How Laser Tag Games Work

mail comes from Johnny. Johnny says, hey, guys, I thought a good podcast would be on laser Tag, and you guys are number seventy one on iTunes for you, Thanks Johnny. Sometimes we get all the way up into the forties and sometimes we drop off that charting time. We're not talking about those times. Now. Let's let's talk about instead. Let's hope by laser tag. Laser tag, are you is

it out of your system? Now? Not even remotely. Long time listeners will remember that any time we have a podcast in which that word is mentioned, Jonathan will do that at least once. So, however, laser tag, and at least in the off the shelf, go it to your toy store. Sense does not in fact use lasers right at least not as the instrument of of transmitting or

receiving any sort of tag. But there are some systems to do, and in fact, one of the I would consider it sort of the pioneer system for the whole thing U used by the by the United States Military as a training exercise. UM does in fact use real uh lasers. So you're talking about the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System. Yes, I am otherwise known as MILES. Yeah. My favorite was when uh Pallette actually sent me a link in preparation for this podcast, which was to a

subset of that particular system. And here is the full title because it just it tickles me. The Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System Independent Target System SLASH Wireless Independent Target System or the MILES its wits. You know, they probably don't refer to it that way. They may actually use a number of some kind or they're just like, yeah, go grab the thingy, grab the thing that's that's actually

a pretty substantial piece of hardware. That the gear that they're using is much heavier and uh much more substantial than the stuff that you will find it your local toys or us. Right now, this stuff is made to to really simulate battle conditions as as closely as possible without really putting anyone in harm's way, because clearly one thing you don't want to do when you're training your soldiers is shoot them. Yeah, that that turns out to be a bad motivator. Also you have to train new ones.

But yeah, but anyhow, No, they actually affix the laser to the end of an actual weapon and the firing blanks. They fire blank cartridges to simulate the actual experience of what it's going to feel like when you shoot at somebody, right, because you don't want you don't want to have the experience of pulling a trigger and there's no recoil, there's no bang, there's no vibration, there's nothing other than just the fact that a little laser shoots out of the

end of the gun. Because then, of course it's not going to handle the way it really wouldn't the true combat situation. No, but it is sort of amusing to think about actual soldiers in actual combat gear running around the field going right, you're dead, I hit you know you did, and yes, I did it totally did you know what That's funny because in this these systems actually go back to the nineties seventies from what I understand, and uh, they actually sort of did that in the

very first versions. Um, when you would shoot somebody, the system would register that you had been hit, but people would turn them off and turn them right back on, which would essentially reboot the system and suddenly they were alive again, right, and there there was no connection between the gun and the sensors so um, which meant that you can keep firing, right if you if you made if you made it a connection where I mean, the thing that makes sense is that if you are hit,

then you are incapacitated someone, especially if your hits some places, that's gonna be a uh pretty critical wound, right if you're hitting the leg. Theoretically, you could keep on firing, although I would imagine most of us would probably be mostly concerned about trying to get undercover and and to stop the bleeding. You know, it's there are people who, in extraordinary circumstances can continue to fight even under that

kind of that kind of wound. But um, but the way the system theoretically should work is that if you were hitting a critical area, your gun would no longer function because if this were a real situation, you would no longer be able to fire your your weapon. Um. Now,

the earliest them did not have that connection. There was a sensor, and there were or several sensors, usually placed in various strategic areas on the body, like there might be one on the belt, there might be one or or several on a vest, on the back of the vest, maybe on the helmet, um sometimes on the arms and legs as well. Uh, before the the in the early days, like you were saying, there was no connection. So if you were hitting the sensor, yeah, it would register that

you are a quote unquote dead. But you could keep firing the gun cheating, or as you said, you could turn it off, turn it back on. It's like rebooting a computer. Suddenly you're alive again. It's like getting extra lives. Sadly, this is not something that pertains to actual battle conditions. It turns out that if you're shot in battle, you don't have a magic reboot button, as much as I

wish it were otherwise. So since that is kind of antithetical to the whole purpose of training, I mean, you're not you're not training so that you win your training, so that you understand and what you need to do in an actual battle situation. So eventually these systems became more sophisticated so that they could communicate with one another, the sensor and the gun, so that the sensor, once

