312 replies to this topic

[tspeirs]

Just wanted to let you know that Freezy has very kindly given me permission to use his code in PinballX and we will have something integrated soon hopefully.

It goes without saying that Freezy has done something pretty slick here.

Tom.

Edited by tspeirs, 16 April 2016 - 06:13 AM.

[blashyrk]

Unblocked all the dll's and exe's but still get pin2dmd.dll not found

[Comicalman]

I am having trouble getting this to work properly in my cab (using  pin2DMD).

 

It appears to be trying to render to the color DMD BOTH the Playfield (starting at top left for about 200+ pixels wide) entire length of display AND the actual DMD.  It flickers between both. Here are some specs on my setup:

 

-Running with my Playfield as display #2, backglass as display #1. Using an Nvidia card.

-Running resolution of both screens at 1440x900 (due to montior limitations).

-Running Windows 7 with .net framework v4.6.1

-Unblocked all .exes and .dlls.

-Set position of DMD to 0,0 and resolution of DMD to 1036x272.

 

Let me know if a video of this would help diagnose the problem.

 

Thanks for all the hard work (and speedy work) on this!!!  

Edited by Comicalman, 16 April 2016 - 10:56 AM.

[mpad]

AWESOME!

I love you guys. the pin2DMD was just in my mail today

 

great to see that you work together. I will post over at TPA forums, maybe you could get in touch with noex, maker of the TPA cam mod.

this would finally make my cab complete!!!!

[freezy]

@Charly Harper: Seems like PinDMDv2 isn't working yet. Can you paste what's in the text box when you start the app?

 

@roar: There's still some more fine tuning needed indeed. Pinball FX2's DMD rendering is pretty shitty, i.e. it's aliased and it's difficult to "parse" the dots out of it. I'll play some more with the parameters and see if I can get better results.

 

@blashyrk: Which DMD do you have?

 

@Comicalman: Interesting. Can you try changing the DMD dimensions to something smaller, like 518x136? What happens if you place it somewhere visible? If your playfield is on monitor 2, position 0,0 is probably behind the backglass. Try moving the DMD to monitor 2 by increasing the horizontal or vertical position, depending on your monitor setup.

 

@mpad: I've already created a thread over there and I'm already in contact with NoEx.

 

The problem with TPA is that the displays are rendered quite differently depending on the game. For example Space Shuttle has alpha-numeric displays on the back box, which are also rendered as such, while other games have modern DMDs. In order to do this correctly, we would either need a pixel parsing algorithm for each game, or somehow pull the data from the memory. I'm looking into this, but my main efforts are currently on a stable v1.0 release of the current features.

 

Of course, since it's open source, anybody is welcome to give it a try!

[Comicalman]

Repositioned the Pinball Fx DMD to backglass monitor (still monitor #1).  In the pic- uppermost DMD is Pinball Fx.

 

The lower is real DMD.  Still getting flickering and bars (presumably from Pinball Fx2 launcher screen behind the PF?).

 

http://tinypic.com/r/fycscz/9

Edited by Comicalman, 16 April 2016 - 01:29 PM.

[freezy]

Hmm at this point a short video would probably help!

[blashyrk]

@freezy I got the pin2dmd

[freezy]

@freezy I got the pin2dmd

 

Can you paste the text in the text box when starting the app please?

[Charly Harper]

I´ve got one question....

 

I can see the simulated DMD of PBFX2 on the left upper side at the 1st monitor (playfield). This is the position 0,0...

 

Is this correct?

[Comicalman]

@Freezy I created a short video showing the flickering + 3 large bars 'interlaced' with the Pinball FX2 dmd image...

 

https://youtu.be/zFh_mXfJAI8

[TerryRed]

While I don't have a real DMD (maybe someday), I think this is great stuff!

 

How does the application work? Does it "grab" from a "window", or a task, or just a section of the "desktop", etc...  I use OBS with all of the above methods to do video capture,so I'm wondering if its similar...

