92 replies to this topic

[allknowing2012]

Eureka! I found something really interesting. I have been testing every possible combination of graphics settings both within VPX and Nvidia settings. I noticed something odd with the Demolition Man table. I was unable to lock the refresh rate to 60 FPS. With F11 on it would show alternating frame rates between 40 and 90 (about 1 second apart) with an average of 63 (or there-abouts) with constant micro-stuttering. It didn't matter what I chose in the settings I could not lock the FPS. Also when I dropped all GFX levels to minimum in VPX the table looked crap yet still didn't improve the FPS!!

 

So I then loaded up JP's TOTAN which I know played very nice. Low and behold it was showing locked 60FPS as expected with no micro stutter. I deduced that there must be something specific with the Demolition man table. I decided to disable the b2s backglass. Sure enough the FPS magically locked to 60 frames and the microstutter is gone.

 

So based on this testing it appears (for what ever reason) VPX is having some issues with B2S with some (not all) back-glasses as TOTAN works fine with its B2S backglass but Demolition Man does not.

 

Does anyone have any idea why this might be so?

Are the backglasses very different resolutions? . could it be stealing memory from the video card to render the backglass?

[arngrim]

if you have a mb with a gpu, try to send the db2s there and let the maon card handle vpx, and pinmame if necessary?

[Jeffrey Spender]

ok, i just had a great idea, just today it came to me.

i'm sure most of you have already tried this, but i'm not that bright.
i need a little more time to figure stuff out, you know.

 

i have copied my VPinballX.exe and named it VPinballX - ST.exe (for star trek)
then i put (almost) all settings at performance level, so no anti aliasing and all that neat stuff.
also i said to give only 1024MB for the playfield/graphics.

Of course the graphics won't look as good as they should, but at least i can run some of those new tables very nicely now.
BUT IT WORKS like a charm, i can now run that new Star Trek.

Also the new Metallica and Terminator 2 were also very heavy, now they run as well.
By the way, did i mention i really like VPX

[allknowing2012]

 

Eureka! I found something really interesting. I have been testing every possible combination of graphics settings both within VPX and Nvidia settings. I noticed something odd with the Demolition Man table. I was unable to lock the refresh rate to 60 FPS. With F11 on it would show alternating frame rates between 40 and 90 (about 1 second apart) with an average of 63 (or there-abouts) with constant micro-stuttering. It didn't matter what I chose in the settings I could not lock the FPS. Also when I dropped all GFX levels to minimum in VPX the table looked crap yet still didn't improve the FPS!!

 

So I then loaded up JP's TOTAN which I know played very nice. Low and behold it was showing locked 60FPS as expected with no micro stutter. I deduced that there must be something specific with the Demolition man table. I decided to disable the b2s backglass. Sure enough the FPS magically locked to 60 frames and the microstutter is gone.

 

So based on this testing it appears (for what ever reason) VPX is having some issues with B2S with some (not all) back-glasses as TOTAN works fine with its B2S backglass but Demolition Man does not.

 

Does anyone have any idea why this might be so?

Are the backglasses very different resolutions? . could it be stealing memory from the video card to render the backglass?

 

I tried Demo Man, 60Fps with vpinmame, 5!! with b2s & dof, 25 with just b2s -- and I used the TOTAN.directb2s just for fun - same results with that directb2s vs the demo.directb2s

[gtxjoe]

Just played Demo Man, 60 fps with vpinmame, 60 fps with b2s & dof, 60 fps with just b2s.

 

I also re-ran using bassgeige's TOTAN b2s and same results.  60 fps across the board

 

Nice job on Demo man.

I am digging the lighting and reflections that vpx offers

Nice psychedelic work on the TOTAN fantasy backglass

[allknowing2012]

gtx, 

  I was able to get mine running "fine" now upping the direct b2s settings for skip lamps and skip solenoids. What are your settings there?

[xzotic]

if you have a mb with a gpu, try to send the db2s there and let the maon card handle vpx, and pinmame if necessary?

The mobo doesn't have built in GFX.  However this could be another possible work around for others with the same issue.

