, I think the only way to bring back "gun games" is through VR! WE NEED HOUSE OF THE DEAD ON VR SO BAD!
VR is a pointless technology that'll probably die out soon. It's basically two TV screens in first person that you cover eyes with. You may as well just shove your face into the TV.
Carlos Vera Yeah but if you try it it's gonna be hard, cuz you can't relax your eyes because in the headset it has a foam thing, and it has a dent so you're not to close to the screen, and when you put the headset on its complete darkness unless u have a game on it, but in reality when you shove your face on the TV you wouldn't be able to see anyway.
ARM0R3D_G1ANT I meant as in "getting really close to it" but I guess people need to be precise and can't just accept "close enough".
Want to know what real VR is? First person view.
I disagree it is like saying TV is radio with moving picture. Believe me in the 30's people were saying TV was going to be a fad. I think VR is more than just what you described. I am not saying VR is perfect just yet but just imagine the amount of applications beyond video games. There are people considering making VR movies. Movies where you basically can interact.
@@MultiBlueblanket haha your funny ._.
This makes me appreciate my modern day Wacom Cintiq even more :D
I enjoyed the video. I had the VIC20, 64 and 128. I was a trip down memory lane.
good research an uber nice collaborations as usual!! love man, thanks for the effort and work!
I can't believe you could control the duck! All my childhood is ruined now knowing all that fun I missed.
Good info thanks
love this video! always wondered how the NES zapper worked and why they don't work with new flatscreen TVs anymore! 📺
You took me to my good old 8-Bit/16-Bit cartridge days. Amazing to know the technology behind it.
Oh my gosh, I've been wondering about this since I was a little kid. It was witchcraft to me. Witchcraft I tell you!
Remember when this guy made a video telling guys to send emails with questions then he made a video making fun and ranting about the questions?
hmm.. I don't.
The 8-Bit Guy another interesting and cool video😎!
zhbvenkhoReload DURRR BURRRKK??!!
zhbvenkhoReload Seems like you mixed up with someone else?
??????????????
I have always wondered the answers to these! Awesome video.
Fascinating material as always.
One last gift for on this shitty of 2016?
Thank you so much! I love learning about retro tech. =]
tfw the 8bit guy is on the trending list
Zekester 2016 what does tfw mean????
Tfw?
it means "that face when"
Omg, thank you soo much. I wondered how this gun worked. Geez, so simple yet so genius. Amazing.
Simple and Ingenious light pen.. 👍🏼 Thanks for explaining.
9:09 Looks like she isn't enjoing the game as you are.
She wanted to shoot at the ducks.
@@Iliek So because someone has autism it means they can't enjoy things?
Idiot.
@@twistedyogert The world is going to be vegan sooner or later. 🌏 Be a pioneer.👏
Save human life, animals (wild too), plants(yes), drinkable water and climate.
Why Vegan? ua-cam.com/video/y2k4NHjAP84/v-deo.html
So the light pen actually transforms CRTs into ancient touch screens?
The Mayans were thrilled.
Three days ago I woke up and thought about that duck gun and how it works. Thanks for the mythbustin'!!!
I was so young when playing Mario in my neighbor's home that I couldn't recall till today what game hardware it was. Ah! What was that feeling to be let in and play the game. We were sent back some days and it was devastating. Today you showed duck hunt and yes that was the other game I played after Mario and with that Shotgun. So I now know my childhood was enriched by a Nintendo some 20-25 years back. That means a lot to me since I am a programmer now.
So in theory you could shine a flashlight into the gun, pull the trigger, and kill a duck.
Heavy text processing is traditionally by far the best application of light pens, they allow you to click on a certain part of the paragraph and edit it immediately without having to use the arrow keys, much like we do with mice today.
That duck hunt trivia blew my mind. Such a great idea for co-op
light gun games are still one of my favourite genres to play at the arcade, Time Crisis in particular 😁
I always thought there weren't a lot of light gun games because maybe it had to do with the capacity of the systems and having to always put up a light box. Like maybe having a complex game with an actual plot would push the limits of the game by constantly having to add the light boxes in every frame? Or I totally over thought that... rofl
But turning every color cell black and every sprite white one per frame wasn't hard at all
MarioKart7z true
The problem with making EVERY sprite white at once leads to the problem... which sprite was the NES pointing at?
With the NES that as true, there was a few games like that and the problem was after just 5 or so targetable sprites on screen, the flashing was getting too crazy. Sega's first light gun game easily overcame this since it worked like a light gun, the end result knew roughly which pixel it was aimed at like the light pen. Safari Hunt had many sprites (and targetable background objects) and all it needed was a single screen flash.
