PLAYING MAME games ON A RGB LASER PROJECTOR

Vector based screens were utilized for arcade games in the ’70s as well as ’80s. A normal CRT utilizes raster graphics, which are displayed by deflecting a beam in a grid pattern onto a phosphor. A vector screen deflects the beam in lines rather than a full grid, drawing only the needed vectors. maybe the very best understood vector game is the original Asteroids.

[Jeremy] developed up a RGB laser projector, as well as wished to run some traditional arcade titles on it. He started off by utilizing the XMAME emulator, however had to customize it to interact with the laser as well as minimize flicker on the display.

To manage the laser, a customized version of OpenLase was used. This had to be improved to support RGB color. The customized sources for both the MAME emulator as well as OpenLase are offered on Github.

[Jeremy]’s friend, [Steve], even got a vector based game that he composed working on the system. “World war vi” is a shoot-em-up battle about the vi as well as emacs text editors.

The results of the develop are shown in a series of videos after the break.