thats awesome, but i’d opt for video goggles (despite how low-res they are)

Posted at 9:40 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by stevediraddo

Verry nice done.
How did they get the video wireles?
How long can you play whith that 4aa pack?
Are they all in series or all in parralel or is it 3 volts?
Greetz Oler

Posted at 9:54 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by Oler

That’s a common thought. The problem is, you are always aiming where you are looking. Disconnecting the view and the cross hairs on these games is not a simple task.

Though this may not be as immersive, the feeling is much more natural. Physically moving your arms to aim feels much more normal than making minute aim adjustments with your head.

Posted at 9:58 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by calebkraft

Not bad, although you would still need a directional pad to move around the game world (ie forward, backwards straft) from the looks of it.

Posted at 10:09 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by Shadow

I dont understand why he is walking around all crouched down and everything… Whatever. Neat, but Im with Shadow.

Posted at 10:15 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by french t0ast

He did mention that the keyboard is on the gun itself, maybe that is what he is using to move around. Still vary cool though, now I want one!

Posted at 10:29 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by TheFish

would probably be more immersive if you played it in a pitch black room.

Posted at 10:31 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by kyoorius

The ultimate ‘VR’ game would be this:

Players wear video goggles and have guns, both of which have a complete set of gyros, accelerometers and compasses. The goggles also have a GPS module.

This now gives you complete information about where every player is and where they are aiming. All that remains is to map the terrain into the game somehow (perhaps webcams & some computer vision wizardry) and you have a real FPS.

Respawning might be tedious. Might work well as a team game vs zombies type thing.

When I’m rich I’ll do it…

Posted at 10:33 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by Tim

WTFV (watch the fine video :D )

He *did* add a game pad to the gun for movement. I expect he’s crouching for the fun of it :)

Posted at 10:42 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by pelrun

It occurs to me that I have pretty much all the equipment required to make one of these for myself! Oh dear :)

Posted at 10:44 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by pelrun

This is damn cool. I can’t wait to see how well they do putting 3 projectors on it. In the end, if you don’t need the ‘gun’ form factor, you could probably put it into some cool little ergonomic handheld controller instead and save on the weight and cost. I’m thinking something like the Nunchuck but bigger.

Posted at 10:45 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by M4CGYV3R

So his plan with the projectors is to mount it so the image comes out of the gun, onto the wall?

You would need a hella huge wall.

Posted at 10:58 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by french t0ast

I’m guessing hes crouching because the “gyro/w.e.”,
detects the lower movement and gives the command to the game character to crouch too…. maybe

Posted at 11:19 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by Jordan

If anyone remembers the game Ravage DCX, an old (WIn95) FPS where you didn’t control movement, only aiming, this would be absolutely perfect for it.

Nice craftsmanship on how it looks, too.

Posted at 12:39 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by Winphreak

Actually it looks like he’s crouching because the camera he’s filming himself with if rather low … maybe if he sells a few of these he can invest in a decent tripod :D

At any rate, this is the first game controller mod I’ve seen in ages that looks like it might be as good as a mouse and keyboard (and maybe better).

Kudos!

Posted at 12:49 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by Zundfolge

is that a toy star wars blaster rifle? nice.

Posted at 2:10 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by bcoblentz

Everything is clear cut enough, but I’m not sure what he is doing to get the video over.

Posted at 2:36 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by F7

Yea, im new to this, so this maybe a dumb question.
But how is he powering the wireless monitor off what seems to be a pack of 6 AA batteries? Also like f7 asked, how does the video get sent over?

Posted at 3:18 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by french t0ast

Colombine II, here they go!!! (I still don’t understand why HackaDay keep showing ways of improving skliis using guns…. I am sooo anti guns in this country!)

Posted at 3:19 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by sansan

btw: notice all the collateral ads about guns and firearm training institutes that pop up on this page…. don’t we have enough killing in this country? just check the news on oakland city (CA) or other places.

Posted at 3:22 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by sansan

Only thing I would add is a solenoid to the trigger so when you fire the gun kicks.

Posted at 4:08 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by digitalundernet

Would’ve been better if this was an augmented reality game. Have a video camera record the view in front of the gun and then shows it on that lcd monitor with zombies flying at you. Better yet, make it a game where you have to search out invisible ghost which is only viewable by your special gun which detect poltergeist. I can see myself running around the house playing that.

Posted at 6:08 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by thach

@thach

“make it a game where you have to search out invisible ghost which is only viewable by your special gun ”

That would be so cool!

Imagine playing a game like that in a pitch black room using the screen for night vision.

Posted at 6:29 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by Aaron

@sansan
No, we haven’t killed all the morons that think guns are toys yet.

Posted at 7:34 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by barry99705

Yes I agree a solonoid would make that gun perfect.

Posted at 8:12 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by baggsie138

Not to get off topic…but sansan, the second amendment to the Constitution was put there for several reasons. Not only to guard the Sovereignty of our Republic, but also for self defense. Police can only react to crime, they cannot (and should not) be omnipresent.

In communities where the Second Amendment is not infringed upon, there are drastically lower rates of crime. Criminals simply will not bother with you or your family if they have to fear for their safety. Learn to protect yourself so that Police can go back to being “Peace Officers” instead of “Law Enforcement”.

Posted at 8:26 pm on Jun 21st, 2009 by not_a_gun_nut

The topic of gun control is very off topic here, here we talk hardware innovation. The second amendment is there for many reasons and those reasons have their own websites.

Back to this particular topic, I think Caleb Kraft has done an outstanding job and I can not think of a much better mod than that. He is driving a monitor, gyroscopic mouse, and a keyboard, with off the shelf batteries. Aside from 3D holographic projection systems, this is the next best trick. And the reason he ducks, is because his ducking is caught by that mouse. Caleb Kraft, hats off to you my friend, that is a very very nice mod.

