69 replies to this topic

[WonderAlex]

Hi there,

I've got a Athalon 1.85 with a ATI Radeon9600 (old, I know) running the latest Catalyst drivers sitting inside a bartop-cabinet.

I've been annoyed for a long time that even though I'm running 1024x768@32 or 16bit all my 4:3 tables look nothing like what I've seen as screenshots on this site. They're blurry, pixelated and on some tables the "transparent" plastic ramps are nothing more than a half-tone pattern. Basically they look like a low rez image blown up.

So I saw this thread and decided to try it.

When I run VP9.0.8 with AF on the play field, bumpers and other details go black. They're there - just black. The lights on the playfield are fine - but still blurry.

Am I missing something? Is there a new version of VP9 is should be using?

Be seeing you,

WonderAlex

[FDSystems]

I´ve had this type of problems at the beginning of VP9.Try to check/ uncheck HR & reorder; don´t forget to save the changes, & close the table before testing again. I have not been able to find a standard setting working for all tables, I use the hit & miss method.
I will follow the answers as i have an ATI Radeon X1200 on my laptop & I only found out recently that they were Catalyst drivers for that.

[WonderAlex]

Well - it did not work.

Even after making sure that the HD Render was checked (dxdaig confirmed everything is working fine and enabled) the PF, and certain other components remain black when I activate AF - and graphic images (the playfield and lights in particuar) look like blown up low-rez pics when the AF is off.

The only table I have that looks good is the Adams Family Gold VP8 - makes me wonder if I should change back to VP8.

Any ideas?

WonderAlex

[Noah Fentz]

You simply don't have enough VRAM. 128MB?

Your only option is to upgrade your video card. If you choose to do so, I'd suggest an Nvidia card if you what the best performance out of VP9.

[WonderAlex]

I was afraid you were going to say that. But I think you're right.

The 9600 I have only has 128

My budget is tight on this - any model suggestions?

Regards,

WonderAlex

Edited by WonderAlex, 03 October 2010 - 01:07 PM.

[Noah Fentz]

Check on Amazon.ca for anything in the 512MB - 896MB range. I had an Nvidia 9600GS with 512MB that I had a few issues with, but when I shipped it off to Wizards_Hat, it's been treating him very nicely nicely. Those cards go for 60-90 bucks (USD).

I can find refurbished cards with up to a GB, too (which I have no issue buying for myself), for around USD 129.00. Some even in the upper 80's, lower 90's. You just have to do a little online shopping.

[toxie]

just discovered this thread, so maybe i can give some additional technical insight to this (as i implemented an anisotropic filter myself for a highend software renderer once, the same goes for antialiasing/supersampling algorithms/patterns )..

a) anisotropic filtering is only of use if the texels of a texture/picture are "distorted" (stretched, trapezoid'ized, etc.), i.e. thats the reason why FS tables do not show that much of a difference (as the mapping of texels into screenspace is almost 1:1, and no distortions are introduced due to camera-perspective, etc.) as trilinear filtering is pretty much all that is needed here to give a nice result (rectangular mappings are well handled by this and as such the AF cannot do much to improve upon this)..
b) multi- or supersampling won't help that much (i don't even know if it makes a difference at all, apart from maybe influencing the texture filtering a bit), but that is due to how visual pinball internally works..
c) visual pinball still uses DX7, which is the reason why AF and AA cannot be enabled by the program itself.. if someone would be brave enough to change this to DX9 or above (or even software rendering? ), it would make this whole process configurable from within VP itself..

[WonderAlex]

Hey - shelved this project for a while. Finally back on it.

Will this do?

http://www.tigerdire...a...&CatId=2234

WonderAlex

[Noah Fentz]

I had one of these, and I had some render issues on my desktop. You really want a card with 896MB or greater card for best results.

[WonderAlex]

I was afraid you'd say that.

Not many options for NVIDIA AGP - looks like I'll have to settle with ATI

http://www.tigerdire...a...57&csid=_21

or

http://www.ncix.com/...manufacture=XFX

That or upgrade the MoBo - but that will defeat the purpose of recycling an old PC for a MAME/PIN cabinet.

Thanks,

WonderAlex

[Sabbat]

bump, somehow my settings got changed back and Future Spa was blurry. So searched for this thread and it fixed it again

[bladexdsl]

i tried this using vpinball.exe as program setting i don't really see any difference except sometimes the dmd fails to load?

