1353 replies to this topic

[Drybonz]

The dual screen support with integrated back glass would be amazing.

[randr]

Yeah dual screen would be nice.

[dark]

At this point I'm really quite satisfied with where vpx is at, so hats off for that. 

 

If I could ask for just one thing in the next beta it would be real world measurement units.  With pretty much all tables using at least some 3D elements, it would really help the precision of recreations.  We could start to really standardise parts' scale to their real world counter parts so that things that are constants like rubber posts, plastic posts etc are always exactly the correct size/scale.

[nFozzy]

I've never used a 3d modeling program that didn't hate working in inches though... VP units would be a lot cleaner if it was 1" to 50 units instead of 1.0625". Maybe it's a little late to change that... A quick inches-to-VP units conversion button would be handy.

[flupper1]

As a feature request for 10.3: (maybe asked before, I don't know) VPX lights at a angle? I really like the VPX lights, so I am having a hard time doing semi vertical lights in Diner with flashers.

And another one: being able to rotate the environment map (at least a little, i.e. 10%) in the table preview? This would make it easier to optimise environment map reflections without going back to photoshop every time.

If these are not possible, no worries, I really like working with VPX as it is!

[dark]

Well I hear that, 3D you can set to any measurement you want and when scale isn't a big issue I often just stay in inches, but when I want to be precise I'm fine to work with in cm/mm.  'Cleaner' units just sounds liked 'rounded' units to me which is the discrepancy in the accuracy.  

 

Trying to convert 50 vp units (the ball) to real units hurts my head:

[sliderpoint]

I was just talking to BorgDog about this. The major manufactures of pinball were/are all US based and when you measure the objects on a real table they are designed in Inches. The arbitrary vp unit is frustrating to get things correctly sized.

Although I would think options for us or Metric would be good.

What about only doing bug fixes for 10 and just switch to working on v11. Port to DX11! Multiscreen support, realistic lighting, BAM type camera options, and whatever else was mentioned that was cool that needed DX11.

-Mike

[nFozzy]

It'd be cleaner because it'd use proper decimals for inches. For example, most pinball parts are measured to 16ths of an inch. 1 and 1/16" easily converts to 50 VP units, but then 1 and 2/16" in VP units becomes 52.941176470588235294117647058823529411764705882352941176470588235294117647058823529411764705882352941176470588235. Bizarre for a unit that's ostensibly based on inches.

 

The conversions can be done easily with fractions, VP units = (inches * 800) / 17 and inches = (VP units * 17) / 800

Edited by nFozzy, 27 December 2016 - 07:34 PM.

[sliderpoint]

It'd be cleaner because it'd use proper decimals for inches. For example, most pinball parts are measured to 16ths of an inch. 1 and 1/16" easily converts to 50 VP units, but then 1 and 2/16" in VP units becomes 52.941176470588235294117647058823529411764705882352941176470588235294117647058823529411764705882352941176470588235. Bizarre for a unit that's ostensibly based on inches.
 
The conversions can be done easily with fractions, VP units = (inches * 800) / 17 and inches = (VP units * 17) / 800

This basically justifies eliminating VP units and go with a real unit of measurement. But I guess if you still need a 3rd form of measurement I would agree that at least a more round conversion factor would be nice. But that seems like something that would not be backwards compatible for opening earlier VPX tables.

-Mike

[dark]

Typically in 3D system unit set up is 1 unit = 1mm, 1cm or 1inch, based off what measured units you choose.  Of course you can customise this but this is a general practice for keeping things straight forward,  so it's kind of counter intuitive for me to think of 1 1/16th as 50 vpus, it would just seem to make more sense to me that 1 unit equals 1 real unit of measurement.

 

Currently I have a simple method of figuring scale from 3D to VP, I simply export the table as a mesh once the PF has been properly sized and positioned, I then match a PF in 3D to it's exact size and position and then I can use this as a constant and means of finding scale for other items on the table.

 

[bent98]

I wanted to say thank you to all involved to make vp the most complete pinball sim out there. With all the 3D modeling being done it's really rasing the bar on what can be done with the vp engine. Now that 10.3 is being developed can we please please please get better Anti Aliasing implemented? Even with 4x brute force those God awful jaggies are still present and it really detracts from the authors efforts to make the table as immersive, accurate and realestic as possible .