Posted at 12:07 am on Jun 22nd, 2009 by greycode

This is slick. It’s a great “Why didn’t I think of that?” innovation.

Posted at 5:51 am on Jun 22nd, 2009 by Teebo

strap a camera on the front of it and you have some very interesting augmented reality potential there.

also might be worth looking into a touchscreen.

Posted at 6:58 am on Jun 22nd, 2009 by J

Patent? Hell no…. they’re gonna have an old timey raffle:

http://www.blackhall.net/pc_vr_game_gun.htm

/it’s gonna take the world by storm i tell ya /

I’m not giving that goofy looking bastard one cent.

But I might steal the idea. I have everything but the gun…..

Posted at 7:14 am on Jun 22nd, 2009 by spadefinger

Sorry folks, but a gyro mouse only send mouse signals… (up, down, left, right)… There’s no 3rd dimension being tracked there (unlike a wii controller that tracks 3D), so ducking is purely for the physical effect, not for the actual game control/interaction.

Feel free to prove me wrong, but you’d have to be pretty convincing since the functionality isn’t needed in a mouse to track that 3rd dimension.

There are plenty of off-the-shelf wireless video transmitters/receivers, so that wouldn’t be too hard.

Many portable LCD screens come with rechargeable battery packs, so I’d assume that is built into the screen.

If you watch closely, it looks more like 8 batteries (double-sided 4 battery pack). I would assume the batteries are being used for the gutted keyboard, mouse, & wireless video receiver.

Posted at 8:05 am on Jun 22nd, 2009 by Thomas

Thomas is correct.
The crouching will have no effect, based off of gyro mouse input. Who knows, maybe he’s rigged something else up, but I doubt it.

It isn’t the perfect VR setup for sure. But it’s pretty freaking cool considering that it’s all “off the shelf” components that work effortlessly with current pc games.

Posted at 8:42 am on Jun 22nd, 2009 by calebkraft

“The ultimate ‘VR’ game would be this:

Players wear video goggles and have guns, both of which have a complete set of gyros, accelerometers and compasses. The goggles also have a GPS module.”

or you could just go play paintball.

Posted at 11:12 am on Jun 22nd, 2009 by nachowarrior

While the gyration mouse gives a very easy way to do head tracking, it seems a webcam and some host software would be better in the long run… It’s the same technology used in optical mice, albeit with a much higher resolution.

Posted at 12:40 pm on Jun 22nd, 2009 by Mythgarr

What I wonder is, how does he handle the difference in game angle and angle of the gun, because as far as I know, the mouse is used as a relative input device in fps games, as opposed to an absolute input, which this is.

Posted at 3:42 pm on Jun 22nd, 2009 by Bob

Well gutting a Wii controller is not that big of a leap, it is a slightly off version of Bluetooth, you get the up down left right, and we have seen them used for three dimensional projects. Powering them is simple, and adding them in may not be all that hard. The antenna are dirt cheap, so you can use the IR part as well. Plenty of alternate uses for them. I like that screen interface though, you could see him looking around in odd angles with it. This thing is probably close to polishing up and selling it. I am starting to get interested in it now I can get Duke Nukem to work on XP.

Posted at 3:54 pm on Jun 22nd, 2009 by greycode

This is pretty cool, but part of aiming with a mouse vs thumbs or this VR gun is that you can do a 180 almost instantly. This gun would actually require that you perform a 180. Probably get owned from behind a lot.

Probably *really* tedious to get mouse acceleration set correctly for each game.

Otherwise pretty awesome.

Posted at 5:23 pm on Jun 22nd, 2009 by jshabadoo

I first though “I have to do this, but the screen will cost lots.” Then I realized that I could just use my netbook. Now all I need is the mouse and gun. I also need to know how to interface the mouse with the game so as to get 1:1 control.

Posted at 10:10 pm on Jun 22nd, 2009 by Edward@Nardella.ca

Looks like it works very well. I wonder how many things get tripped over during a battle?

Posted at 12:10 am on Jun 23rd, 2009 by Alan Parekh

Combine with this kind of technology:
http://kotaku.com/5293855/augmented-reality-game-fights-zombies-with-skittles

Then you could have a real “level” in a warehouse where you could run around on a big map shooting stuff…. of course it would be limited to x/y level design with out any z to speak of…. but it would be fairly interesting.
Peace!

Posted at 1:39 am on Jun 23rd, 2009 by Louis II

Throw a wiimote, nunchuck and motionplus into one of those rifle shells (modified to fit the motionplus, obviously) and stick the lcd screen on top! I’m sure a lot of us have most of those lying around already, and it’s far more capable than the gyromouse solution. Heck, you get a full 6dof imu!

I’m off to buy myself a motionplus today…

Posted at 2:30 pm on Jun 23rd, 2009 by pelrun

wiimote with motion+ would be 10x easier. I want to see a project that ANYONE can do, and requires much less work.

Posted at 12:23 pm on Jun 25th, 2009 by k

That is one awesome mod. Really amazing. Playing Crisis Warhead with that would be amazing!

Posted at 1:04 pm on Jul 11th, 2009 by Chris - Gun Games

That is a quite a cool gadget to have, and the best thing is that it is quite easy to build from all the electronic components you might have at home already. The only worry would be, if you tackle you mother by accident.

Posted at 1:16 am on Jul 22nd, 2009 by king randow

Great mod, and really easy to do. That what I call innovative game design. Not just making the game look better and better but also making the experience, in total, better and better.

Posted at 1:18 am on Jul 22nd, 2009 by RS Components

see the new photo at his site Blackhall.net/GameGun.htm

Posted at 7:50 am on Sep 2nd, 2009 by NVRBLD