24th March 2005, 6:05 PM
(This post was last modified: 25th March 2005, 12:14 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
Actually, electrons aren't being shot at your face. Our eyes see light, not electrons. Rather, the electron gun hits the screen, the inside of which is coated with a substance that glows when hit with electrons. This glow is light, and that light is then shot out through the glass into your optical organs.
Here's the deal, electrons can only be fired in a vacuum, such as the vacuum TUBE inside, for example, your friendly CRT screen. Put air in there, the electrons get scattered everywhere and just end up ionizing some stuff.
The phosphors on the screen simply glow, no electrons manage to "get through" as you put it. The back magnet in the tube determines one direction, the front determines the other. It sweeps the beam horizontally, then the front one shifts it down a level, then it sweeps again. The color is determined by what pixel the magnet is hitting. The strength of the beam determines how much of a glow you get, from notta to maximum.
A black and white screen was coated in a phosphor that only glows white, so the only thing they could change was how much it glows.
A color screen is arranged with sections for blue, red, and green, over and over again. Some screens had an arrangement of 3 circular dots in a triangle, but most today use a rectanglular pattern without a triangle setup. The only thing it needs to do is aim at the red phosphor location for red, blue for blue, and so on. As you can imagine, this requires a LOT of precision. Hence, older TVs had a tint control, which shifted the beam ever so slightly in different directions until it was alligned correctly. Well, actually they all have it, but then it was a dial and now it's digital.... you know....
Point is, you can't see electrons, they can't be fired in a reliable direction through air, and the phosphors, when hit, release light, they don't knock electrons towards your face.
So, that in mind, if the pixels release light no matter what the method, then why would the light gun care?
Finally, as I said before, the Nintendo system has NO idea what the TV is doing at any one time, at all. You can play the system with NO TV attached at ALL. Newer displays DO provide data feedback, which is nice so a system can know exactly what it's hooked up to and display accordingly, but the NES system, RF, and A/V hookups did NOT have such a communication system. The signal went straight to the TV, and never came back. Remember, a closed circuit electrical connection may require a closed loop, but something like outlet power that just goes straight from the point of greatest resistance to the dirt below you? That doesn't need a closed loop at all, just a path of least resistance, like lightning (well it does need a solid path TO the end goal).
PS: I've played Duck Hunt on a wall mounted LCD screen before.
Soak YOUR head!
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/tv.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/plasma-display.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lcd.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/jumbo-tv.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/projection-tv.htm
This one's for light guns specifically:
http://stuffo.howstuffworks.com/question273.htm
It lists both Duck Hunt's method and the method used by games with a lot more targets here, which is different. It also states how, without having any idea what the TV is doing, it is able to synch it. It's based on what the NES already knows, since the screen synchs itself to whatever signal it recieves. You were pretty close. I THINK Duck Hunt uses a combination of the two in order to figure out which duck got shot... That's the only thing that can explain why the duck targets do the box thing and how it can do the other part...
http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
Edit: In retrospect lazy did get it mostly right, excepting MAYBE the method that Duck Hunt used (he mentioned one I wasn't familiar with and I assumed he meant it one way when really that wasn't specifically stated by him), but mostly he got the last part of how CRT displays work.
Anyway, the only real problem after that is, well, do LCD and plasma screens draw the image in the same line by line fasion as a CRT screen? Well, for compatibility with the standard RF signal, yes, yes they do. The only other issue is speed of display and refresh rate I suppose, but LCD and plasma screens sold as TVs for home use pretty much assuredly are up to CRT screen standards.
Here's the deal, electrons can only be fired in a vacuum, such as the vacuum TUBE inside, for example, your friendly CRT screen. Put air in there, the electrons get scattered everywhere and just end up ionizing some stuff.
The phosphors on the screen simply glow, no electrons manage to "get through" as you put it. The back magnet in the tube determines one direction, the front determines the other. It sweeps the beam horizontally, then the front one shifts it down a level, then it sweeps again. The color is determined by what pixel the magnet is hitting. The strength of the beam determines how much of a glow you get, from notta to maximum.
A black and white screen was coated in a phosphor that only glows white, so the only thing they could change was how much it glows.
A color screen is arranged with sections for blue, red, and green, over and over again. Some screens had an arrangement of 3 circular dots in a triangle, but most today use a rectanglular pattern without a triangle setup. The only thing it needs to do is aim at the red phosphor location for red, blue for blue, and so on. As you can imagine, this requires a LOT of precision. Hence, older TVs had a tint control, which shifted the beam ever so slightly in different directions until it was alligned correctly. Well, actually they all have it, but then it was a dial and now it's digital.... you know....
Point is, you can't see electrons, they can't be fired in a reliable direction through air, and the phosphors, when hit, release light, they don't knock electrons towards your face.
So, that in mind, if the pixels release light no matter what the method, then why would the light gun care?
Finally, as I said before, the Nintendo system has NO idea what the TV is doing at any one time, at all. You can play the system with NO TV attached at ALL. Newer displays DO provide data feedback, which is nice so a system can know exactly what it's hooked up to and display accordingly, but the NES system, RF, and A/V hookups did NOT have such a communication system. The signal went straight to the TV, and never came back. Remember, a closed circuit electrical connection may require a closed loop, but something like outlet power that just goes straight from the point of greatest resistance to the dirt below you? That doesn't need a closed loop at all, just a path of least resistance, like lightning (well it does need a solid path TO the end goal).
PS: I've played Duck Hunt on a wall mounted LCD screen before.
Soak YOUR head!
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/tv.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/plasma-display.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lcd.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/jumbo-tv.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/projection-tv.htm
This one's for light guns specifically:
http://stuffo.howstuffworks.com/question273.htm
It lists both Duck Hunt's method and the method used by games with a lot more targets here, which is different. It also states how, without having any idea what the TV is doing, it is able to synch it. It's based on what the NES already knows, since the screen synchs itself to whatever signal it recieves. You were pretty close. I THINK Duck Hunt uses a combination of the two in order to figure out which duck got shot... That's the only thing that can explain why the duck targets do the box thing and how it can do the other part...
http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
Edit: In retrospect lazy did get it mostly right, excepting MAYBE the method that Duck Hunt used (he mentioned one I wasn't familiar with and I assumed he meant it one way when really that wasn't specifically stated by him), but mostly he got the last part of how CRT displays work.
Anyway, the only real problem after that is, well, do LCD and plasma screens draw the image in the same line by line fasion as a CRT screen? Well, for compatibility with the standard RF signal, yes, yes they do. The only other issue is speed of display and refresh rate I suppose, but LCD and plasma screens sold as TVs for home use pretty much assuredly are up to CRT screen standards.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)