[Sabbat]

i tried this using vpinball.exe as program setting i don't really see any difference except sometimes the dmd fails to load?

It shouldn't effect the DMD. Sounds more like you are running on windows7/vista without running as administrator or in Windows NT compatibility mode.

[bladexdsl]

yeah admin is ON running in windows nt 4.0 sp5

never had a problem until i enabled this 16x setting. screw it i'm changing it back to default

Edited by bladexdsl, 15 April 2011 - 02:47 PM.

[Sabbat]

yeah admin is ON running in windows nt 4.0 sp5

never had a problem until i enabled this 16x setting. screw it i'm changing it back to default

Well it was worth a shot, its helped a lot of us

[rob046]

yeah admin is ON running in windows nt 4.0 sp5

never had a problem until i enabled this 16x setting. screw it i'm changing it back to default

You should seriously upgrade! NT is coming up on being 20 years old. NT is as old as my Judge Dredd pinball machine! I wasn't even in high school yet when NT came out & I'm 32 now! If I were you I'd at least upgrade to XP, you should be able to do that for cheap. If not vista or a windows 7 home, but only run those if you got a good 2gb of RAM.

Honestly turning on AF doesn't make a huge difference. The improvements are usually subtle. & on tables that already use high rez textures you can hardly tell any difference at all in most spots. If you can't do 16xAF for whatever reason, it isn't too much of a loss. After all, before VP9 this AF setting didn't work at all & we got along just fine.

A note for anybody, I did lots of testing with both VP & FP with AF. Beyond 8x or maybe even 4x in some cases, I don't see much difference. In other words, I say don't waste resources on 16xAF. If you got a decent gpu, just max it at 8x at most. Might free up a little memory & the results are just as good.

[Sabbat]

yeah admin is ON running in windows nt 4.0 sp5

never had a problem until i enabled this 16x setting. screw it i'm changing it back to default

You should seriously upgrade! NT is coming up on being 20 years old.

I'm pretty sure he meaning running win7/vista in NT compatibility mode so the DMD loads up infront of VP and not behind it.

[rob046]

yeah admin is ON running in windows nt 4.0 sp5

never had a problem until i enabled this 16x setting. screw it i'm changing it back to default

You should seriously upgrade! NT is coming up on being 20 years old.

I'm pretty sure he meaning running win7/vista in NT compatibility mode so the DMD loads up infront of VP and not behind it.

I guess that would make more sense, but even that seems a bit odd. I never use anything older than XP for any compatibility mode. Compatibility modes in general rarely do anything for me. I'm running win7 64bit without any compatiblity modes for any software I have ATM. I rarely have the problem of the DMD not showing up on top, but if I do, I know that simply disabling desktop composition will fix this if it is really an issue, or I just hit F3 for a quick fix.
Though I love the look of the border around the DMD display when Aero is on, so I leave the exe settings alone. I subscribe to the thought that you shouldn't ever mess with those settings unless they give notable improvements. Otherwise you are always better off letting stuff run "as is" when you can.
So I'd personally tell people to give disable desktop composition a try to help fix some things before trying compatibility mode.

In terms of performance I get no improvement using compatiblity modes, if anything maybe lose a few fps. I never have on any of my different setups. & windows 7 seems better than any previous windows in terms of having great built in compatibility. I have no trouble playing some pretty old games that I could even play on XP with or without compatiblity mode settings.
I'm now running SP1 as well. I've been a huge fan of win7 since day 1, even before day 1 as I was running beta win7. One thing to note is that win7 has a number of compatibility patches in windows update, so always stay up to date on that, install SP1, all that good stuff.

[Sabbat]

yeah admin is ON running in windows nt 4.0 sp5

never had a problem until i enabled this 16x setting. screw it i'm changing it back to default

You should seriously upgrade! NT is coming up on being 20 years old.

I'm pretty sure he meaning running win7/vista in NT compatibility mode so the DMD loads up infront of VP and not behind it.

I guess that would make more sense, but even that seems a bit odd. I never use anything older than XP for any compatibility mode.

It's just something i read to do either on the forums or in the chat.

[Shooby Doo]

On 2 of my systems running XP I have to set it to NT compatibility so the DMD shows properly. On 2 other systems it's fine without that.