1388 replies to this topic

[mystman12]

Thanks for your help, BilboX, but I still can't figure a few things out. I've replaced and installed the VPinMAME.dll, I've downloaded the ROMs, but I tried downloading a normal VP BK2K, and it loads just fine, but the ROM doesn't start up. There are a ton of BK2K ROMs, does it make a difference which one I downloaded? I just downloaded destruk's ROM, which was the most downloaded one on the site. It was bk2k_l4.

[Syco54645]

the post says which version of rom to download

It needs the 3 VPM roms, respectively dd_l2, bk2k and taf_l7 (see the download section on VPF).

Edited by Syco54645, 20 December 2013 - 07:56 PM.

[mystman12]

I couldn't find a ROM with just bk2k, they all had something added after that.

[JohnIV]

If you have a full MAME set you can just point vpmame's rompath to it as well.  The then current pinball sets were added a few years back.

 

John IV

mameui.info

[settingsons]

Thanks for the release - been looking forward to this for a long time .  I haven't been lucky, so here are the details.....

 

I registered the new VPinMame.DLL using the pinmame setup.

I just tried to run it on the cabinet.  I disabled my 2nd graphics card and have the main card running two screens.

As I use XP I couldn't run the extractor without the error, so I double-clicked on the table and tell it to launch with Unit3DPinball.exe, but nothing loads.

If I look in the task manager I can see the Unit3DPinball.exe loaded but no CPU activity.  Here is the output_log.txt :

Initialize engine version: 4.2.0f4 (38efbd14869d)
GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1
Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 9.0c [nv4_disp.dll 6.14.13.623]
    Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
    Vendor:   NVIDIA
    VRAM:     1536 MB (via registry)
    Caps:     Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=0 DF24=0 INTZ=1 RAWZ=0 NULL=1 RESZ=0 SlowINTZ=0

There is nothing after that so not sure why it stopped.  I only run a handful of services so I am not sure if it's related to that.   Thanks!

[mystman12]

Well, I got it to work, but it only runs at an average of 15-20 fps. The physics and flippers are really slow, too. I'll mess around with some settings in the meantime. Also, I was wondering, would a table that doesn't use a ROM run faster, and will we be able to play Future Pinball tables with this in the future? The documentation seemed to say so.

[Vinthar]

Just one note because it does not seem that you guys saw it on the doc: THERE IS some edition/physics edition functionnality in this version. Just launch in command line using "/editor" => you will be able to play with the "Curve Editor" (complex flippers) AND global physics values IN RUNTIME. Though, there is no documentation at this point...

 

Win7 64 bits, GTX 770, latest drivers, 16GB ram - crashes badly with black screen after loading table.

I would like to send error logs but can't see any email address in documentation....

Upload it here I will take a look as soon as I can. Black screen often means VPM did not load successfully. Did you saw the VPM splashscreen?

 

I tryed on other, older computer and it worked flawlessly, so I re-registered Vpinmame on my main setup and now it works also on my main rig. Apparently problem was on my side

Looks pretty promising!

[mystman12]

Yeah, I probably can't run this no matter what I do. I'm trying to run it on a laptop with 6GB of RAM and an AMD-A4 processor that only runs at 1.50 GHz. So unless the emulation is what's taking up all the power, this won't work for originals, either.

[BilboX]

 

 

I played with all the settings for cab mode and while the play field looks good the toys, plastics, flashers, and table objects  look jaggy and low res on my end too. BTW I cranked everything up to highest quality setting.

 

I am not understanding what you mean by ortho view? 

Thank you for your efforts on this project

 

Hard to explain here without drawings. Orthographic projection is what you can see on technical docs for example. In contrast with perspective projection, the farther objects does not seems smaller.

The thing is that for a cab, we need to "stretch" the back of the table. If you pay attention, the resolution of objects is better on the user side (flippers, etc..) and lower on the back of the playfield. Short answer, ortho will have a good resolution everywhere but the playfield would look "flat". But the best way will be to include it as an option.