 

ok, i just had a great idea, just today it came to me.

i'm sure most of you have already tried this, but i'm not that bright.
i need a little more time to figure stuff out, you know.

 

i have copied my VPinballX.exe and named it VPinballX - ST.exe (for star trek)
then i put (almost) all settings at performance level, so no anti aliasing and all that neat stuff.
also i said to give only 1024MB for the playfield/graphics.

Of course the graphics won't look as good as they should, but at least i can run some of those new tables very nicely now.
BUT IT WORKS like a charm, i can now run that new Star Trek.

Also the new Metallica and Terminator 2 were also very heavy, now they run as well.
By the way, did i mention i really like VPX

Unfortunately this has little to do with the issue in hand. It doesn't matter what settings I put (I can put them all down to minimum and still recreate the problem). You need to be running a specific table with a specific backglass with comparable specs (or lower) to mine to recreate the issue that I have raised.

 

 

 

Eureka! I found something really interesting. I have been testing every possible combination of graphics settings both within VPX and Nvidia settings. I noticed something odd with the Demolition Man table. I was unable to lock the refresh rate to 60 FPS. With F11 on it would show alternating frame rates between 40 and 90 (about 1 second apart) with an average of 63 (or there-abouts) with constant micro-stuttering. It didn't matter what I chose in the settings I could not lock the FPS. Also when I dropped all GFX levels to minimum in VPX the table looked crap yet still didn't improve the FPS!!

 

So I then loaded up JP's TOTAN which I know played very nice. Low and behold it was showing locked 60FPS as expected with no micro stutter. I deduced that there must be something specific with the Demolition man table. I decided to disable the b2s backglass. Sure enough the FPS magically locked to 60 frames and the microstutter is gone.

 

So based on this testing it appears (for what ever reason) VPX is having some issues with B2S with some (not all) back-glasses as TOTAN works fine with its B2S backglass but Demolition Man does not.

 

Does anyone have any idea why this might be so?

Are the backglasses very different resolutions? . could it be stealing memory from the video card to render the backglass?

 

I tried Demo Man, 60Fps with vpinmame, 5!! with b2s & dof, 25 with just b2s -- and I used the TOTAN.directb2s just for fun - same results with that directb2s vs the demo.directb2s

 

The TOTAN backglass should be fine as it appears to be lower on resources anyway. The test is Demo man with the Demo Man fantasy backglass on a GFX card similar in specs to the GTX480. This would conclusively show that there is a widespread issue with VPX and B2S probably related to resource contention as suggested in this thread. Other GFX cards with higher RAM/Specs may not see the issue as there will be enough to serve both VPX and B2S. 

 

 

 

Just played Demo Man, 60 fps with vpinmame, 60 fps with b2s & dof, 60 fps with just b2s.

 

I also re-ran using bassgeige's TOTAN b2s and same results.  60 fps across the board

 

Nice job on Demo man.

I am digging the lighting and reflections that vpx offers

Nice psychedelic work on the TOTAN fantasy backglass

Just to clarify it is the Demo Man fantasy backglass that was part of the test not the TOTAN one. 

 

 

In summary I am confident that I have found and can easily reproduce a resource contention issue between VPX and B2S on a system with a i7 quad core 3GHZ (oc), win 7 32 bit machine with a Nividia GTX480 GFX card. I would suspect that any similar configuration (and less) will exhibit the same issue. There are a couple of workarounds including find another backglass with lower resources, disable the backglass completely or use the reassignment of B2S resources either through affinity changes on the CPU or reassigning to another GFX card. 

 

The remaining question is will the VPX dev team do anything about it or will my system specs be deemed not high enough as the minimum specs to run VPX. This is fine by the way it just needs to be stated that this is the level the Dev team expect as minimum. If they want VPX to be accessible to more users at specs similar to mine and below then a change will be required. Investigation of incorporating B2S into VPX  I believe would be a good outcome. 

 

Remembering this only affects a certain combination of VPX tables and backglasses on specs similar to mine but I know the issue will be raised again and again by people unless a dev says "Your specs don't meet the minimum to run VPX and B2S successfully across all tables".

