Aimtrak gun loses alignment when I aim off the screen. <tag> Aimtrak <Tag>

Efriim

@dureq83
Well at least it works and it is probably right, I'm probably wrong I think I scanned it here
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Spinners,-Trackballs,-Lightguns,-and-other-Mouse-Devices#advancemame
but I read about it searching for aimtrak in two places.
There is a firmware on the gun device itself? And the windows program allows it to have different configurations maybe these apply. Setting it to Mouse mode only.

dureq83

The firmware on Aimtrak guns are stored in the gun themselves. I updated the firmware while plugged into my windows machine. I currently have the aimtrak gun configured as a mouse.
This is what I don't get. I run gunconf on my raspberry pi and am able to calibrate it correctly. (while in the calibration screen, the crosshairs don't become misaligned after moving off the screen.) ((So we know that the sensor bar is reading the gun correctly)) I then load a game using two different emulators (not just different versions of the same emulator) and both emulators have the same problem (which tells us that it's not an emulator problem, or at least I don't think so.) So if it's not an emulator issue then where, Dear Watson, does the problem lie?

Efriim

@dureq83
Quick question. When the aimtrak is pointed way off screen and the trigger is pulled; does the alignment over-compensate proportionately, only parabolic? Or rationally with condensed values?

dureq83

@Efriim I'm sorry, I dont understand the question.

Efriim

@dureq83
When reloading and the alignment gets adjusted, is this adjustment equal to the distance off screen reloaded? If you were to shoot the lowerleft without going offscreen will it make any adjustment? And if you were to shoot the lower left off of the screen is the adjustment diagonal or will it show only x and y adjustments? Finally if reloading several times off screen does the misalignment compound itself limitlessly?

dureq83

Whether or not I go to reload the gun, when I aim off the screen it loses the alignment.

Efriim

@dureq83
Could you try?
lr-mame2010
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2010/ini/mame.ini
line 80/115

offscreen_reload          1

I could not find this setting for advmame.

dureq83

I changed the Offscreen_reload from 0 to 1 in LR_Mame2010, and ran Aliens.zip and still am having the same issue with the calibration being off when I aim off the screen. I tried to launch Lethal Enforcers 2 with Mame-2010 and it won't run, probably because of the rom family which is for Advmame.

Efriim

@dureq83
Like a mouse it is trapped on the screen. Then it needs some sort of off-screen scroll. Or perhaps a way to disable the some of the mouse cursor functions yet not make inoperable the tracking.

Efriim

@dureq83
While I thought the above configurations for advmame.rc were to enable the device functions maybe they are used to make separate the mouse events of the aimtrak. Can you confirm this function.
advmame.rc post #16

dureq83

I'll have to check this later when I'm in front of my game. Has no one else on this forum (300 views) ever had this problem? It would be great to have additional details or ideas from others.

mitu

I don't have an Aimtrak, so I don't know how it can be configured, but I suppose that - like other lightguns - it emulates a mouse in Linux.
The only idea that pops to mind for the behaviour you're seeing is that the emulator is reading the mouse movements as relative coordinates and once it's off screen it looses the correct position. I know that some Libretro cores have an option to use 'absolute pointer' (for instance mame2003-plus), but I don't know if Advmame has this kind of option - or maybe it's not only up to the emulator, but there's something that can be configured for the gun itself.

dureq83

@mitu thank you for the reply, I will explore this when I'm more awake.

dureq83

I'm currently installing Mame 2003 Plus from source and am going to mess around with the settings for the emulator.
I did have a question that might help troubleshoot the issue. I'm seeing the same issue in multiple emulators, is it possible that there might be a setting in Retroarch that is causing the issue seeing as how Retroarch is what handles the emulators? Or am I way off?

Efriim

@dureq83
Nah retroarch only handles lr-emulators.

mame2003plus had a build failure for me, I think it ran out of virtual memory somehow. I don;t know what to do about.

The advmame.rc settings above are still worth trying. From what I read in aimtrak posts they worked but most of it was pretty bleak.

dureq83

Understood, Mame2003 is still installing at the moment, so I'll have to wait for it to finish. I did contact Andy with Ultimarc and bounced some ideas off his head.

Efriim

ping

dureq83

I did a light search last night for pre-programed retro pie images made by others, I didn't want to use one but I did want to check their setup and see if the lightgun was still having the same issue so I could compare settings/files. I didn't find anything hopeful. Also, I really want to get to the bottom of this rather than cop out and look at someone elses work. I really think this issue is going to come down to a simple line of code/text in a settings config

Efriim

@dureq83
Its good for experience, I don't think I've tried any other RetroPie distribution they are unsupported by the way, I imagine they use the same packages.

The non retropie:
Lakka is cool, it was the first I tried, and I think they are developing well it might be known as the official RetroArch emulation distribution as it only has lr-emulators.
Batocera was my second and I liked it a lot, it introduced EmulationStation and emulators outside the retroarch such as Reicast.

There is a lot less to do with Lakka and a lot less to configure but it is a solid retro platform. It may be overly difficult to get an aimtrak driver on it so maybe search for that first.

Batocera was based on recalbox, it has gone its own way, there is less to do than retropie because there is no raspbian underneath, so it is very streamlined, but I think it will have advmame.

Efriim

With your keyboard you know you can exit emulationstation to the CLI by pressing "F4"
to return to ES type "exit".

to edit this file
sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/advmame.rc
I wrote down the defaults in case we need to revert.

device_mouse raw
device_raw_mousedev[0] /dev/input/mouse0
device_raw_mousedev[1] /dev/input/mouse1
device_raw_mousedev[2] /dev/input/mouse2
device_raw_mousedev[3] /dev/input/mouse3
device_raw_mousetype[0] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[1] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[2] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[3] ps2

If this configuration doesnt work
mouse0 would be exchanged above to the corresponding event# of the mouse control.

I wish I knew of a better Mouse event test.
ls /dev/input/
I think the mice will have a corresponding event, so mouse0 = event0 to some degree.
There might be a lot listed here type this and then get your gun
evtest /dev/input/event0
Ctrl+C is a kill to exit.
and try the rest of the events to understand what they are and the number they are assigned.

if evtest is not installed
sudo apt install evtest

joystick can be tested like this
jstest /dev/input/js0

I know this is sort of redundant, while I don't want to rule it out completely yet.