 

Can the sticky flipper rubber be changed from here though? Tbh that's all that bothers me about it. The materials xml?

 

I am afraid it is only possible from script now. No, the material.xml store the rendering materials (textures, etc..), the modified_materials.xml stores the materials we modified IN realtime using our MaterialEditor (runtime). This will be on the next video . The step after that will be the "Physics Editor", where you will be able to tweak, in realtime too, bounciness, bounciness combine mode, static friction, dynamic friction, friction combine mode. There is a lot of work because we need to mimic some editio noption like picking, selection border, undo framework, etc...

 

Thanks for the release - been looking forward to this for a long time .  I haven't been lucky, so here are the details.....

 

I registered the new VPinMame.DLL using the pinmame setup.

I just tried to run it on the cabinet.  I disabled my 2nd graphics card and have the main card running two screens.

As I use XP I couldn't run the extractor without the error, so I double-clicked on the table and tell it to launch with Unit3DPinball.exe, but nothing loads.

If I look in the task manager I can see the Unit3DPinball.exe loaded but no CPU activity.  Here is the output_log.txt :

Initialize engine version: 4.2.0f4 (38efbd14869d)
GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1
Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 9.0c [nv4_disp.dll 6.14.13.623]
    Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
    Vendor:   NVIDIA
    VRAM:     1536 MB (via registry)
    Caps:     Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=0 DF24=0 INTZ=1 RAWZ=0 NULL=1 RESZ=0 SlowINTZ=0

There is nothing after that so not sure why it stopped.  I only run a handful of services so I am not sure if it's related to that.   Thanks!

Ouch. This log does not tell a long story :S. it seems that it cannot even reach the runtime Script compilation. Are you still on the same state? Did you picked the".upt" file? Sorry about those "basic" questions (I'll avoid the "have you tried to reboot teh system?" IT question ). Not funny sorry. Well, do you have a Win7 somewhere on which you can try? PM if you have further questions, I will try to answer (hard this week-end!).

Regarding this, do you know guys that Microsoft will stop updating XP in april?

 

Well, I got it to work, but it only runs at an average of 15-20 fps. The physics and flippers are really slow, too. I'll mess around with some settings in the meantime. Also, I was wondering, would a table that doesn't use a ROM run faster, and will we be able to play Future Pinball tables with this in the future? The documentation seemed to say so.

In a general manner, try not to rate Physics if it is below 700 FPS as we tuned it for about 1KHz...

 

I couldn't find a ROM with just bk2k, they all had something added after that.

Yeah, my mistake, it is indeed bk2k_l4 rom...

[settingsons]

 

Thanks for the release - been looking forward to this for a long time .  I haven't been lucky, so here are the details.....

 

I registered the new VPinMame.DLL using the pinmame setup.

I just tried to run it on the cabinet.  I disabled my 2nd graphics card and have the main card running two screens.

As I use XP I couldn't run the extractor without the error, so I double-clicked on the table and tell it to launch with Unit3DPinball.exe, but nothing loads.

If I look in the task manager I can see the Unit3DPinball.exe loaded but no CPU activity.  Here is the output_log.txt :

Initialize engine version: 4.2.0f4 (38efbd14869d)
GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1
Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 9.0c [nv4_disp.dll 6.14.13.623]
    Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
    Vendor:   NVIDIA
    VRAM:     1536 MB (via registry)
    Caps:     Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=0 DF24=0 INTZ=1 RAWZ=0 NULL=1 RESZ=0 SlowINTZ=0

There is nothing after that so not sure why it stopped.  I only run a handful of services so I am not sure if it's related to that.   Thanks!

Ouch. This log does not tell a long story :S. it seems that it cannot even reach the runtime Script compilation. Are you still on the same state? Did you picked the".upt" file? Sorry about those "basic" questions (I'll avoid the "have you tried to reboot teh system?" IT question ). Not funny sorry. Well, do you have a Win7 somewhere on which you can try? PM if you have further questions, I will try to answer (hard this week-end!).