[gtxjoe]

gtxjoe, on 04 Jan 2016 - 8:54 PM, said:

Just played Demo Man, 60 fps with vpinmame, 60 fps with b2s & dof, 60 fps with just b2s.

 

I also re-ran using bassgeige's TOTAN b2s and same results.  60 fps across the board

 

Nice job on Demo man.

I am digging the lighting and reflections that vpx offers

Nice psychedelic work on the TOTAN fantasy backglass 

 

 

xzotic -

I did it with the Demo Man B2S and also the larger TOTAN B2S  - 95 Meg backglass just to see if it made a difference. Hopefully people can post their results and let's see where the line in the sand is.

Have you updated the video drivers on the GTX 480 recently, maybe that would help. 

 

I have B2S settings, skip lamp at 1 and skip solenoids at 3  ( i think this is the default, at least I dont recall changing them).  

VP Video settings are really just Extreme FXAA enabled and Force Anisotropic Texture Filtering.  4xAA is not checked.  I do have FPS limter/Sync = 60 and Max prerendered frame = 1

 

Running I5-4690k 3.2 GHz, Win 7 64 bit, GTX660 2Gb

Edited by gtxjoe, 05 January 2016 - 04:29 AM.

[randr]

if you have a mb with a gpu, try to send the db2s there and let the maon card handle vpx, and pinmame if necessary?

The mobo doesn't have built in GFX.  However this could be another possible work around for others with the same issue.
 

ok, i just had a great idea, just today it came to me.
i'm sure most of you have already tried this, but i'm not that bright.
i need a little more time to figure stuff out, you know.
 
i have copied my VPinballX.exe and named it VPinballX - ST.exe (for star trek)
then i put (almost) all settings at performance level, so no anti aliasing and all that neat stuff.
also i said to give only 1024MB for the playfield/graphics.

Of course the graphics won't look as good as they should, but at least i can run some of those new tables very nicely now.
BUT IT WORKS like a charm, i can now run that new Star Trek.

Also the new Metallica and Terminator 2 were also very heavy, now they run as well.
By the way, did i mention i really like VPX

Unfortunately this has little to do with the issue in hand. It doesn't matter what settings I put (I can put them all down to minimum and still recreate the problem). You need to be running a specific table with a specific backglass with comparable specs (or lower) to mine to recreate the issue that I have raised.
 

 

 

Eureka! I found something really interesting. I have been testing every possible combination of graphics settings both within VPX and Nvidia settings. I noticed something odd with the Demolition Man table. I was unable to lock the refresh rate to 60 FPS. With F11 on it would show alternating frame rates between 40 and 90 (about 1 second apart) with an average of 63 (or there-abouts) with constant micro-stuttering. It didn't matter what I chose in the settings I could not lock the FPS. Also when I dropped all GFX levels to minimum in VPX the table looked crap yet still didn't improve the FPS!!
 
So I then loaded up JP's TOTAN which I know played very nice. Low and behold it was showing locked 60FPS as expected with no micro stutter. I deduced that there must be something specific with the Demolition man table. I decided to disable the b2s backglass. Sure enough the FPS magically locked to 60 frames and the microstutter is gone.
 
So based on this testing it appears (for what ever reason) VPX is having some issues with B2S with some (not all) back-glasses as TOTAN works fine with its B2S backglass but Demolition Man does not.
 
Does anyone have any idea why this might be so?

Are the backglasses very different resolutions? . could it be stealing memory from the video card to render the backglass?
 

I tried Demo Man, 60Fps with vpinmame, 5!! with b2s & dof, 25 with just b2s -- and I used the TOTAN.directb2s just for fun - same results with that directb2s vs the demo.directb2s
 

The TOTAN backglass should be fine as it appears to be lower on resources anyway. The test is Demo man with the Demo Man fantasy backglass on a GFX card similar in specs to the GTX480. This would conclusively show that there is a widespread issue with VPX and B2S probably related to resource contention as suggested in this thread. Other GFX cards with higher RAM/Specs may not see the issue as there will be enough to serve both VPX and B2S. 
 
 
 

Just played Demo Man, 60 fps with vpinmame, 60 fps with b2s & dof, 60 fps with just b2s.
 
