4027 replies to this topic

[Thalamus]

Ah. So, I did understand. And, yes, I agree with you fully on table elements should only accept mono.

 

Good luck with your tuning. I should really consider getting double ones myself.

[wiesshund]

wiesshund : So, when you say

 

'I think most table authors do not have access to a decent software package to allow them to create the sounds like that It is not terribly intutive to do in audacity, and i cant share pro tools'

 

Why is it then a problem ??

 

If some table author added something that was multichannel to the table area. I'm pretty sure that I would delete it right away as no sound from the table should come from more than one place at any given time.

 

I'm sure that it something I don't get here ?

 

 

I picture may make more sense?

 

I could (and i am not saying do this mind you) take a measurement of your cab, including the exciter locations

then i could throw that in as a graphical template t work against

 

Now, i could make table sounds, that are multi channel (some channels will simply be silent)
that will play a sound exactly as your exciters and cab audio in general see things, as opposed to how normal audio stuff sees it (which is acoustically and some other stuff)

 

And each sound made for you like that will play great, on your cab, no matter what the table script says about it
But, it will most likely not play for any one else right on any other setup the differs from yours

And it definitely will not play right for anyone who is using acoustic speakers.

 

But like i said, it was an observation, not a recommendation or anything

 

3d audio is tricky when it comes to pinball
Everything the devs have to work with is basically based off of dolby surround, except in the gaming world 5.1 side surround is renamed rear but it is still the same channel
And the listener is in the center of the sound scape

 

In pinball, the listener is never in the center of the sound scape
He is standing in the hallway outside the theater room, looking through the door, and even the back channels are in front of him.

[wiesshund]

I think wiesshund wants playfield samples that go full surround sound for audio surround sound rather than ssf support. I am not sure how we can have both without some enhancement to the sound manager to use different samples for different audio modes.

No, i do not, and i specifically said i do not
I specifically said that almost no table authors would be able to make them properly
Plus they would have to deal with making both a 5.1 and 7.1 set of sounds
since for VPinball 7.1 does NOT down convert to 5.1 or visa versa
 
What Wiesshund wants is for the table to understand No speaker besides table rear right/left, table front right/left
regardless if if 6 channel 8 channel or 12 channel atmos is available
 
The backglass is fine to use what ever is available, the table is not
 
All i'd want the table to do is (Warning incoming evidence that i have no clue about coding)
 

 

dim RearLeft
dim RearRight
dim FrontLeft
dim FrontRight
dim SoundObj

dim SoundXcenter
dim SoundYcenter



SoundXcenter = table.width*0.5
SoundYcenter = table.height*0.5



sub playsoundat
dim pan
dim fade

If SoundObj x > SoundXcenter then
pan = (soundobj x / soundXcenter)*100
FrontLeft=(frontleft+pan)
RearLeft=(rearleft+pan)
end if

If SoundObj x < SoundXcenter then
pan = (soundobj x / soundXcenter)*100
FrontRight=(frontright+pan)
RearRight=(rearright+pan)
end if

If SoundObj y > SoundYcenter then
fade = (soundobj y / soundYcenter)*100
RearRight=(rearright+fade)
RearLeft=(rearleft+fade)
end if

If SoundObj y < SoundYcenter then
fade = (soundobj y / soundYcenter)*100
FrontRight=(frontright+fade)
FrontLeft=(frontleft+fade)
end if

'playsound name sound loop, frontleft volume, frontright volume, rearleft volume, rear right volume, rand pitch, pitch, existing, restart
Playsound soundname, (flv - frontleft), (frv -frontright), (rlv - rearleft), (rrv - rearright), 0.05, 0, 0, 1
End Sub

Edited by wiesshund, 05 April 2021 - 01:41 AM.

[njk70]

Well said.  Pondering it a little.... if you really wanted to the table script could select sound samples based on your audio mode. I don't know if the scripts have access to the sound mode variable to do it automatically (@toxie?) but it could at least be a script variable to play audio 7.1 (desktop user) or ssf 7.1 (cabinet) and do appropriate things for each. I think that gets you the best of both worlds but does require per table scripting effort. I could think of more complicated methods where you tag each sample for what mode its for and when a sample name is requested it picks the one most closely matching your setup. But I'm not convinced table authors would be interested in it, hard enough to get them using mono positioned samples for things it seems much less have complicated multi-channel samples. But you got me thinking about supporting both simultaneously and having a cabinet in my game room which also has an acoustic surround sound system around me off a second sound card (which I happen to have a spare sitting right here) not for physical table sound effects but for other special effects and music... @wiesshund you are a bad influence.

[wiesshund]

 For the record, I hate adjusting leaf switches, especially double ones.

