Laser games and first person 3D laser graphics

The reason I said a leaky green pen is so the user can see where they are pointing without the need for a cursor. With a weak one, IR leakage does not become an eyesight risk, compared to a high-powered IR pen, and hopefully, with a bit of "tidying" up through an algorithm on the computer, it should be able to track the spot with reasonable accuracy.

I agree though, the "cursor" with an IR pointer is a more accurate and "tidier" idea, provided you don't blind yourself with it. If you need any help, I'm learning C++ currently and it would make an interesting first project for me in the near future. I have a camera, large flat wall, spare time and soon, goggles too. I don't have a laser scanner or the cash for one though.

A leaky green won't work. The IR spewed out is very weak, 30mW at the most for a very high powered one, and it is very diverged. At 10m the IR might be a meter across. And at the distances in the laser tag video, it would be huge and extremely faint, there would be no way to track it

IR from leaky green isn't all that dangerous. It's weak and it's very diverged, so it won't damage your eyes. It's not the best thing, but it won't blind you. The big problem with IR is more false power readings that include the IR.

And actual IR lasers are no more dangerous than visible lasers. The only difference is there is greater human negligence to what we can't see in comparison to what we can. You'd only need about a 20mW IR laser anyway, that should be plenty bright, and that's not going to blind someone unless you stare into the aperture for minutes on end.

Ok, thanks for the advice, I didn't know it diverged quite so much - I got my camera, so I'll finally be uploading some pics from time to time, and I can experiment with dot-tracking...

If you use a high powered green laser pointer then depending on the power of the projector it should be the brightest green point in the scene. Id say that would be the easiest way to differentiate the pointer from the projection, if you use an IR laser then you won't be able to see what you are doing as easy, at least with green there is the beam to help guide you from long distances.

If any of you want to try some image processing/computer vision start by downloading the OpenCV library, easy to use and comes with all you need for most vision programs.

An IR laser for laser graffiti may not be such a good idea. Many types of lighting emit craploads of IR. Then again, lights emit alot of wavelengths, but most incandescent lights emit more IR than any other wavelengths.

I have played a few of Zoof's games on my untuned projector, and laseroids is abitt hard if you cant see where your shooting (Don't have a red laser for it yet, and the "bullets" are in red)

I have a few vids of me running his stuff on Youtube.

Anyways, nice work on this stuff Zoof, you're a big help to the Freeware community