I also re-ran using bassgeige's TOTAN b2s and same results.  60 fps across the board
 
Nice job on Demo man.
I am digging the lighting and reflections that vpx offers
Nice psychedelic work on the TOTAN fantasy backglass

Just to clarify it is the Demo Man fantasy backglass that was part of the test not the TOTAN one. 
 
 
In summary I am confident that I have found and can easily reproduce a resource contention issue between VPX and B2S on a system with a i7 quad core 3GHZ (oc), win 7 32 bit machine with a Nividia GTX480 GFX card. I would suspect that any similar configuration (and less) will exhibit the same issue. There are a couple of workarounds including find another backglass with lower resources, disable the backglass completely or use the reassignment of B2S resources either through affinity changes on the CPU or reassigning to another GFX card. 
 
The remaining question is will the VPX dev team do anything about it or will my system specs be deemed not high enough as the minimum specs to run VPX. This is fine by the way it just needs to be stated that this is the level the Dev team expect as minimum. If they want VPX to be accessible to more users at specs similar to mine and below then a change will be required. Investigation of incorporating B2S into VPX  I believe would be a good outcome. 
 
Remembering this only affects a certain combination of VPX tables and backglasses on specs similar to mine but I know the issue will be raised again and again by people unless a dev says "Your specs don't meet the minimum to run VPX and B2S successfully across all tables".

32bit os? You would solve any issues probably by simply upgrading to a 64bit win7.

[allknowing2012]

 

 

if you have a mb with a gpu, try to send the db2s there and let the maon card handle vpx, and pinmame if necessary?

The mobo doesn't have built in GFX.  However this could be another possible work around for others with the same issue.
 

ok, i just had a great idea, just today it came to me.
i'm sure most of you have already tried this, but i'm not that bright.
i need a little more time to figure stuff out, you know.
 
i have copied my VPinballX.exe and named it VPinballX - ST.exe (for star trek)
then i put (almost) all settings at performance level, so no anti aliasing and all that neat stuff.
also i said to give only 1024MB for the playfield/graphics.

Of course the graphics won't look as good as they should, but at least i can run some of those new tables very nicely now.
BUT IT WORKS like a charm, i can now run that new Star Trek.

Also the new Metallica and Terminator 2 were also very heavy, now they run as well.
By the way, did i mention i really like VPX

Unfortunately this has little to do with the issue in hand. It doesn't matter what settings I put (I can put them all down to minimum and still recreate the problem). You need to be running a specific table with a specific backglass with comparable specs (or lower) to mine to recreate the issue that I have raised.
 

 

 

Eureka! I found something really interesting. I have been testing every possible combination of graphics settings both within VPX and Nvidia settings. I noticed something odd with the Demolition Man table. I was unable to lock the refresh rate to 60 FPS. With F11 on it would show alternating frame rates between 40 and 90 (about 1 second apart) with an average of 63 (or there-abouts) with constant micro-stuttering. It didn't matter what I chose in the settings I could not lock the FPS. Also when I dropped all GFX levels to minimum in VPX the table looked crap yet still didn't improve the FPS!!
 
So I then loaded up JP's TOTAN which I know played very nice. Low and behold it was showing locked 60FPS as expected with no micro stutter. I deduced that there must be something specific with the Demolition man table. I decided to disable the b2s backglass. Sure enough the FPS magically locked to 60 frames and the microstutter is gone.
 
So based on this testing it appears (for what ever reason) VPX is having some issues with B2S with some (not all) back-glasses as TOTAN works fine with its B2S backglass but Demolition Man does not.
 
Does anyone have any idea why this might be so?

Are the backglasses very different resolutions? . could it be stealing memory from the video card to render the backglass?
 

I tried Demo Man, 60Fps with vpinmame, 5!! with b2s & dof, 25 with just b2s -- and I used the TOTAN.directb2s just for fun - same results with that directb2s vs the demo.directb2s
 

The TOTAN backglass should be fine as it appears to be lower on resources anyway. The test is Demo man with the Demo Man fantasy backglass on a GFX card similar in specs to the GTX480. This would conclusively show that there is a widespread issue with VPX and B2S probably related to resource contention as suggested in this thread. Other GFX cards with higher RAM/Specs may not see the issue as there will be enough to serve both VPX and B2S. 
 