 

Yes, because after a week of use, they "settle in" and move

[wiesshund]

Well said.  Pondering it a little.... if you really wanted to the table script could select sound samples based on your audio mode. I don't know if the scripts have access to the sound mode variable to do it automatically (@toxie?) but it could at least be a script variable to play audio 7.1 (desktop user) or ssf 7.1 (cabinet) and do appropriate things for each. I think that gets you the best of both worlds but does require per table scripting effort. I could think of more complicated methods where you tag each sample for what mode its for and when a sample name is requested it picks the one most closely matching your setup. But I'm not convinced table authors would be interested in it, hard enough to get them using mono positioned samples for things it seems much less have complicated multi-channel samples. But you got me thinking about supporting both simultaneously and having a cabinet in my game room which also has an acoustic surround sound system around me off a second sound card (which I happen to have a spare sitting right here) not for physical table sound effects but for other special effects and music... @wiesshund you are a bad influence.

 

I dont want the table script to do something

i dont know how to write in c++

so vbs is the only way i can write an example of what i'd like the table to be doing inside vpx under the hood

 

As for the other part

 

No, most authors will not be remotely interested

And it is understandable, i have the stuff to make decent ac3 audio, and it's a pain in the ass, it's a lot of work.

 

But, there are a few tables out there that really do scream to be on a cab, in a room by itself

with the backglass having it's own independent audio, with 8 or 12 channel surround

 

Just paint the room and all the speakers black, and dont light it very well, so all you can really see is the cab.

 

It is not practical at all, it's silly and maybe kinda stupid, and it's definitely not realistic at all what so ever

and it also only suits a small amount of tables

 

But, it is fun, aside from the part where you have to return the other surround sound system back to the living room.

 

You can do it with a cab too, but i think it only works out well in a cab using 5.1/7.1 acoustic, i think with exciters it would just make things weird with the table vibrating wrongly

 

I played around with it on bountyhunter while he was still beta testing it, and the pinkfloyd table, and i took one of the old EM baseball tables
and made some backglass tracks from old baseball recordings, like 30's through 50's era stuff, which was kind of fun, sounded like you were standing in the middle of the field.

 

Fun to play with, if you've the audio set up for it to play back on right.
But yea, i cant see authors lining up to do it, nor a large amount of cab owners being thrilled with it, considering how their audio is set up.

[njk70]

@wiesshund, thats pretty much what its supposed to be doing in ssf mode. I don't have control of individual channels so i remap pan (-1,1) and fade (-1,1) to sections of surround sound that play proportionally to sl,sr,rl,rr channels with nothing coming out of fl,fr based on position. What I have assumes center channel is not connected, I have no idea what comes out of center, I didn't really consider that.  But in my comments while doing this I did note this would probably sound really wonky in a real surround sound environment because of exactly what you might be seeing. There is a point where things flip somewhat harshly left to right. This seems to be ok in ssf mode which is why it sealed the deal on this being a seperate mode and not a global change to the 7.1 mode. Honestly there isn't much more that can be done with the DirectSound3D (WAV file) code path. I could keep looking and mess with the listener position and min/max distances to see if I can get something a little more subtle but we are pounding a square peg in a round hole (I know, hit it harder).  The directsound3d modeling is for a human head and ears listening to sounds around you, you naturally hear sounds in different locations differently... heavily weighted to in front of you.  Its really hard to get that to map to SSF. Really we need play a mono track to four channels with very simple controls of per channel volume. We set the volume completely proportional to the x and y coordinates. We don't get that with DirectSound3D, we have to let windows do its surroundsound algorithm.   Can we do it with the BASS library? I'm not sure,  I did a cursory look and didn't see anything obvious. I could play the sound twice, once to SL,SR and once to RL,RR and could probably work out the math for the pan and volume differences. I do a simple version of this in my copy of SSFImpactor but I don't know how well it would work here. 

 

I'll reread everything here, it'll make more sense now.

[wiesshund]

 

 

 What I have assumes center channel is not connected, I have no idea what comes out of center, I didn't really consider that.  

 Well, hehe, in the case of the table fading to the back, and panning a sound 0.00
everything

[njk70]

Really need someone who knows windows audio to at least point in the direction of how to do this. I'm just limiting myself to what I found out about DirectSound(3D) [which is very deprecated] and BASS.dll which is ok but there are other libraries and APIs around. I just stuck with what was already in place. I did ok considering I had never so much as made a windows program go beep before or given any thought to how SurroundSound worked.

[njk70]

I thought about it a little more. I can't really do anything about the center channel, I don't think there will be any positioning where something doesn't come out of the center channel, but I suppose I can hook something up and take a listen. But for the sudden pan transition I can maybe do something in ssf mode. I was being a bit lazy as I was getting really tired of this project.

 

The issue is that the bulk of the transition occurs at the far sides of the playfied. The middle 70-80% doesn't shift sound all that much as I recall. So I remapped the left side into the small area that you can hear a transition on the left and on the same on the right side. So basically it skips over that middle 70-80% which is why there is a sudden shift. It sounds worse than it is when its on playfield and the speakers are only two feet apart. I already tried to soften it a bit by putting in a center transition zone that had output on both sides so it wouldn't be quite as whiplashy switching from side to side.

