666 replies to this topic

[fuzzel]

Actually it was quite simple to add this feature. Please try rev916. First create one or more collections with the collection manager. Then select one or more elements open the context menu and under "To Collection" select the desired collection. To limit the entries in the context menu I desided to show only the first 32 collections if you have more than that you need to assign them the classic way.

[dup3d]

thx for your super fast support

i will try rev916 later when it´s on dropbox but really sounds great that you put in my (and others) requests. as i´m dong it the same way as teppotee with writing all the names down somewhere for now this will really be a great timesaver and would be appreciated not only be me

[cupid]

VP doesn't display the physics frames in its FPS counter. It's purely dependent on the graphics frame time. You'll have to either believe me about this, or check the code (it's in pin/player.cpp).

 

Multithreading in game engines is really only useful if you are CPU bound so that you can distribute the work across multiple CPUs. VP isn't very CPU hungry at all in my experience, so I don't think it's worth the hassle. As soon as you go multithreaded, you have to deal with a whole new set of headaches related to synchronization. Typically this will also introduce extra latency, something that you don't really want in something that has to be as responsive as possible, i.e., a pinball simulation.

 

I believe you in terms of FPS measuring in VP. Interesting, that you think VP is not CPU-Bound. I always asked that myself, did not come to a conclusion and would have bet on it to be CPU-bound.

[mukuste]

 

VP doesn't display the physics frames in its FPS counter. It's purely dependent on the graphics frame time. You'll have to either believe me about this, or check the code (it's in pin/player.cpp).

 

Multithreading in game engines is really only useful if you are CPU bound so that you can distribute the work across multiple CPUs. VP isn't very CPU hungry at all in my experience, so I don't think it's worth the hassle. As soon as you go multithreaded, you have to deal with a whole new set of headaches related to synchronization. Typically this will also introduce extra latency, something that you don't really want in something that has to be as responsive as possible, i.e., a pinball simulation.

 

I believe you in terms of FPS measuring in VP. Interesting, that you think VP is not CPU-Bound. I always asked that myself, did not come to a conclusion and would have bet on it to be CPU-bound.

 

 

The old renderer was, I'm pretty sure, bound by the graphics bus. There was so much transferring of pixel data due to the use of sprites everywhere; combined with the bad support for DDraw nowadays which probably meant that many of these things were not in VRAM as they should be, I really believe that this clogged up the pipes to the GPU.

 

In fact, since moving from DX7 to DX9 gives such a huge performance boost, it's totally clear that VP cannot have been CPU bound in the old version. All that changed was the rendering, so this must have been the bottleneck.

 

And simulation-wise, there isn't much going on. You have usually only one ball for which you have to check collisions, so that's not much work, and the collision code seems quite well optimized using octrees. Nothing else needs to do collision checks, so the remaining physics mostly boil down to flippers, which are cheap too. If you check the F11 display, it also shows the time spent in the physics simulation, and it tends to be in the hundreds of microseconds area, so less than 1ms.

 

I guess the VBS runtime isn't terribly efficient, but I haven't seen it become a problem yet. Nothing else I can think of should eat much CPU.

Edited by mukuste, 11 February 2014 - 02:35 PM.

[toxie]

Also, we did quite some optimizations to all kinds of CPU code over the years..

 

Before there were several hotspots on the CPU, but these have been replaced by ddraw/d3d calls later-on..

Edited by toxie, 11 February 2014 - 03:20 PM.

[fuzzel]

One big bottleneck is the blitting madness into the depth buffer. Since DX8 the direct access of the depth buffer is forbidden or not possible anymore. I don't know how the driver handles this case in legacy mode but I'm pretty sure that we are facing a lot of GPU stalls doing such things with ddraw today

[kiwi]

This seems to be introduced by the new version of Scintilla,

the command "Me" is black, instead of blue as in the VP915.

Me.TimerEnabled = 1

With this command is right, Blue

.AddBall Me

Thanks

 

Max

[boiydiego]

gone back from vp9.2.1 to 9.20 runs much better hoping 9.2.1 will work beter and beter with the time.

[arngrim]

i installed a second system recently, and i only tested original tables with music yesterday, and i have been surprised that the music, in mp3 format from the music folder was played not played on the mail sound system, which is linked to the dmd panel speakers.

 

is it something that can be improved? move the mp3 musics from the music folder to the music sound system? could be awesome, like a real pin

[krille81]

You can make a easy batch script to run a regfile with vp sound setting with main speakers when you play music tables.


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[arngrim]

really?

 

can you show me how?

[krille81]

Of course i have too look on my cab, gtxjoe helped me with the script.


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[krille81]

i will send a private message to help you

[arngrim]

i'll try but honestly i don't think that the mp3  have their place at the play sounds level at all, mp3 to be put on music folder is imo a fine way to separate play music than play sound sounds, and i don't see any negative impact to move them on play music, worst case, the user has only one set of speakers and both levels will be played on the same speakers

[gtxjoe]

Found the old post - http://www.vpforums....showtopic=25323. A DOS batch file is used to load different Visual Pinball settings based on the table being launched. But having the ability to map Music to one sound card and Sounds to another sound card would be more desirable.

[fuzzel]

Please try rev918. Now you can move a single selected collection up/down in the collection manager to do a manual sorting of all collections.

[arngrim]

is it something that can be done easily? move the music files from the second sound system to the primary in vp?

having scarface music from the inside of my cab, just to mention that one, is weird..

[DreamTrap]

i vote for an option added to the video settings to set the trial settings globally for all tables. for instance type in 200 and that will be the value for everything

[toxie]

@arngrim: it could be done, but that would require more work, both on code/VP and artist side, as you would basically have to tell VP which sound system to use for what (also some sound samples should go to the other sound system, not only the music).

 

i guess this is VP10 work, as there we also want to target better support for sound in general (=different sound collections, depending on what a sound is "intended" to be used, i.e. mechanical, music, sound effects that should come from the backbox, etc). and as we will move to a new sound library (bass or fmod i guess) anyhow due to 64bit support, we should wait til then.

 

@dreamtrap: i guess i'll add some code later-on, not only for trails, but also for AA, FXAA and ball reflection. basically the same as with RU/RO (so that you have -1,0,1 as option, not just 0,1)

Edited by toxie, 17 February 2014 - 12:34 PM.

[DreamTrap]

sounds good