81 replies to this topic

[SnailGary]

I made some discovery about the VPinball framerate while trying to improve ball smoothness on my WIP cabinet.

Here is the setup: Test machine is a PhenomX3, 2.8Ghz with Nvidia GTX460.
Running VPinball 9.1.2 directly after system boot with the T2 fullscreen table gives a sluggish ~130 FPS (via F11 measurement). Perfectly playable but nowhere near to what the system should be capable of. Ball movement slightly stutters here and there.

So I tried to tweak the program options and the graphics drivers. I even did some profiling in the source code. At some point, the same table suddenly ran at >350 FPS. What puzzled me was that the framerate stayed high even after reverting all the previous changes - even after restarting VPinball several times. However after the next system reboot, the framerate was low again.

Now for the funny part: I found that the framerate boost is directly related to running Firefox 4 and navigating to vpforums.org homepage! Firefox alone does not do the trick. It has to show vpforums.org. This can be measured even while a table is playing: stop firefox and the framerate immediately drops.

So my guess is that the browser makes some live changes to the graphics driver in relation to specific content being displayed - maybe the animated GIFs on the front?
Can anybody confirm this? And if yes, what magic settings could make this possible?

(I didn't plan to add internet access to my cabinet, but I would do anything for FPS... )

[Sabbat]

Please pass whatever you are smoking this way

[007]

Sounds like Voodoo to me. Better stay away.

[settingsons]

Is there a Doctor online?

[rascal]

Hmmm, does the framerate drop if you go to other pinball sites or use IE? Sounds like a conspiracy to me!

I think there may even be some subliminal messages in VP, as after a while of playing it, you end up coming daily to this site and posting, chatting, and downloading.... eventually even subscribing!

Firefox spelled backwards is X-of-Erif! So who is Erif?????

Anybody know this man and how he relates?
http://twitter.com/erif

SPOOKY!

Edited by rascal, 16 April 2011 - 10:21 AM.

[007]

Bloody Hell! I'm getting a firewall.

[faralos]

Welcome to the Matrix

[oooPLAYER1ooo]

Should try making a donation to the site 50 bucks may buy you 5fps
Please test this out asap ....... There Noah it is the perfect plan

[cupid]

Should try making a donation to the site 50 bucks may buy you 5fps
Please test this out asap ....... There Noah it is the perfect plan

If ((subscription < Goldsupporter) || (Group != "VP DEV Team"))
doStutter();

Edited by cupid, 16 April 2011 - 02:10 PM.

[Itchigo]

Should try making a donation to the site 50 bucks may buy you 5fps
Please test this out asap ....... There Noah it is the perfect plan

If ((subscription < Goldsupporter) || (Group != "VP DEV Team"))
doStutter();

At last, someone who writes funny code like me!!

Sub WifesBirthday_Forget()
Playsound "OhShit"
Beer=Beer+1
Playsound"MuteWife"
End Sub

Edited by Itchigo, 16 April 2011 - 02:40 PM.

[Rukia Means Business]

No beer for you! You were bad by forgetting my birthday. You are being punished! Bad Itchigo! Bad, bad, bad!!

Rukia

[Sabbat]

lol

[wildman]

Bad Itchigo! Bad, bad, bad!!

[Itchigo]

No beer for you! You were bad by forgetting my birthday. You are being punished! Bad Itchigo! Bad, bad, bad!!

Rukia

How does it go? Whip me, beat me, make me write bad checks, oh wait, I can do that already!

[GSGregg]

James Brown: "Take me to the bridge and drop me off!"

[SnailGary]

Ah well, somehow I knew that this was going to happen...
Should have removed that "funny" from the topic name!

Back on track: I am pretty sure this has something to do with the DirectX configuration and driver settings.
Maybe I should have mentioned this happens on a Win7/x64 system with a fairly modern graphics gard (GTX460) and of course a recent driver.

See there is this other topic "Why does VP hate Nvidia?" which describes in detail that modern ATI cards shine at VPinball and modern NVidias suck. I tend to think this may be related to the above findings.
Of course there will be other programs with similar DirectX settings which positively influence VP framerate. FF4 + vpforums just came in handy for a joke.

