I noticed a lot of similar questions popping up on the forums about VPX performance and eliminating ball stutter. I thought I would attempt to write a guide that would capture answers to a lot of those questions and create a central hub for related discussion. Please note that this guide is based on my personal experience and opinions. It is likely that other opinions will emerge when the discussion starts, and I would encourage anyone using this guide to consider the following discussions as part of the guide.
This Guide is aimed at achieving optimal performance in Visual Pinball 10. There is a gap in the required computer specs for VP9 and VP10 (or VPX). Good performance in VP9 does not mean that your computer will be able to achieve optimal performance in VPX. Let's look at the specs you need for VPX:
Intel i5 processor or better
4GB ram or more
nvidia 750 graphics card (or equivalent ATI/AMD card)
If your computer does not meet these specs, you may still be able to physically start and play a table in VPX, but you may not be able to be able to achieve optimal performance. If your computer does not meet these specs, you should assume that any of the following tips may not help you eliminate your performance problems and that you should first address hardware specs to do so.
Video Options. The video settings are found under the "Preferences" menu in the VPX editor. This is the first and easiest place you should check to make adjustments. These options are global, and some of the settings can be further at the level of individual tables, which we will discuss later.
1) Make sure that, not only the resolution, but the "refresh rate" (the Hz number) matches your monitor's.
2) Unless you are wanting to run desktop tables (landscape) leave this checked.
3) Leave the anti-aliasing options unchecked for now.
4) Leave this as "don't stretch the ball"... otherwise, your ball may sometimes look egg-shaped.
5) Stereo 3D settings... leave these alone.
6) Ambient occlusion has to do with shadow and lighting. Leave this unchecked for now. This option can cause performance issues quickly as it is resource hungry. The graphical improvement is minimal, so you may want this to be off always if you are having any kind of performance issues.
7) Ball Rendering... leave these all unchecked for now (even though I have one checked in the picture).
8) Set these both to "1" for now.
9) Force Anisotropic Filtering is a graphics boost at minimal cost to resources, so let's leave it on unless you are still having issues down the road.
10) Desktop composition stays checked. Please note that "Force exsclusive fullscreen mode" is the options to turn on true fullscreen mode (like you play most 3D games). We are going to leave it off and talk more about it later.
11) Maximum textures is a limiter for how much ram you are going to allow VPX to use for playing tables. We definitely want to leave this on "unlimited" unless we run into weird issues down the road, like crashing tables.
12) The elements slider we will leave all the way to the right (max) for now.
Our basic strategy is to turn off all the quality controls in the main video option window... leaving the element detail slider to full and textures to unlimited (which we walked through in the detailed, numbered steps above). These will be our default settings for each table we open. In the next section we will open a table and "tweak" the settings so that we have optimal performance for that table.
Table Options. Open a table through the file menu in the editor. Next press the "options" button on the left and the "table options" will open on the right. We will play test the table (play button on the left) and see how the table performs. If we find that it has some stutter, or is not as smooth as we want it, we will close the table and adjust the "elements slider" in the table options. Making sure to check "override global setting", so that we are using this slider for the table, and not the one we set in section 12 in the global video options, above. Now it is trial and error.... move the element detail slider to the max setting (full right)... now test the table... you should see its a bit better... if its not completely gone... move the slider to left one tick at a time.... test until the it feels like the stutter is gone.... *(thanks to Ben Logan for suggesting this method, and HauntFreaks for the recent write-up which I basically plagiarized for the last few sentences)*
After you have found the sweet spot for the slider (and this may be different on every table, depending on how demanding the table is), you can try to add in other effects in the table options to see if your system can handle them with the given table. Add them one at a time, testing after each change, so that you know what effects are having the most impact on performance. After you do this for a few tables, you will quickly learn what the best approximate settings are for your system and VPX.
Here is a picture of the VPX editor with a table open, displaying the table options bar on the right side. I used the Embryon table by ICPJuggla as an example (because it is awesome) but it will be the same for each table.
- 4x Anti-Aliasing - Removes "jagged" edges - Hi impact
- FXAA - another form of Anti-Aliasing (AA)... can be used together with 4x AA. Less graphical and resource impact (Medium)
- AO (Ambient Occlusion)... as discussed above... minor graphical enhancement... very high resource impact.
All of the three above settings will override the global in video options.
- Vsync - this will be -1 probably, by default. -1 means it will use the default we set in the video options. You can leave it or change it to 1 here also.
- Under "playfield options" you can uncheck reflect elements on playfield, or change the strength of the reflection. You can leave these on or reduce or remove them for a very minor resource improvement, or if you just have a personal preference on how it looks.
- Under ball, you may actually gain a bit of a "perceived" performance improvement by reducing the amount/stregth of reflections of light and objects on the ball. When the ball is moving quickly, less reflections may make it look like it is rolling more smoothly, or you may even gain an actual minor improvement. Test it out and see what you think. Try a setting of 0.5 or 0.3. Zero to remove completely.
Those are all the settings we will be changing in the table options. At this point your table should be pretty well optimized... however, we can discuss some other popular techniques.
True Fullscreen. In section 10 of the video options, we left "force exclusive fullscreen mode" unchecked. Now we are going to decide if we want to try it out. Almost every 3D game you play (Call of Duty, Dark Souls, etc) offer a fullscreen video mode and that is how they are intended to be played on today's computer hardware. They are optimized to be played this way, and you will get the best performance in fullscreen mode.
VPX also offers the same fullscreen mode, and you can turn it on by checking "force exclusive fullscreen mode" in the video options. You may have steered clear of this option because of the warning "less compatible" next to the option. In reality, the "true fullscreen" mode is commonly used and most players on the forum who try it find that there are no compatibility issues, and that it does offer a snappier performance over windowed fullscreen mode.
Playing in true fullscreen does take a bit of extra setup work and reading. I'm simply going to link, here, to a useful thread on the forum that answers every question about setting it up and troubleshooting any problems that arise. http://www.vpforums....rue +fullscreen
Additional Tips. I am going to compile as many additional tips as I can in this last section. I'm sure that, through discussion, we will come up with new tips and standards, and I will try to keep this document updated as much as possible. Anything that you can think of adding is most welcome.
- In general, modern tables with more lighting effects, models, etc... are going to use more resources than older tables, such as a EM.
- Some users suggest, that if you are still running Windows 7, you should disable "aero" from the windows desktop to improve performance. I do not use Windows 7 and have not tested this.
- Some Windows 10 users report Windows Defender as the source of their slowdown and stutter. Turn off your Windows Defender. Read here for related info: http://winaero.com/b...ith-few-clicks/
- Backglass settings... I originally got this great tip from Allknowing, and if you have a tricky table that doesn't quite want to smooth out, this can really help with some fine tuning. Right click on your backglass raise the numbers in the four lighting and solenoid, etc boxes by a few digits. Just go a few at a time as you test them. Sometimes they will be greyed out on some backglasses and this is not an option, but if you can adjust them it's worth a try. This works best on a backglass with a lot going on (lots of lighting, moving parts, etc).
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Edited by Drybonz, 15 September 2016 - 11:53 PM.
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