Regarding this, do you know guys that Microsoft will stop updating XP in april?

 

 

 

I know it isn't very informative.  No problem for the basic questions  - I appreciate you trying to help.   I did double-click on the UPT.  I also tried launching with the command-line and /editor option but it hangs at the same point.  I also did some re-boots, etc. but same behaviour.

 

Maybe it is related to me not having some basic services running?   I will try and enable a few this evening.

 

Unfortunately no W7, but I may ask for a copy for Christmas .   Thanks!

Edited by settingsons, 21 December 2013 - 11:41 AM.

[ClarkKent]

It seems to be that I'm too stupid to set this alpha up for my cab. I'm using "fake full screen for all" but I can not move the playfield and backglass with the red cross on the upper left side, it can only be enlarged or minimized but not moved. And I can not rotate the view by 90 degrees. How to do that?

 

Moreover there should really be something done about the performance. As Crysis 3 is running absolutely fluid on my i5 2500k with GTX660 it looks weird that I can not get full 60 fps with a pinball simulator. Dr. Dude almost reaches 60 fps, TAF only 45 fps or so. All in cabinet mode.

[louizou]

It seems to be that I'm too stupid to set this alpha up for my cab. I'm using "fake full screen for all" but I can not move the playfield and backglass with the red cross on the upper left side, it can only be enlarged or minimized but not moved. And I can not rotate the view by 90 degrees. How to do that?

 

Moreover there should really be something done about the performance. As Crysis 3 is running absolutely fluid on my i5 2500k with GTX660 it looks weird that I can not get full 60 fps with a pinball simulator. Dr. Dude almost reaches 60 fps, TAF only 45 fps or so. All in cabinet mode.

Can you see all the cross handles ? Each virtual screens has 2 cross (top left) and (bottom right)

If you can't see all of them, quit the app, delete cabcalibration.xml and restart it, now you should see all the cross handles.

 

To perform a rotation, drag the top left cross to the bottom left position and drag the bottom right cross to the top right position.

You can invert the handles as you wish to perform the desired rotation.

 

About performances, we have tried to do our best to optimise the shaders.

Have you lowered the number of pixel light count ?

The slider goes from 0 to 200, so be careful with this.

[rockyrocket]

Firstly I want to say thank you for this release - its impressive even for an alpha!.

I have made some wrappers for pincab use that start a table and swap out the vpinmame.dll and register it on the fly, then replaces the old one for us that want pindmd support.

Its mostly working in pinballx but I have run into some issues with the esc key and am wondering if the menu key can be changed somehow?.

[Roo]

I figured out my ROM audio issue.  Somehow the audio device got switched from the default to an optical output that I don't use.  This happened twice after TAF got stuck with no ball launched and I had to quit.  Maybe I somehow changed it in the options panel with the arrow keys while trying to nudge the ball free?  That was the only time I used them while I was messing around with this.  It seems weird that the audio device would just get changed on me otherwise.

 

Speaking of that, anyone else have problems with the next ball not launching on TAF?  It seems to happen at least 30% of the time so far.

 

 

I still can't get acceptable performance, though.  I have a VirtuaPin with an i3 @ 3.1 ghz and 4GB RAM.  It has a GTX 660 for the playfield monitor and another video card for the backglass.  In cabinet mode, I tried disabling vsync as suggested and that did help some.  I also tried disabling the backglass monitor entirely just to test the theory about 2 video cards causing issues.  That seemed to help, also.  That seems strange because I would think having the main card only run one screen would make it run better.  That must be why the VirtuaPin is made this way.  I don't think it is too uncommon in cabinet builds, either.  These changes got me from like 19 FPS with TAF idle to about 40-50 FPS while idle.  Still not playable once you start the game, though.