Edited by bent98, 27 December 2016 - 11:26 PM.

[Shockman]

Being something of a critic I agree with sliderpoint that the state of the software might be at a point that a bug squashing campaign might be best. That, and the fact that many requests are obviously VP11 destined, and these fixes have missed many updates and some cycles now too, and they have to be fixed before you could go into another cycle in a relaxed personal condition, am I right?

 

I promise I'll have a lot to point out in the 10.3 beta thread.

 

Some might be hard because I know they were worked on a lot, like the kickers, others will be as easy as pie, like more logical wording for a labels, yes, anti-friction, but view backdrop too. Your'e past putting out something great, This and that spiffy new menu is polish, for anything that is to remain kin to VP10.0

 

 

Speaking of menus though, something that may be nice to add into the 10 cycle would be to use the thing you do to give most of the table info at the exit point, to have a method for displaying the rules which is also in the table info.

 

 

Thanks. 

Edited by Shockman, 28 December 2016 - 05:18 AM.

[kiwi]

........ but I could add a rectangular kicker hole in the next version.

Something malleable with the control points as the trigger?

 

Thanks

Edited by kiwi, 28 December 2016 - 06:39 AM.

[ClarkKent]

A solution for showing the menus in exclusive fullscreen mode!

[Drybonz]

A solution for showing the menus in exclusive fullscreen mode!

 

That is dual screen support also, I think.

[toxie]

I would also hope that we could get dual screen going.

Then i would love to experiment a bit more with dynamic/real lighting.

Apart from that nothing super-big on my todo list, just a ton of smaller things.

Moving to DX11 or 12 as pointed out would be yet another huge effort that would not show immediate benefits though, as then we should also get away from the pre-rendering of static objects, etcetc. and then would have to change the way stuff is rendered dramatically as the new DXs put much more work and responsibility into the programmers hands, which is good and bad.

The only immediate benefit i could see coming from that would be that we could have HDR TV support, which is not possible in DX9.

[bent98]

Excuse my ignorance but does that mean you will implement better AA?

[toxie]

The reason we do not have better/faster AA yet is that we have this mixture of static and dynamic object rendering which does not work with the faster AA methods.

The only thing we could add is another postprocess AA, so instead of FXAA have something similar/newer.

[BorgDog]

Lots of great ideas for improvements guys! And thanks as always toxie and fuzzel for making it all happen and putting up with all of us.

 

On the subject of the reworked toolbars it would be great if we could have the option of where to place them, so when I work on my laptop or desktop where the monitor is landscape I would put the toolbars on the side like they currently are, but when working on my cab with the playfield monitor in portrait orientation it would be much better with the toolbars at the top (or bottom) to allow for more working space.  Thanks!

[dark]

Moving to DX11 or 12 as pointed out would be yet another huge effort that would not show immediate benefits though, as then we should also get away from the pre-rendering of static objects, etcetc. and then would have to change the way stuff is rendered dramatically as the new DXs put much more work and responsibility into the programmers hands, which is good and bad.

I've already been trying to take steps to replace old high poly (static) parts with lower poly parts that could be rendered dynamic.  The problem is, we simply aren't going to be crossing that bridge until we come to it so to speak.  If we want people to get away from using static rendering, the simplest way would be to take that leap and get rid of static rendering.  As it is now, we suffer the drawbacks of not being fully dynamic, but the advantage being we get to use high poly static items with no real impact on performance, no one is going to stop utilising that advantage while it's still present.  When people start seeing the advantages of a dynamic environment and the drawbacks of using all these high poly items in that environment, attitudes will shift quickly I can assure you.

 

The other thing is, making the leap to dx11 or 12, we'd have access to a lot more shaders and we could likely utilise more mapping options like cavity map, light map, shadow map, occlusion map, displacement map.  The big one has been normal maps, they are totally key to getting low poly objects to look highly detailed in a dynamic environment.  The shaders, in combination with good maps can make a low poly model look fantastic, just see any of my more recent models on sketchfab and try enabling lit wireframe mode to see how much the maps are actually cheating and giving the illusion of detailed geometry that just isn't there in the optimised model.

https://sketchfab.com/dark0verseer

See the X-Files models or TWD model to see what I mean.  Sketchfab is using shaders similar to what you see in modern gaming engines, albeit optimised for the web.