Ok, I'm off for more testing. Have fun!

[rob046]

You aren't crazy! Its like we are talking about being abducted by aliens! I swear it happens! I have proof!
Yeah I've had the same kind of issues, been waiting for other people to finally notice this as well. I started that other thread you linked to, & if you read it all the way you'll see my "funny" finding to be very similar to yours. I don't use firefox, but I got a few programs that when running in the background provide me this "boost". Even with the odd fix the boost still doesn't make my nvidia card run any better than my ATI did.
I also had gotten this boost while having this site open, but it only seemed to have happened after I got the youtube vidoe popup thingy.

This is funny because one of the programs that give me this boost is an old media player. So there is something that some (maybe all?) media players do that give this "boost". I hate to call it a boost, its more like VP playing more like it should, closer to how ATI cards perform.

I also wonder how many people have this issue but don't even know it. With Nvidia, I can go back 6 or 7 years when I had XP where also something very similar happened to me. For some reason when ms messenger was enabled, VP ran nearly 2x better & smoother. Basically the same issue I'm having today. In fact one of the other programs when running that also fixes this issue today is my yahoo messenger.
But at the time everybody thought I was nuts, just as people probably snickered when I mentioned this again recently.

I have yet to find a fix. Since this issue was happening years ago, there is just something that doesn't seem to jive well between VP & Nvidia. Sleepy brought up something about this sounding like an overlay issue. IDK, he said something smart but I didn't quite understand it fully, though he didn't have any ideas for a fix I don't think.

VP devs, any thoughts? Not counting on Nvidia to do anything about this. & the more people that check if they have this issue, & the more people who do have it speak up about it, maybe it can be sorted out & everybody with Nvidia can have guaranteed top performance out of the box, for those that insist on Nvidia. Though certainly nothing wrong with the 5xxx or newer ATI cards, I would actually recommend ATI to people who want hassle free good performance & visuals.

Gary, try running yahoo messenger or "the core media player" or "newsleecher" (a few of the programs I find to fix this issue) & see if those also fix this issue for you like they do for me. I'm tired of being alone on this issue. Regardless of your results I'm already convinced we are going through the same issue, regardless of what does or doesn't fix it.

Edited by rob046, 17 April 2011 - 07:42 PM.

[Noah Fentz]

Should try making a donation to the site 50 bucks may buy you 5fps
Please test this out asap ....... There Noah it is the perfect plan

Should try making a donation to the site 50 bucks may buy you 5fps
Please test this out asap ....... There Noah it is the perfect plan

If ((subscription < Goldsupporter) || (Group != "VP DEV Team"))
doStutter();

This whole topic is hilarious!

I have had zero performance changes from fresh boot to opening the site to using messengers. I get smooth gameplay on everything using UVP with my Core2Duo 2.93 overclocked to 3.36 with an Nvidia GTX460 SE.

Am I doing something when I configure these units no one else is maybe?

[maceman]

Hmm...

Yes, very very interesting. I have to admit that I feel that I havesimilar issues with the 460GTX. I notice random studder as well, as if somehting on the system takes away bandwidth every so often.

I haven't noticed any framerate boost yet...but i never tried opening anything else at the same time either....

What i notice however, is that thestudder seems to happen during points of the game where 'events' kick in. So for example, if I am playing TOTAN, it is smooth, but at the exact moment an 'event' happens, like a loud sound or music kicks in because i've rolled over or trigger something, it will glitch for a nano-second and then return to normal.

If there isa way to improve the framerate, please, let's find out!!!

Maceman

[maceman]

WOW!!

This is really really bizarre!

I just tried this. T2 runs only at 75-92 fps for me in vp direct with everything closed..

As you said, as soon as i opened vpforums.org the framerate jumped to 350-400fps???

What the heck????????????????

____

I also tried T3 and it went to over 4000 fps??

Also, I have no flippers- they only appear when triggered. In the off state they are invisible??

_______


I think T3 was a one-off... Most games are anywhere between 160 - 475 fps. I am missing flippers i just noticed in 2 games , T2 and AFM. ARFM has them though.

Edited by maceman, 18 April 2011 - 05:37 PM.