335 replies to this topic

[open6l]

You taking feature requests yet? Curious if you can add colored DMDs (for example in TRON the actual DMD in FP is colored blue but it still outputs in amber/orange to the DLL).

[gauntletlover]

Absolutely, this is just the Beta release to hammer out possible issues, like yours that we have resolved. The ability to change color is on my shorter to do list, as well as several much larger ideas on my wish list .  Don't hesitate to post any suggestions. I won't promise any timelines or guarantee that they will be included but I will consider them all. I am happily doing this because I enjoy it in my spare time which unfortunately isn't always in abundance.

[open6l]

and I (as am sure all of the FP community) is grateful to you Macro and yourself for taking FP+DMD to the next level. This was one of the remaining pieces of the puzzle to get true 3 screen support working and I'm over the moon with the results so far. I will keep testing various aspects and post results when I can

 

I've also created a thread over at GoPinball.com.

Edited by open6l, 08 June 2013 - 05:11 AM.

[open6l]

Here is TRON Stern

 

[gauntletlover]

That looks awesome! I don't have that version of tron. I guess I'm on the hunt Thanks for all of the videos, If I can find my daughters camera. hehe,  I'll post a video of my modified tron legacy table. I took all the movie clips and ran them through the FutureDMD instead of the full color window, as well and made some custom fonts. It looks pretty cool. anyway, (I'm off for the night)  It looks like you will be up for a while

[open6l]

I'd love to see what you did with your TRON Legacy ImageLists (I'm looking to output them to the DMD if at all possible as well).

[MagicPinball68]

Hi Gauntletlover, this is absolutely awesome.  I was waiting so long for this! I love it, it works great! I want to say a big thank you for your hard Work and for sharing this. Can’t believe this really come true.

 

There is just one little thing that is not working on my system, "the scaling" is verry special, doesn’t matter in aspect ratio mode or not. I can not scale it to full screen. The Problem is when i try to scale it, it suddenly jumps at one point, from about 70% to 130%. I was trying to change the resolution of the screen, doesn’t help. This happens on every monitor.  Would be so cool if you can try to fix this in a future update.

Thanks again for your hard work, can't still beleve it, DMD in FP. WOW.

 

For a better understanding:

Edited by MagicPinball68, 08 June 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[waynewhitney]

This is a little off topic, but, where is the Avengers table available?

Initial findings.. I notice a line of pixels at the bottom of the DMD seems to be cut off. I tried a few tables (TRON Stern, Tron Legacy and Avengers) and all 3 experienced the same problem. Here is a screenshot (I'm also uploading a video).
 
[img]http://www.vpforums.org/public/style_images/VPForums/attachicon.gif[/img] Image1.jpg
 
Great work so far though
 
quick video
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6naVZhgZo0

[The Loafer]

It is an alpha/beta (and is not based on the Stern table layout)

[gauntletlover]

Hey Magic, I plan to look into this weekend, I never liked the resizing as it is but it didn't effect my cab so it kinda got neglected. I will hopfully have it revised with a smoother system soon. That is the most extreme case i've seen. I'm suprised by raising your resolution you can't get better flexibility. I'll post when when I get it fixed up.

[aupton]

@gauntletlover - Thanks again for making this amazing add on! I was up till 4am playing

 

Here's some screen shots of interest, though it appears that my results are similar to others. Also, I noticed that when launching Future Pinball without using a launcher like FPLaunch the DMD will remain static and even corrupt visually between tables. The only way to clear the DMD screen was to exit the executable and re-launch it. If I launch the tables through FPLaunch / Hyperpin the the DMD clears properly between tables.

 

Please let me know if you would like any additional info or screen shots.

 

Masters of the Universe: DMD Missing a few pixels on the right

 

Gremlins: DMD still showing stale MOTU DMD after exiting Future Pinball

 

STERN TRON: DMD Artifacts

 

Medieval Madness: DMD Missing a few pixels on the right 

 

Twilight Zone 1.1: DMD Missing a few pixels on the right

[gogo69]

wow ! just tested it ! works pretty good and is amazing to have in futurepinball

atm it kind of does not remember last postion of dmd an how it was scaled, sometimes it does , sometimes it doesn't

and as written above the limitation of 128x32 does not cover all DMDs so you only get part of it shown

anyways - i am sure this will be fixed and then it will be TOP !!!