 

Could you just position the DMD of Pinball FX2 (or TPA using the camera mod) off of the visible desktop area and still capture it? One could always use a spare monitor to setup their PBFX2 and TPA DMDs in position to the right of their 2nd screen, get your DMD software working, and then disconnect that spare screen.

 

Maybe some kind of "virtual" screen, or maybe use one of those "null" screen dongles.

 

Or am I off base here...

 

Can this be used with pretty much any program? (that's not exclusive full screen)

[freezy]

New version v0.0.3, download here.

 

Make sure you resize the DMD in Pinball FX2 under cabinet options to 1040x272 (4 pixels wider than before).

 

Then you should have perfect pixel matching. The new version also trims down pixel luminosity to 2bit grey scale (while keeping the same hue), so black pixels are now really black.

 

I haven't had the time yet to debug PinDMDv2 (I don't have one). Will try to get this running as well with Russel's help.

 

@Charly Harper: Yes, if you see the virtual DMD rendering okay but not your real DMD that means capturing is working but not your device. What does the text box say?

 

@Comicalman: That's really weird. What happens if you move the DMD to monitor 2 behind the playfield? Do you have an idea where the three bars are coming from? And you say they're never displayed at the same time but it flickers between the two? It's difficult to tell from the video because the camera has its own framerate..

 

@TerryRed: It grabs from the DMD window. I don't know how OBS works. Yes, off-screen capturing of the DMD seems to work. Yes, in theory you could use the app for a nicer rendering of the DMD on a separate screen. But then we're pretty much in XDMD territory... Yes, the screen grabber works with anything (just try it out).

[Comicalman]

The Good news: With this new version (and sizing) I no longer have the bars flashing between the DMD.

Bad news:           The output from your pgm is still flickering.

 

I tried moving the fx2 dmd behind the playfield- it made it worse by attempting to render part of the PF.  

 

I'm wondering if this somehow because I just use one video card (with two outputs)?  

Also, I see you have a log file.  Wondering if you could somehow expand upon it- so we can look at what my machine is doing?  Perhaps FPS...

Edited by Comicalman, 17 April 2016 - 01:46 AM.

[TerryRed]

I don't have a real DMD to test on, but I tried it out on my 4K UHD TV.

 

Program runs fine as long as your desktop / screen resolution is 1920x1080 no DPI scaling. When in 4K, the "screen" capture function works, but the red outlined window size doesn't move or resize properly.

 

PBFX2 capture works fine either way however. I just don't have a DMD on my cabinet to see the output, but the previews look correct.

 

Screen capture seems to work as well, but is it limited to 30fps or less?

Edited by TerryRed, 17 April 2016 - 03:35 AM.

[russdx]

Ill dig out an pinDMD2 and monochrome dmd and try and get this working with frenzy

[atarian]

Really impressive work - thanks. Is there any possibility that PinDMD1 would be able to be supported in the future?

[russdx]

pinDMD1 only supports 4 shades so Freezy would need to do some down sampling on the shades. I can dig a pinDMD1 out as well and give Frenzy some example code on how to talk to this device as well if he wants to support it.

 

@Freezy pinDMD1 uses FTDI for coms with 2bit pixel (2 sub frames) protocol. I have example code if you want

Edited by russdx, 17 April 2016 - 03:00 PM.

[freezy]

Yeah sure, what the heck

 

Just need someone with a PinDMDv1 who can test and give me feedback multiple times a day if possible..

 

@Comicalman: I'll create a command line tool soon so you can fiddle with more parameters like captured frame rate. Did you try with the DMD visible and not cached by either playfield or backglass?

 

@TerryRed: Will test on a hdpi device. Not first prio though..

[Comicalman]

Watcha mean 'cached by pf or backglass"  Tried both bethind PF and in front of Backgass (I think that is only option there)

 

 Did you try with the DMD visible and not cached by either playfield or backglass?