 

So I turned off cabinet mode and just tried to get it running decently on the main monitor in fake full screen mono or whatever the default is called.  With everything turned down all the way down or off, I can get about 100 FPS on TAF when it's idle.  When playing, it still stutters pretty often, though (dropping down to 30 or 40 FPS).  Multiball is really bad (like 20 FPS).

 

I then tried DD and got about 140 FPS while idle.  That table played smoothly for me (probably stayed at 70-90 FPS while playing), but again this is in single monitor mode with every single setting turned off.  No reflections, no AA, all sliders at 0 (except ambient room lighting).

 

I didn't think I'd be able to run this at max settings or anything, but I thought the GTX 660 would be decent.  I'd like to hear what numbers other people are getting, particularly if you have the same card.  I don't think my CPU or RAM is the problem as CPU usage was staying at about 60% and only like 1.5 GB of RAM were in use.

[rockyrocket]

For anyone that`s interested I have managed to find a way of running this from PinballX  dynamically swapping and registering the DLL`s on the fly.

Details here...

http://www.gameex.in...a-and-pinballx/

Sorry if the description is incoherent but I am as they say knackered!.

Please speak up if you can improve this.

[mystman12]

Yeah, the physics only run at 400-500 KHz, which is why they're going so slow. Man, I really wish I could run this! Oh, well, I don't play emulated tables any ways, so I'll wait to see if a non-emulated table runs any better. (Which I'm doubting) If anyone has any more tips to improve performance, please share!

Edited by mystman12, 22 December 2013 - 01:23 AM.

[BilboX]

Firstly I want to say thank you for this release - its impressive even for an alpha!.

I have made some wrappers for pincab use that start a table and swap out the vpinmame.dll and register it on the fly, then replaces the old one for us that want pindmd support.

Its mostly working in pinballx but I have run into some issues with the esc key and am wondering if the menu key can be changed somehow?.

Oups, sorry about that, will will make the "Main menu key" changeable in input menu. Thanks for finding/writing workarounds! We wil take care of the vpinmame problem when I can find some times to speak with VPM devs...

 

I figured out my ROM audio issue.  Somehow the audio device got switched from the default to an optical output that I don't use.  This happened twice after TAF got stuck with no ball launched and I had to quit.  Maybe I somehow changed it in the options panel with the arrow keys while trying to nudge the ball free?  That was the only time I used them while I was messing around with this.  It seems weird that the audio device would just get changed on me otherwise.

 

Speaking of that, anyone else have problems with the next ball not launching on TAF?  It seems to happen at least 30% of the time so far.

 

 

I still can't get acceptable performance, though.  I have a VirtuaPin with an i3 @ 3.1 ghz and 4GB RAM.  It has a GTX 660 for the playfield monitor and another video card for the backglass.  In cabinet mode, I tried disabling vsync as suggested and that did help some.  I also tried disabling the backglass monitor entirely just to test the theory about 2 video cards causing issues.  That seemed to help, also.  That seems strange because I would think having the main card only run one screen would make it run better.  That must be why the VirtuaPin is made this way.  I don't think it is too uncommon in cabinet builds, either.  These changes got me from like 19 FPS with TAF idle to about 40-50 FPS while idle.  Still not playable once you start the game, though.

 

So I turned off cabinet mode and just tried to get it running decently on the main monitor in fake full screen mono or whatever the default is called.  With everything turned down all the way down or off, I can get about 100 FPS on TAF when it's idle.  When playing, it still stutters pretty often, though (dropping down to 30 or 40 FPS).  Multiball is really bad (like 20 FPS).

 

I then tried DD and got about 140 FPS while idle.  That table played smoothly for me (probably stayed at 70-90 FPS while playing), but again this is in single monitor mode with every single setting turned off.  No reflections, no AA, all sliders at 0 (except ambient room lighting).