it was registered a hit would deactivate the guns. You could not keep firing, and you were you were dead. A many generations from that very first system now right, right, yes, yes, the system they used now is is far more advanced. In fact, one of the things I thought was really kind of cool about the system that the military uses is that they have they can actually set the the the burst that comes out of the gun and tune it to the various kinds of weapons they actually use

or they might actually come into contact with. Right, So it's not like a laser from your your assault rifle would be the same as a laser from a handgun or say a rocket propelled grenade. Even they can adjust the power and the intensity and even the the uh, the sensitivity of the sensors. So let's say that you they they'll often use um armored vehicles in these training exercises. Well armored vehicles of course. I mean the they have armor, and that armor is pretty tough stuff and your average

gun cannot pierce it. So if you were to shoot an armored vehicle with one of these guns, your shots might hit your target, but they wouldn't register as a hit because in reality, the bullet would not penetrate the armor. But if you had a heavier weapon, um, and you fired at that vehicle, then it might register it as a hit because you've used a weapon that would actually be capable of doing some serious damage to that vehicle. This kind of you know, sensitivity, really makes it an

effective tool for simulating these these conditions. Now, the version that you see in the world of citizens is nowhere near as sophisticated or compl x or expensive or expensive. It's still it's still can be fairly complex. It doesn't have to be the the you know, stupid version. But uh, I guess what we should probably do is let's let's

go from the low end and work our way up. Okay, So a very basic laser tag system, yes, as in the kind that originally came out back in the uh well, late seventies was when the first one started coming out, But eighties is really when I remember him because that's when I remember laser tag itself debuting. Well yes, um, yeah, the very the very first one. And I should say that I got a lot of my information from a from a website of a guy named Brian Farley, um

who uh. If you're in laser tag circles, you might know him as Tag Ferret. Uh. Apparently he's a laser tag enthusiast, but he's also the software engineer and co inventor of the Laser Tag Team OPS line of toys,

which is a newer version of laser Tag. Um. But he had a pretty neat that had all sorts of history um and apparently, according to what he said, the very first system was the Star Trek Phasers that came out in nine which is funny because I thought that the the arena style uh laser tag systems were popular first and that they were a take home product based on that. But apparently I was wrong, right. It was

the good old set stun. Yes, yes, so it was set to laser but but no, it was a guy named George Carter the third who was inspired by the aforementioned uh sort of uh Star Wars, who decided he wanted to create an arena where you could play, uh, a laser gun game. Um, and he's the one who apparently came up with the system known as photon Um. First center opened in four in Houston. No, I'm sorry,

I'm sorry. First system opened in Dallas. Well, the the these weapons did not use laser beams, despite their name. What they're using our infrared signals, infrared LED I believe, and uh and so it's outside the spectrum of visible light, so you can't you know, we can't see it. It's we do actually sinse infrared radiation as heat. So but

there's some problems with infrared signals. Now, almost all current laser tag systems, apart from the military one and a couple of commercial ones for for entertainment use, still rely on infrared signals. But one of the problems is that it's a divergent beam, meaning that it doesn't remain focused like a laser does, doesn't have a great range, it can bounce off stuff, so you can actually get hit

by infrared ricochets. But more important eight and as far as the game goes, you don't have to be terribly accurate with one of these guns to register a hit in general, I mean, you can do things to refine it as much as possible, but in general, the further a way you are, as long as you're within still you know the range of whatever the gun you're using is, because you can change the intensity of these things. Um, the further way you are, the less accurate you need

to be in order to register a hit. Yeah, and um, you could tell doing some research actually some of the the the knockoff systems, the ones that were really inexpensive. We're using a form of visible light, but those were horribly inaccurate, right, and if you tried to play them outside you could get hit by the sun. Yes, that's sort of a sort of a problem because you in general are gonna want some kind of room to run

when you're playing these games. Um. But but yeah, I mean, and it's possible to use a lens to try to focus it down, and some of the laser tags is to over the years have done this and and to varying degrees of success. I mean, Um, a lot of the earlier systems apparently used out uh an infrared emitter with about a plus or minus five degree um, which had sort of a mediumish range like a hundred to two hundred feet somewhere in there. UM from what I read UM on Mr Farley's website. Uh, some of them

more advanced systems UM. And also read read that as expensive systems can get up to around three ft three fifty feet UM. But as you said, I'm not sure how you know whether or not they're as accurate from that distance as they would be if you were closer up. Yes, it's very similar. And we'll talk a little bit about remote controls in the second because the two are related related.

