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| LCD TopGun by bink 06/27/2007, 8:39am PDT | ||||
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| Recently I've been playing various lightgun games using the mouse, because quick and accurate clicking is about the only gaming related skill I seem to actually possess. Hogan's Alley, Terminator 2, House of the Dead, you name it, I've tried to click my way through it on one credit. The only one I actually succeeded with was Operation Wolf but I digress. I decided to see how hilariously bad I would become if I were forced to aim using an actual gun, so I ordered the LCD TopGun from Play-Asia.com. Not only is it the only gun which works with LCD screens, it also has PS2 and XBOX adapters and received several excellent reviews, so I figured, what could go wrong?!
Turns out a lot. For one thing, the setup is a nightmare. You have to mount two rails on either side of your screen, and there is nothing included with which to secure these rails (unless you want to screw the rails INTO YOUR MONITOR) so combined with the incredibly short cord to your USB port the rails are always falling off. The gun's laser pointer is about two inches below the barrel and the knobs used to adjust it are ridiculously finicky. As a result, the laser pointer isn't accurate -- you can get it dead on with the gun sights at the center of the screen only to have the laser "drift" by as much as two inches when you move to a corner. Finally, the calibration involves making sure the correct driver is installed, holding down a sequence of buttons on the gun, firing at the corners of the screen while standing on your head with the lights off, and even more absurd tasks I'm too embarrassed to go into. And after all that, the gun STILL won't register WHERE THE FRICKING SIGHTS ARE POINTED. Currently after five or six calibrations the gun fires about an inch below the sights. Nevertheless I was determined to try an actual game with the thing. After going through the game-specific calibration for Terminator 2, the MAME crosshair jumped wildly from corner to corner as though I were flicking the gun back and forth spastically. It was impossible to aim at anything. With a labored sigh I dug back into Google to find out what went wrong. Apparently the driver designed by the TopGun company is an utter piece of shit, so I went through two other "homebrew" driver setups in a vain attempt to get the gun to work. Still the crosshair jumped around. Finally after more reading I figured out that heat sources can interfere with the LED cameras on the rails. So I moved my computer from the desk to the floor -- that helped a little but not enough to make a difference. I gave up on Terminator 2 and tried Duck Hunt -- aiming directly at a duck with the iron sights results in a complete miss nearly 100% of the time. I can't get this gun to calibrate accurately. I dug through Google a bit more and one WIKI sight helpfully recommended that I might try calibrating the gun "a bit off" to make it more accurate. It was at this point, faced with the possibility of repeating the nightmarish calibration sequence over and over while adjusting my fire centimeters each time, that I gave up. If anyone can figure out a good way to get this gun calibrated, or even has a success story with it, I'd like to hear it. Currently I'm at $40 wasted on the gun with $20 ridiculous shipping charges from Hong Kong. |
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LCD TopGun by 06/27/2007, 8:39am PDT  Re: LCD TopGun by 07/04/2007, 1:15pm PDT Re: LCD TopGun by 12/06/2007, 10:12am PST Fascinating. What are your thoughts on the Spanek Vertical Roaster? NT by 12/06/2007, 1:31pm PST |