Edited by gogo69, 08 June 2013 - 04:10 PM.

[bmiki75]

GREAT JOB  Gauntletlover!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have waited for this for a long time. Now with BAM and this FP rock!!!!!!!!!

It's time to put it on my VP cabinet.

[gauntletlover]

Hey Aupton, thanks alot. The pixels off on the right are because you are a victim of the resize issues. I'm going to spend some time on that this weekend (currently at work sshhh). The pixels are there they are just hidden. When you stretch the resize window It is sometimes smaller than the display. If you enable the rezize frame and move in small increments to the right you will notice that you can expose the pixels. I will hopefully have this fixed over the next few days and re-post it. Thank for the help.

 

I haven't tested loading and unloading between tables as of yet. It works fine if I leave it always running on my set up. As soon as future pinball loads it starts streaming the image data for the dmd. It is captured real time and presented real time. If fp loads even a split second sooner than the dmd you may get some corrupt frames causing artifacts because it will only receive part of the opening data and needs to get in sync.

 

You will need some form of wait in your script between the dmd and fp's load to ensure it is running first to catch the start of the stream. I believe it is sleep, 3000; to wait for 3 seconds in ahk.

 

If the frame is staying loaded try running the dmd with Administrator privlidges and see if that corrects it. It may not have permission to read active processes to know that fp closed.If it doesn't know it will continue waiting on a still frame (some games have long pauses between frames) until it receives more data and won't know it is time to clear the screen.

 

Let me know if this helps. I will do some testing when I get a chance.

Edited by gauntletlover, 08 June 2013 - 08:46 PM.

[waynewhitney]

When this is all sorted out, what will be the best way to deal with the backglass? Do you completely eliminate the speaker panels?

Hey Aupton, thanks alot. The pixels off on the right are because you are a victim of the resize issues. I'm going to spend some time on that this weekend (currently at work sshhh). The pixels are there they are just hidden. When you stretch the resize window It is sometimes smaller than the display. If you enable the rezize frame and move in small increments to the right you will notice that you can expose the pixels. I will hopefully have this fixed over the next few days and re-post it. Thank for the help.
 
I haven't tested loading and unloading between tables as of yet. It works fine if I leave it always running on my set up. As soon as future pinball loads it starts streaming the image data for the dmd. It is captured real time and presented real time. If fp loads even a split second sooner than the dmd you may get some corrupt frames causing artifacts because it will only receive part of the opening data and needs to get in sync.
 
You will need some form of wait in your script between the dmd and fp's load to ensure it is running first to catch the start of the stream. I believe it is sleep, 3000; to wait for 3 seconds in ahk.
 
If the frame is staying loaded try running the dmd with Administrator privlidges and see if that corrects it. It may not have permission to read active processes to know that fp closed.If it doesn't know it will continue waiting on a still frame (some games have long pauses between frames) until it receives more data and won't know it is time to clear the screen.
 
Let me know if this helps. I will do some testing when I get a chance.

[darquayle]

Gauntletlover, you are soooo cruel.  I've now spent almost an entire beautiful Saturday with your amazing program.  You need to release these updates when the weather in my local area is rainy, too cold, or too hot.    I don't know how you did it, but this app really is cool.  I've now got it fully integrated into my cabinet.  I  chose to start it up with FPLaunch and exit it when FPLaunch exits.  This ended up being the most seamless to my other tools running on my system (primarily HyperDMD).  I've now gone through sixteen of my favorite FP tables and modified their backglass images to eliminate the grill area and it looks perfect on my cab.

 

So, here's what I've seen so far:

 

- Resizing isn't perfect but if you can get pretty close if you keep an image active while you are resizing.  For me, I used the Elvis table and exited play mode but kept the editor open.  When doing this, the last displayed image stayed on the screen.  I could then try different sizing until I got something reasonably close.  I know you will be working on this.  It's not a show stopper for my usage today.

 

- Some table's DMDs are set at 128 x 16.  Examples are Batman and Transformers.  If you change the DMD setting on the table to 128 x 32 it works fine with FutureDMD.

 

- One nice thing is that I only had to drag my existing DMD off the translite screen and everything just worked.  No script edits required.