But it's kind of like if you have a remote control where you can just kind of pointed in the general direction of the television or cable box or whatever and it'll it'll work. UM. That usually means that it's got a decent powered led in an infrared l E ED may even have more than one. Some remotes have multiples so that it gives you a wider angle that

you can use to to change the channel. You know, I don't know about anyone else, but I have played the game of how how how wide an angle can I get before I can't turn up the volume anymore because I don't have friends. So um. Also, well, let's work if I bounce it off the couch, how about the ceiling. Yeah, So, same thing with the some of these laser tag games is the same sort of general idea is that you don't have to be uh like, have a dead on aim in order to to really

register a hit. Now, some of them actually do use lasers in the sense that they'll use them as an effect, like the there'll be a second l e ed or a second like a laser attached to the gun that fires visible light. But that's not what is actually registering hits. That's just all it is, is just a visual effect to give it that extra little so that when you're pulling the trigger, you're not thinking, hey, my gun's not doing anything right. So, um, I hadn't actually realized that

some of them actually used lasers like that. Yeah. Again, it's just as an effect, it's not it's not as a way to transmit a hit. And these infrared systems can get pretty advanced now. In the old laser tag system, um pretty much meant that any hit was gonna register on your target, like any any hit from any other

laser laser tag gun. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you could essentially shoot yourself and because the the very first system named laser tag and that's laser with a z uh, which came out by Worlds of Wonder Um and um yeah it the gun wasn't connected at all to the sensor, so it had no idea who was shooting whom and whose team you were on or any of that information. It was just a since or and just an emitter really,

that's all it was. And it helped to be standing within three feet of your target because otherwise, you know, it wasn't as accurate as you might like it to write. Now, the more advanced laser tag systems can do much more sophisticated things. For example, you can build into your sensor a database of codes. This is again very similar to

what remote controls do. And in the guns you can set it so that the the infrared beam that it shoots has a very specific series of pulses, so when the sensor is hit, it can actually detect who shot you. And that's very much what goes on with your remote control, because your remote control is using a series of codes as well. Um. Otherwise it wouldn't be able to tell which number you're pressing if you want to change your channel, or whether you want the volume up or down or off.

Each of those has its own identifiable code. So um, so yeah, like if you push, if you volume up, this series of this series of pulses comes out. And then what happens is the receiver that the sensor picks up those series of pulses, it converts it into binary and then consults its little database to see what that command translates to. Same sort of thing with laser tech.

It'll look up its database and say, oh, well, player two was the one who shot you, And so you can see at the end of the game who it was that was, you know, plaguing you, and if it was someone from your own team, you can chew them out. But uh, and and a lot of these systems also will include a radio frequency transmitter and that is sending signals to the master control not the master control program

was about to go into tron there for a second. Uh, the master control unit, which will then kind of act as a score a scoreboard, you know, keeping track of who shot whom and which team is winning and that kind of thing. And um again, it's just that the sensor picks up the it sends a signal to the RF transmitter which then sends a signal to the master control unit, and uh, you know, it keeps record of

your score. It's pretty cool system. I'm I have never played in one of those laser tag arena type things. I've played the back when I was a kid in the eighties, I actually did play with the the laser tag system that the first one that hidden in eight six. Like you said, Um, but that was very primitive compared to these. Yes, yes, um, yeah, there's there's a lot

of history out there about those systems. Um. I was one of the people that, Um, apparently, when World's Wonder went into bankruptcy, Uh, it was really easy to pick up the original laser tag system on the cheap, which is what I and two of my closest friends did in high school. And I remember, Um, you know, we'd go up to school at night and run around in parts of the area where they had you know, the

school trailers and stuff. Uh, and we would play laser tag. However, UM, it would probably have benefited us if we had paid attention to what it was going on, because um, as a matter of fact, somebody was somebody was. Actually it's not funny. I don't didn't mean to to laugh, but it's ironically enough, somebody was actually killed playing at a school when a police officer who was responding to a