 
 

Just played Demo Man, 60 fps with vpinmame, 60 fps with b2s & dof, 60 fps with just b2s.
 
I also re-ran using bassgeige's TOTAN b2s and same results.  60 fps across the board
 
Nice job on Demo man.
I am digging the lighting and reflections that vpx offers
Nice psychedelic work on the TOTAN fantasy backglass

Just to clarify it is the Demo Man fantasy backglass that was part of the test not the TOTAN one. 
 
 
In summary I am confident that I have found and can easily reproduce a resource contention issue between VPX and B2S on a system with a i7 quad core 3GHZ (oc), win 7 32 bit machine with a Nividia GTX480 GFX card. I would suspect that any similar configuration (and less) will exhibit the same issue. There are a couple of workarounds including find another backglass with lower resources, disable the backglass completely or use the reassignment of B2S resources either through affinity changes on the CPU or reassigning to another GFX card. 
 
The remaining question is will the VPX dev team do anything about it or will my system specs be deemed not high enough as the minimum specs to run VPX. This is fine by the way it just needs to be stated that this is the level the Dev team expect as minimum. If they want VPX to be accessible to more users at specs similar to mine and below then a change will be required. Investigation of incorporating B2S into VPX  I believe would be a good outcome. 
 
Remembering this only affects a certain combination of VPX tables and backglasses on specs similar to mine but I know the issue will be raised again and again by people unless a dev says "Your specs don't meet the minimum to run VPX and B2S successfully across all tables".

32bit os? You would solve any issues probably by simply upgrading to a 64bit win7.

 

64bit for me..its not really a memory issue per se .. 

[PinballShawn]

Well I've had enough tweeking settings over and over, I just broke down and bought a superclocked GTX-770. If I get any stutter I'm kicking someone's ass!

[WiiMoritz]

I had problem with B2S a long time ago, I just need to set to start as EXE, change skip numbers to 10, check use simple. lamps, save, restart table and problems are gone

Enviado de meu XT1033 usando Tapatalk

[wrd1972]

Can someone explain what "skip lamp" and "skip solenoid" both do, in detail? Also MAX prerendered frames.

Thanks

Edited by wrd1972, 08 January 2016 - 02:12 AM.

[allknowing2012]

The rom sends many requests to the backglass .. it tells the backglass to ignore most of them and only react to every nTH request. I havent noticed a thing in terms of display on the backglass as I upped the numbers. It doesnt affect the table at all - ie you are not missing light/solenoid events on the table. Prerendered frames - I would think the obvious ... how many frames to store in the cache and buffer/memory.

[atarian]

....and as mentioned before the skip lamps/solenoids on the B2S backglass (running as an EXE) yield big improvements for me too, and tbh when you are playing you won't notice any difference so they are the first performance tweaks I apply when installing a new table.  That combined with the Affinity settings (Aero on and FPS locked to Vsync) gives me almost perfectly smooth play on all tables with B2S-Server running (for me at least).  

Edited by atarian, 08 January 2016 - 06:59 AM.

[Aubrel]

Hello

 

I've made some test also because some tables are a little slow and I didn't manage to change anything...

I'm running a 2 screens cab on a A10-7870K with 8GB of 2400C10 DDR3 (2GB dedicated to the IGP@975Mhz)

It should be very cheap compared to the i7+GTX I can see here but VP9 runs well (more than 100fps on most tables with very high quality setting).

 

For VP10 it's a little short, that's my results with VP10 1.0.