 

I didn't think I'd be able to run this at max settings or anything, but I thought the GTX 660 would be decent.  I'd like to hear what numbers other people are getting, particularly if you have the same card.  I don't think my CPU or RAM is the problem as CPU usage was staying at about 60% and only like 1.5 GB of RAM were in use.

I DO have a GTX 660, but my proc is i7 3.5. Only one card, two screens output.

Here is what I have in idle, for full HD (1920 1080) stadard, and for FULL HD + second screen 1024*768, with the given option file (all reflections, etc...):

 

Addams: 95 FPS , 75 in cab

DrDude: 130 FPS , 130 in cab

BK2K: 120 FPS , 102 in cab

 

When playing, I can drop to  40FPS for addams and 80 FPS for two others. But important rate is physics, it must not drop below 700FPS.

 

Notes:

 In cab, Resolution is important of course, but "Render Mesh quality" is also consuming => dropping from High to medium will save you arounf 10FPS.

 Please, when you are benchmarking, turn main menu and options menu off : drawing the GUI is VERY consuming...

 

As I have roughly the same GC, it should come from either CPU, or maybe too much loading in backgrounds... Really sorry if this is not smooth for now, but, ClarkKent, Crisis never show you more than 150 real pixels lights at the same time, and covering some much part of your screen (and we are faaaaaaaaaar from having Crytek resources). We made a lot of graphics options to run on as much config as we can, but we do not have hands over the Unity engine. Either upgrade, or turn to another simulator, sorry....

[BilboX]

Almost forgot:an important tipfor performance is to disable dmd size doubling in vpm options! The copy to unity texture will then be 4 times faster... let me know if this improved fps....

[Roo]

I DO have a GTX 660, but my proc is i7 3.5. Only one card, two screens output.

Here is what I have in idle, for full HD (1920 1080) stadard, and for FULL HD + second screen 1024*768, with the given option file (all reflections, etc...):

 

Addams: 95 FPS , 75 in cab

DrDude: 130 FPS , 130 in cab

BK2K: 120 FPS , 102 in cab

 

When playing, I can drop to  40FPS for addams and 80 FPS for two others. But important rate is physics, it must not drop below 700FPS.

 

Notes:

 In cab, Resolution is important of course, but "Render Mesh quality" is also consuming => dropping from High to medium will save you arounf 10FPS.

 Please, when you are benchmarking, turn main menu and options menu off : drawing the GUI is VERY consuming...

 

As I have roughly the same GC, it should come from either CPU, or maybe too much loading in backgrounds... Really sorry if this is not smooth for now, but, ClarkKent, Crisis never show you more than 150 real pixels lights at the same time, and covering some much part of your screen (and we are faaaaaaaaaar from having Crytek resources). We made a lot of graphics options to run on as much config as we can, but we do not have hands over the Unity engine. Either upgrade, or turn to another simulator, sorry....

 

 

Thanks for that response.  That helps me understand a little better.  I never looked at the physics number, so I will pay attention to that - perhaps CPU is a factor after all.  In my single screen test I achieved similar numbers to what you have for TAF, but it sounds like you aren't seeing the stuttering that I am.

 

Does the program always use the native resolution of the monitor?  I actually tried it out on an old desktop which had vpinmame installed and it ran better there with a GTX 460 than on my 660.  But I think this is probably because it was only running 1680 x 1050.  So is there any way to turn down the resolution slightly?  When you start the program it shows that window with the resolution dropdown, but that's clearly ignored because I never changed it from the default of like 640 x 480 and it looks like it runs full screen at the monitor's native resolution.

 

I did notice the drop caused by the menu overlays, also.  So I've always been closing them when testing but that's a good point.

Edited by Roo, 21 December 2013 - 10:10 PM.

[BilboX]

Either switch to realfullscreen mode or change your desktop résolution. I am sooooo sorry, maybe too tired but it's a gtx 680 i have, no 660... this should explain too the differences...