In the end, how many light gun games could someone come up with without all of them being a tired idea while competing with other titles being released. Somehow Nintendo actually pulled out 20 games that used it and Sega had 13 at the time.
Well, there's a basic timing issue.
You have 60 or 50 frames per second on the NES depending on whether it's NTSC or PAL,
Let's say PAL since that makes the problem bigger.
Now to figure out what happened and what you hit, you first need a black frame. That's 1 black frame for every time the gun is fired.
Now you need to show each target rectangle for a single frame. That's 1 frame per target.
Now say you have 9 targets.
That means your screen is near enough to blank for 10 frames.
That's almost 1/5th of a second.
That is very distracting. And it only gets worse the more potential targets there are.
And if for some reason you had say, 49 targets (I don't think that's plausible on an NES, but it's possible on snes - and notice how the Snes Super Scope - the Zapper equivalent actually works more like the light pen than the zapper) then the screen is going blank for a second or more every time you pull the trigger?
That.... Seems quite maddening.
A second of a mostly blank screen, but with a sequence of flashing white squares? Very noticeable, and headache inducing (if not a major epilepsy threat too.)
So there's a pretty strict upper limit on the number of targets with this kind of technology...
That was cool ... you can have another chhanels like 16 bit thn 32 thn 64 bit guy for newer stuff too 😂😂
I got the Playstation 2 light guns when I was a kid. These guns ("Guncon 2" to be specific) use the CRT timing technique, similar to the light pen shown in the video, but probably because of the latency of the USB connector (that interfaces the guns and the console) a yellow RCA connector was to be plugged in directly to the gun (with an adapter) so it could track the CRT drawing beam. Although it can show a pointer on the screen that works in real time with the gun's movement, mainly for helping navigate through menus, during the actual shooting game the screen is blinked white for a frame (I guess) in order to increase the precision of the light detection and avoid failures (also, it gives a nice "shooting effect").
I remember the disappointment when we switched to a plasma screen, but even now I still have somewhere a small CRT TV that I occasionally plug in just for this and the performance is still impressive.
Idk how you ended up in my recommendations but I'm enjoying see the tech of yesteryear.
Someone needs a high speed camera!
it would need to be INCREDIBLYYYYYYYY fast.
Tj & Ja well, there are cameras with 170k fps, if I'm not mistaken... But 20000 fps should do the trick, too...
Tripplehelix the slow-mo guys did an episode on crt
go ask slow mo guys, and dont forget to tag me...
There’s a high-speed camera that can record light moving. #mindblown
Hey random guy scrolling down and reading the comments.
I just wanna wish you and your friends and family a Happy New Year !
thanks I wish you the same
CTmacintosh86 thanks bro!
We random guys thank you and wish the same to you.
Happy New year from 2018
This is Very Cool and Informative, Thanks. I have always wondered how this worked
I get so happy when David uploads :P
I guess if you had a CRT monitor built inside a desk, like facing upwards, or slightly at an angle so that you can both properly see what's on it while sitting at the desk and effortlessly point at it with your light pen, it wouldn't be quite as cumbersome to use, but that's a hard trade-off just for using a light pen though, when your C64 could be used for many more things besides that and which then would be uncomfortable to use on a monitor set in that position.
Or a monitor mounted on a hinge in a desk, not unlike a sewing machine. Folded down for writing, lifted up for viewing
The S pen is great in its own way. Inside the screen is a magnetic field. When the S Pen is nearby the screen, the magnetic field activates the S Pens tiny board inside and then a pointer on the device appears to predict where the pen is hovering. Once the pen touches the screen, the sensitive pressure tip activates and sends signals to the device on where the pen is and how hard the device is pressing so if you were using an app like ibis paint X then you can change the size of the line by applying more or less pressure
Thank you! I always wanted to know how this Zapper works, since I used it once back in the day..
great explanation and demos
Dude you should totally solder together a 2-port adapter with a dip switch or something to change which pin the pen's button goes to.
tohopes you Sir. stole my idea
a SP4T* switch would probably be better (*Single Pole 4-Throw)
the software could also just mask out the upper nibble of the $DC00 CIA register and consider any non-zero value as pressed. i'd have thought that the Fire button (bit 4) would be inuitive assignment and become a defacto standard.
+Gert Brink Nielsen it looks like it says SPAT switch
+Martin Wagner : It's the design decision that the fire-button pin was already wired as the trigger-signal from the photo-diode. And only this pin could trigger the transfer of the raster-counter to the lightpen-register (directly by the vic-chip, for timing precision), so you could only use one of the other pins to act as button.
Wut? You could control the duck with a second joystick in Duck Hunt? Well, I didn't know.
Thank you very much for this video. For a long time I was also interested how this technology works.
Fascinating as always. Thanks!