(W7/64, 1920x1080@60, dB2S 'exe' 1280x1024@60, Quality FXAA, Reflect Ball, Ball Trails, Ambient Occlusion 'Enable', Prerendered frames 2, Anisotopic Texture Filtering, textures unlimited et details @max)

 

AFM (JP) : approx 80fps stable in game

ARFM : approx 80fps stable in game

TOTAN : 60-65fps stable in game

Soprano : 58-62fps stable in game

Shrek : 80fps stable in game

Rolling Stones : 57-70fps very unstable in game / sometime 5 fps at start until credited

Sharley Shootout :  70-72fps stable in game / sometime 5fps at start until credited and started

Dr Dude : 65-69fps stable in game

Metallica : 54-56fps stable in game / 5fps at start until credited and started

Star Trek : 50-52fps stable in game / sometime 5fps at start until credited

 

The stange fact is the following :

- removing dB2S backglass bring me only 2-3 fps (changing the 'skip' options of the dB2S backglass from 1 to 10 changes nothing on my system)

- turning off "Quality FXAA, Reflect Ball, Ball Trails, Ambient Occlusion 'Enable', Anisotopic Texture Filtering" brings me only approx 5fps for all of them for a big quality lost !!!

When I disable them one by one, I can see the result for each on the screen (so they work), but the fps remains approx the same !

(And same for the prerendered frames a very few fps difference from 0 to 3...)

 

I also have to enable at least quality FXAA because without I have many white dots arround the textures and I think that fast FXAA doesn't work as it has no effect on my system.

 

So it's very strange... because from the best (exept 4xAA who kills my perfs) disabling all the other options are only able to bring me approx +10% of perf on my system for the cost of a big visual quality loose...

 

I hope it can helps to resolve something

 

Regards

Edited by Aubrel, 08 January 2016 - 03:57 PM.

[atarian]

gStAv produced a graphic some time ago summarising some settings to try from JimmyFingers. Pasting it here as it is relevant to this thread:

gStAv graphic:

[DKong]

A $100 i3 CPU and $120 gtx750ti will do fine.

 

I'm getting stutter on many of the new VPX tables, including TOTAN (some stutter), POTC, Sopranos, T2, and America's Most Haunted.  I don't get stutter on JP's AFM table however.  All VP and PM5 tables play smoothly on my system.

 

Here is my rig:

 

AMD A10-7850K Kaveri 12 Compute Cores (4 CPU + 8 GPU) 3.7GHz

GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3H FM2+ / FM2 AMD A88X

SAPPHIRE DUAL-X 100373L Radeon R9 280

8GB RAM

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

 

 

Should this be enough to play VPX tables without stutter?  If so, could you please let me know how?  

 

I see there are several threads going and many theories, however it sounds like you have VPX playing well on your system.

 

I would greatly appreciate if you could post a screenshot and how/what settings to adjust in order to get VPX tables to play without stutter.

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited by DKong, 09 January 2016 - 02:51 AM.

[DKong]

I must have a setting wrong somewhere.  I see a lot of people are getting FPS rates between 50-100.  Mine are much higher, so maybe this is my stutter issue?

 

Do I want to set VPX to lock in the FPS at 60?  How/where do I do this?

 

My current FPS averages on a couple of tables:

 

TOTAN - VPX

140-160 fps (with B2S enabled)

150-170 fps (withOUT B2s enabled)

 

Pirates of the Caribbean - VPX

340-360 fps (with B2S enabled)

350-410 fps (withOUT B2s enabled)

 

I have read this entire thread, but still am a bit lost on how to correct the VPX stuttering.  

 

I would greatly appreciate some help in clarifying this issue (and if it should help correct the stuttering).

 

Thanks guys.

[vampirolatino2]

I must have a setting wrong somewhere.  I see a lot of people are getting FPS rates between 50-100.  Mine are much higher, so maybe this is my stutter issue?

 

Do I want to set VPX to lock in the FPS at 60?  How/where do I do this?

 

My current FPS averages on a couple of tables:

 

TOTAN - VPX

140-160 fps (with B2S enabled)

150-170 fps (withOUT B2s enabled)

 

Pirates of the Caribbean - VPX

340-360 fps (with B2S enabled)

350-410 fps (withOUT B2s enabled)

 

I have read this entire thread, but still am a bit lost on how to correct the VPX stuttering.  

 

I would greatly appreciate some help in clarifying this issue (and if it should help correct the stuttering).

 

Thanks guys.

 

Enable vsync in video properties.

Edited by vampirolatino2, 09 January 2016 - 03:58 AM.