Badass community member and all around swell fellow unstoppablejuggernaut spotted a nifty gadget on YouTube. It's called the GameGun and it's a gun for games. Nothing new there, right? Wrong. It's more than just a fancy light gun it's got motion tracking, meaning that your movements are what appear on screen. Turn left, you turn left. It doesn't use drivers, so it works with every game out there. The video above has what appears to be the inventor of the gun and owner of Blackhall, the "company" behind the the GameGun, showing the very cool looking tech off.
I'm a bit dubious about the "company" as their website looks like it was put together by, well, a guy in his garage and because the video is of a guy in his garage. Plus, you should never fully trust someone who sucks at videogames, and he seems to die a lot. However, since it is a guy in his garage the tech most likely works as well as advertised since faking it might be difficult, and he says its compatible with every gaming system out there now. In fact if you disregard the low budget of the GameGun's "sales pitch" I'd say its a definite DO WANT item or at least a DO WANT TO TRY IT OUT item. In the video below he also discusses how the GameGun will have a projector mounted into it in order to project the game onto a wall or screen for playing. No price point yet, but I can't imagine it being cheap when it drops some time before the holiday season.
(Update: Movement is handled by the keyboard built into the gun it seems.)
Matthew Razak is Destructoid's Associate editor and co-founder of film site Flixist. He began as community member "cowzilla" and was since sequestered to write brainy features material. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife.
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Why would you want to project it? Having the POV on the device is the coolest thing about it. I'm curious about how the response times are, and if it gets out of calibration. Unless it became cheap and widely/universally supported, I wouldn't spring for one but it would be fun to play in an arcade.
All I could think about is how much that thing would mess up my head if I tried to play Portal with it. But yes it is indeed a cool looking device and if this went mainstream I would love it but right now it's just a guy with a broken toy gun and a computer attached to it.
someone who plays alot of FPS go get drunk and order this (i'd have to be to do such a thing). I wanna know if its legit. LOL imagine how goofy youll look playing this at home
If you need to move the gun to use it, and the proposed projector is on the gun, wouldn't you just be flailing your picture about every time you made a motion?
If every movement of yours makes your character move identically, how are you supposed to walk forward for long distances? Wouldn't you eventually run out of actual space and plant your face into a wall? Unless you live in a banquet hall or haul your PC out to a football field I don't see how this could work.
He said it has a built in keyboard,so he is stilling it for things like Walking Forward, ect, the only thing that is tracking is Mouse Motion, IE, Mouse Aimming, just for looking around and aiming. You still use the buttons on it to walk forward, run, and stuff. so basically you can just sit still and look aim and rotate 360 and stuff, just imagine you are the MOUSE :P
Darkened spherical room + wireless gamegun with one of those pico projectors could really make that thing quite awesome.
Oh, and of course that spherical room is the inside of a giant trackball you use for walking. Somebody go build this!
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11:00 AM on 08.30.2009
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZuzCpqVZ_c
Add on one of these instead of the screen, and I will totally buy one.
In fact, I'd probably buy one anyway.
This definitely looks both awesome and sketchy.
Oh, and of course that spherical room is the inside of a giant trackball you use for walking. Somebody go build this!