call about somebody running around the school with a gun. Uh, you know, he was investigating, and when the kid had the laser tag gun and pointed it at him, he fired in what he thought was self defense. So I wouldn't recommend if you decided to go out and buy a laser tag kit that you run around in places where it is dark and you may or may not appear to be up to no good. Yeah, of course it's back in the eighties. This was back still in

the time where you would be able to purchase toy guns. Yeah, the toy guns that looked like at least, you know, an analog to a real gun. Nowadays it's all neon colors. Of course, that always raises the question in my mind, what stops someone from painting a real gun on neon color? But let's not go there. Well enough people paint the fake guns black, so the people it's just a big

crazy um. But no, actually, in response to that, Worlds of Wonder, although it was still operating under bankruptcy conditions, uh did make some white different white weapons, and they came out with a whole bunch of other stuff too. After UM They after they initially went under, the company re emerged a couple of years ago. They a few of the original founders formed a new company UM and UH called Shoot the Moon Products, which is still in existence.

UM and they licensed their stuff to to Tiger, and they came out with a whole bunch of new stuff. They even had a basically a blast bazooka laser tag bazooka that would function as a mortar, as a bazooka, or as a rifle, depending on what it was attempting to do. I guess that just increases the area of effect. Yes, yes, well, I mean if you're using it as a bazook would it would fire any in a very short pattern, but in a wide array, so virtually anybody within a certain

area is going to get hit. UM And in mortar mode it would actually fire in an arc UH and protect its sensor from an attack from the front. And if you used it as a rifle, it would actually Now I'm going from the marketing compy, I'm just trying to figure out how you fire infra red ray in an arc. Yeah. I was kind of wondering that too, but that's what it's supposed to have done. And then in the rifle mode it is is a highly you know, it's a very precise and more precise and precise. Well, yeah,

but I don't think it was. It wasn't uh sending the signal out over his wider ranges when it was in the other mode. But apparently it was really neat and again really expensive because you know, it was a larger toy. Yeah, and some of the guns would have I remember reading about one that would have sensors on the gun itself so that if the gun were hit it um a certain number of times, it would stop working.

And and of course a lot of the laser tag games that are in arenas or whatever are in systems where similar to the military, if you are hit a certain number of times, your gun will stop working and you have to go and recharge or to uh to continue playing. Um. It's a lot simpler now than it was back in the eighties when really the only option you had back then if you wanted to try and achieve that would be to tether the gun to the vest,

which you know then affects your mobility. Yeah, but it would, and it also would involve some hacking, especially on these off the shelf systems that you would get forty or fifty dollars. What's interesting is I have seen plans on the internet for building your own laser tag gun and sensor systems. Interesting. I looked through them and they are

well above my area of expertise. So after reading the first three or four steps, I said, this is a good project for someone much more electronically inclined than I. So, so you're not handy with a soldering iron, is what you're saying. I'm a left hander. I find that most tools are designed for right handers. And that's my story, and I'm stick and do it that I'm a sinister kind of guy. That's an old French joke for you guys out there, alright, Well, not like an old French

it's a joke about never mind. Um right, well, let's let's go back to remote control just for a second. Sure, so I know where you're gonna We gave the connection between remote controls and laser tag uh. We should, of course say that this means remote controls that are using infrared signals not. Most most modern ones do, although some of them do use radio signals, right, And I wouldn't be surprised if some started to use things like you know,

you're over your home networks, right, or bluetooth. That would be another another one that would make sense. But if you go back to the early and you hadn't forgotten this, now, this is this is a sidebar, a sidebar on the whole laser tag remote controls discussion because it has to do with sound as opposed to light the sidebar and how old we are? Yeah, the old old remote controls used ultra sonic some signals in order to make your television do things. There didn't even need to be a

battery in the remote control. No, it didn't use a battery at all, because all you're doing is pressing a button which caused a tiny aluminum bar to vibrate at a very high frequency and ultra high frequency. Uh, and the receiver, once it quote unquote heard that frequency would react the appropriate way. UM. So example examples would include power volume, that kind of thing sort of the sort of similar to, um, what the the the current remote

controls do? Um? This meant that if you were a fidgety child who happened to have a who happened to have a popular toy that was around in the seventies. Um, you could accidentally affect the behavior of your television. Would you like to reveal the name of said toy? Oh? Uh well, actually for me, it was a different toy than it was for you. What was the toy for you?

