Mobile and Handhelds

Light guns on Android, handheld PCs and the Switch: what works and what cannot.

Firearms

Mobile and Handhelds · Deep Dive

Mobile and Handhelds

The edge of what a light gun can talk to.

Light guns on Android, handheld PCs and the Switch: what works and what cannot.

Photo: A Sinden light gun beside an Ayaneo 2S Windows handheld running Steam by Phil Hayton / GamesRadar+ (Future)

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 How Android Sees the Gun — The Rule That Drops an Absolute Mouse, and What Survives What an Android phone, tablet, TV box or handheld does with an OpenFIRE gun plugged into its USB port: the one test in Android's input reader that decides whether a pointing device is a mouse, why the gun's absolute mouse fails it, what the keyboard and gamepad halves still deliver, what Sinden found when it tried, the port's power, and how to check a device on the bench
    2. Vol 2 Getting the Gun Into Android Games — Gamepad Mode, a Touchscreen Mode for the Fork, the Emulators, TV Boxes and Android Handhelds The two routes Android leaves open, what each emulator can do with them, a touchscreen output for the private fork and the descriptor it needs, calibrating with no cursor on the screen, why there is no game-driven recoil on Android, and the TV boxes and handhelds that run it
    3. Vol 3 Apple and Nintendo — iPad, iPhone, Apple TV and Switch, and Why the Gun Has No Way In What iPadOS does with a mouse since 13.4, why Apple's game-controller mouse API gives only deltas, what an absolute HID pointer and a HID touchscreen do on iOS, the Apple TV with no USB port and no mouse, and the Nintendo Switch: gyro aiming, Joy-Con 2 mouse mode, USB mice per game, and what a Pico could pretend to be
    4. Vol 4 Handheld PCs and Linux Handhelds — Windows in Your Hands, Knulli and ROCKNIX, One USB-C Port and a Dock What changes when the PC is a ROG Ally or a Legion Go rather than a desktop (the primary-display trap when docked, the built-in touchscreen, one port for everything), where the Steam Deck is covered, why Knulli builds every Batocera gun package except OpenFIRE's, what ROCKNIX and muOS offer, and how the gun's 24 V brick, the dock and the handheld's charger fit together
    5. Vol 5 Screen Size, Docking and Casting, and Where It Runs Why a phone at arm's length looks to the gun's camera much like a television across a room, and why it is still the wrong target; aiming at the television a phone or handheld is connected to, whose coordinates the gun's range then covers, one calibration profile per display path, why wireless casting is out, the host-by-host table, what to test first, and the proposed decisions