What is the surprising mechanism that can be seen by slow-motion shooting of the cathode ray tube screen of the ray gun game 'Duck Hunt' released by Nintendo in the 1980s?
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How the Nintendo Zapper worked in Slow Motion - The Slow Mo Guys - YouTube
Mr. Gab, a member of The Slow Mo Guys, appears. The home screen of ``Duck Hunt'' is displayed on the CRT TV behind him, and he holds a ray gun in his right hand.
The original ray gun released in Japan and other countries was gray, but the ray gun for
The ray gun is connected to the game console with a cord.
When I pointed the ray gun at the TV screen and pulled the trigger, the home screen switched to the game screen.
There is something like a black band moving from top to bottom on the TV screen, but this is visible because the game screen is being photographed with a camera and cannot be seen with the naked eye.
Aim at the duck on the screen and pull the trigger to shoot it down.
A fellow dog will catch the duck that has fallen. It is a game where you aim for a high score while trying not to run out of bullets as the number of ducks increases and the difficulty level changes.
If you look carefully with the naked eye, you'll see that the moment you pull the trigger, the screen goes dark and a white square appears where the aim is. This is an important mechanism of the game Duck Hunt.
In the first place, CRT televisions display frames by firing lines of light called
Since the afterimage of light remains in the human eye, this display method can still be recognized as a normal image.
If you further increase the number of frames per second and shoot at 82,000 FPS, it will look like this. You can see that the scan line moves from left to right.
When slowed down to 1.75 million FPS, the frame moves from left to right in about 1 second. The speed of the scanning line is said to be 24,500 miles per hour (approximately 39,500 km per hour), and it can go around the earth in about an hour.
Importantly, the entire frame is not drawn on a CRT TV at any given time, and the perceived smoothness of the image is due to visual effects.
With this mechanism, it is possible to make the duck appear to be moving by drawing it in a different location each time, without having to move the duck as an animation on the screen.
Next, we will check the behavior when the trigger of the ray gun is pulled.
There is a light sensor in the muzzle of the ray gun, which allows it to recognize where it is aiming.
When the trigger signal is transmitted to the game console, a completely black frame is sent to the CRT TV.
Then, in the next frame, a white square will appear where the duck was. Depending on whether the ray gun was aimed at this white square, it would be determined whether the duck was shot or the bullet missed.
Once it has been determined whether or not the duck was shot, a different screen will be displayed in subsequent frames. The only thing that is updated first is the display of the score part, and the appearance of the shot duck is drawn later.
In the next frame after the score changed, the shot duck was shown.
According to Mr. Gab, the appearance of the duck disappeared in 4 frames after being shot, but it seems that the human eye cannot recognize that the duck has disappeared.
Even if you watch it play at constant speed, you will still not be able to recognize that the duck has disappeared.
Also, when the mode is set in which two ducks appear, the white squares do not appear in two places in the same frame, but each one is displayed twice with a black screen in between. This is because in order to determine whether or not you have shot a duck, the ray gun does not just have to point at a white spot, but it also needs to ``focus on a white spot one frame after aiming at a black spot.'' This prevents people from being judged as having shot a duck just by pointing a ray gun at a white wall or light bulb.
This mechanism is used not only when shooting ducks, but also when selecting menus from the home screen.
'Honestly, I think this is a very good piece of engineering. The peripherals and cables were compatible with just about every TV that existed 40 years ago,' Gabb said. I commented.
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