For me? Remember those? Uh? Well, they still make them, the the magnet kits that have all the little metal pieces and you can basically sort of shape the magnet. You could. There are two magnets, and then you can pick up the little metal pieces and make them into a little arc, kind of make little animals out of them.

Every once in a while, I'd be playing with that thing in my grandmother's house and she had one of these TVs with the Zenith Space Command TV remote, and uh when the pieces would all fall, you know, it would I would basically make something that that had no structural integrity and it would fall in on itself as soon as it made a certain noise, the change the channel would change on the TV. And I don't know what those are called, so I don't have a name.

So the little the little metal piece of little metal pieces would vibrate at the right frequency, and the television would think, oh, I need to change the channel or or adjust their volume or whatever. Apparently, a neighbor's dog who came by every once in a while to their dog tags would rat would jingle at the right frequency and change the channel on it. For me, Um, I will tell you it was the slinky slinky it walks

downstairs and right. The slinky convinced me that I had the powers of a television god because I wouldn't even have the remote in my hands, and yet I could affect the channel and the volume, not in any predictable way. So clearly I had a long way to go. But I was a kid. I figured, you know, I'd grow into my godly powers and eventually use them for good

and fighting crime in various television related escapades. Um, As it turns out, No, it was just that when I was moving the slinky back and forth, that was occasionally iterating just the right ultra high frequency to uh to affect the television. Crazy stuff. Oh and I also had another toy later on in life that does relate back to laser tag. Yeah, I can't let this go either. So in the late eighties there was a series of toys and then a cartoon that was truly terrible called

Brave Star. Go to YouTube search for Brave Star. Yep, it's actually it's technically three rs because there's one after the B. But yes, b R A V S T A R R and it's all one word. Brave Star was a space cowboy. Some people called him Marie and he uh he had a he had a horse that

would turn into an nthropomorphic horse. But the toys that came out had these little laser tag type backpacks and you could put one on the bad guy one the good guy, and you can actually have a little shooting fights between the two, and the little backpacks would register shots and and and hits, which I thought was pretty darn cool because I was lame. And if you try and watch one of these cartoons on YouTube, first of all, I'm sorry, and second of all, um, you know I

have no I had no taste as a kid. It's only marginally gotten better as an adult. Ouch. All right, Well, that that pretty much wraps up this discussion on laser tag and remote controls. I would say we actually wrapped that up a few minutes ago we kind of did. I'm sorry, but but no, it was it was good to go back to the space command thing because I always did think that was fascinating, and you know, I had no idea as a kid. How how much of it's easy to find if you're interested in in that remote.

There are tons and tons of photos of them, of varieties of them. They had them out for years, as a matter of fact, for many many years. So it was pretty much the first considered as far as I can tell, the first remote UH made only had like four button song it. Yeah, the the remote that we had before that one was me Yeah, yeah, that's the one that we had for a long time until we got our first cable box. Go and change the channel, son, turning the knob, trying to get that was my father,

the widely published author and scholar of American literature. Clearly he talks just like that. Now that we've wrapped that up, let's go on quickly to our second round of listener mail. This listener mail comes from our friend Ben Ivy, and Ben Ivy is what we call a super fan. He's also a big fan of stuff you should know as well as other uh how stuff Works podcasts and blogs, and Ben sent us something that was really cool. Let

me read the email. We can't let stuff. You should know his Facebook page be the only one with fan art. So here's a little something for your consideration. It's nothing new. Perhaps in the future I'll incorporate your pictures into something. The big fan of all the house stuff Works podcast. Please keep up the great work, Ben. So, what Ben has done is he has created his own fan logo for tech stuff and you can actually view this on

our Facebook page. We've uploaded it into an album for or fan art and it's pretty cool, very retro, kind of has a Transformers vibe to it. Uh, the old animated series, not the new new movies. But so, if you guys have any fan art you want to send in, you want to try your hand at something like that, you send it over, we might upload it up to the fan page and and have it up there on our our Facebook page. Yeah, pretty cool stuff. We look

forward to seeing more of that. If you have any fan art you'd like to send, or comments, questions, more topics incident to our email address, which is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Chris and I will

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