 

- Sadly, there was one issue that I have not found an answer for yet.  Five of the tables I tested today would load and get to the very end of the launch process and then just hang.  These were Avatar, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Family Guy, and The Goonies.  For these to fail, I don't even need to be running the FutureDMD app.  Just the existence of the OpenGL32.dll and LedWiz.dll in the Future Pinball directory will cause this to fail.  If I rename, delete, or move these two files everything launches fine.  I'm not an LEDWiz owner so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it, or if there is something in these specific table files that is conflicting with this system.  Oh, I also tested it with multiple versions of FP and that didn't seem to make a difference.  And I tried it both on my test machine and my cabinet.  Let me know if there is anything you need me to try or if you need me to send you any other information for testing.

 

No worries and no hurry.  Just trying to be a good beta tester. 

 

Thanks again for an excellent app.

 

[open6l]

just wanted to add my experiences. Avatar, Goonies, Family Guy and Indiana Jones loaded fine for me and displayed the DMD properly. I didn't have to change anything in the scripts either. I am running BAM though which shouldn't make a difference.

 

Edit: Just tried Jurassic Park 1.2 as well and it loaded fine and the DMD displayed fine.

 

I'm running Physics 2.5 with latest BAM build. My performance options are maxed and Load Image into Editor is not check marked. 

 

Video of Goonies running

 

 

Gauntletlover, you are soooo cruel.  I've now spent almost an entire beautiful Saturday with your amazing program.  You need to release these updates when the weather in my local area is rainy, too cold, or too hot.    I don't know how you did it, but this app really is cool.  I've now got it fully integrated into my cabinet.  I  chose to start it up with FPLaunch and exit it when FPLaunch exits.  This ended up being the most seamless to my other tools running on my system (primarily HyperDMD).  I've now gone through sixteen of my favorite FP tables and modified their backglass images to eliminate the grill area and it looks perfect on my cab.

 

So, here's what I've seen so far:

 

- Resizing isn't perfect but if you can get pretty close if you keep an image active while you are resizing.  For me, I used the Elvis table and exited play mode but kept the editor open.  When doing this, the last displayed image stayed on the screen.  I could then try different sizing until I got something reasonably close.  I know you will be working on this.  It's not a show stopper for my usage today.

 

- Some table's DMDs are set at 128 x 16.  Examples are Batman and Transformers.  If you change the DMD setting on the table to 128 x 32 it works fine with FutureDMD.

 

- One nice thing is that I only had to drag my existing DMD off the translite screen and everything just worked.  No script edits required.

 

- Sadly, there was one issue that I have not found an answer for yet.  Five of the tables I tested today would load and get to the very end of the launch process and then just hang.  These were Avatar, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Family Guy, and The Goonies.  For these to fail, I don't even need to be running the FutureDMD app.  Just the existence of the OpenGL32.dll and LedWiz.dll in the Future Pinball directory will cause this to fail.  If I rename, delete, or move these two files everything launches fine.  I'm not an LEDWiz owner so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it, or if there is something in these specific table files that is conflicting with this system.  Oh, I also tested it with multiple versions of FP and that didn't seem to make a difference.  And I tried it both on my test machine and my cabinet.  Let me know if there is anything you need me to try or if you need me to send you any other information for testing.

 

No worries and no hurry.  Just trying to be a good beta tester. 

 

Thanks again for an excellent app.

Edited by open6l, 09 June 2013 - 02:08 AM.

[gauntletlover]

Darquayle, Sorry about that. You should see me try to explain to my wife why I've spent every spare moment over the past 2 months hidden away in my "man room" to work on a dmd (she thinks im playing dungeons and dragons) haha

 

I can confirm I am having problems with those tables as well. If I guess right but can't test quickly.

 

open6l has an ledwiz?

You (Darq) Do not?

And I do not.......

 

If the 3 above are true can anyone else testing this confirm if these tables work or not  and do you have or not have an ledwiz? If this is the case I will put together a non ledwiz build.

[darquayle]

Is it wrong of me to be happy that you have the problem as well????     I've traded a few PMs with Open6I and he doesn't have a LEDWIZ.  He is running Windows 7 64 bit.  I'm running Windows 7 32 bit.  That's about all I can tell is the difference right now.

[Zablon]

Good job. Long needed and overdue.