 

With a little more work I could soften that transition more, maybe reintroducing the logarithmic scale would help, i spent a little bit of time trying to find an equation that would result in the mapping I wanted but I gave up and stuck with the linear rescaling so I could be done with the project.

[njk70]

Had another thought. Should maybe the original 7.1 mode be changed to freely use the front speakers and be a "acoustic" 7.1 surround vs the ssf surround mode?   Right now the original 7.1 still shifts sound to the lower half of the surround sound stage, maybe it should use the full stage in acoustic mode? @wiesshund?  I could make you a test version like that if you want to try it.

[wiesshund]

Had another thought. Should maybe the original 7.1 mode be changed to freely use the front speakers and be a "acoustic" 7.1 surround vs the ssf surround mode?   Right now the original 7.1 still shifts sound to the lower half of the surround sound stage, maybe it should use the full stage in acoustic mode? @wiesshund?  I could make you a test version like that if you want to try it.

 

No, i think it is right to shift the table to the lower half.
PinMAME has no choice but to play out the front channels.
Does not make any sense for the table to go wandering into those, except for backglass sounds, and those already can

I am trying to see if i can find anything helpful in telling the table sound functions that specific channels are not valid for use
 

Like you said, the documentation kind of sucks and is antiquated

[Madonion]

Hey Guys,

 

glad this forum is still alive and kicking! Is it fine to upgrade to 10.7 beta now or is 10.6 still preffered? 

[wiesshund]

Hey Guys,

 

glad this forum is still alive and kicking! Is it fine to upgrade to 10.7 beta now or is 10.6 still preffered? 

 

rename the VPinballX.exe in the 10.7 beta zip and have both?

who says you have to chose only 1?
 

[Friffy1]

 

Hey Guys,

 

glad this forum is still alive and kicking! Is it fine to upgrade to 10.7 beta now or is 10.6 still preffered? 

 

rename the VPinballX.exe in the 10.7 beta zip and have both?

who says you have to chose only 1?

 

That's what I've done.  I've got both exes in the same folder.  Have each setup as its own emulator in Popper and have tables that "want" 10.7 launch with that, all other VPX tables launch with 10.6.2.

I was THIS close to going full 10.7, but then I found that Terminator 2 does a weird plunger thing in 10.7.  Every second (roughly) the plunger seems to go from max (fully pulled) to 0, back to max again.  Really strange.  It's the 32A version of Terminator 2 (I think it was 32A who made it).  The G5K version does NOT suffer that issue.  But, I kinda figured if 1 table has the issue, several do.  So, no worries.  I'll run both.  LOL

Edited by Friffy1, 05 April 2021 - 11:10 PM.

[Thalamus]

What you are referring to is the new plunger feature. I should probably have mentioned it here in the beta thread that it would be a good idea to put that as disabled as default instead of enabled. But, then again, people would not see that this was made. But, yes, there are some tables that has issues with that enabled still. T2, didn't know that one had such a problem, but, there are others too. Go to Keys/Dof under preferences, then near the nudge adjustments, there is this small little checkbox I never remember what is called. It says plunger something. Turn that off and you are back to the way it was previously for VPX and tables should not become "weird". At some time, tables might get updates for the new feature.

[wiesshund]

 

 

Hey Guys,

 

glad this forum is still alive and kicking! Is it fine to upgrade to 10.7 beta now or is 10.6 still preffered? 

 

rename the VPinballX.exe in the 10.7 beta zip and have both?

who says you have to chose only 1?

 

That's what I've done.  I've got both exes in the same folder.  Have each setup as its own emulator in Popper and have tables that "want" 10.7 launch with that, all other VPX tables launch with 10.6.2.

I was THIS close to going full 10.7, but then I found that Terminator 2 does a weird plunger thing in 10.7.  Every second (roughly) the plunger seems to go from max (fully pulled) to 0, back to max again.  Really strange.  It's the 32A version of Terminator 2 (I think it was 32A who made it).  The G5K version does NOT suffer that issue.  But, I kinda figured if 1 table has the issue, several do.  So, no worries.  I'll run both.  LOL

 

 

I was about to say disable the plunger 1sec retract in nudge/DOF setting but Thalamus beat me to it

[Friffy1]

What you are referring to is the new plunger feature. I should probably have mentioned it here in the beta thread that it would be a good idea to put that as disabled as default instead of enabled. But, then again, people would not see that this was made. But, yes, there are some tables that has issues with that enabled still. T2, didn't know that one had such a problem, but, there are others too. Go to Keys/Dof under preferences, then near the nudge adjustments, there is this small little checkbox I never remember what is called. It says plunger something. Turn that off and you are back to the way it was previously for VPX and tables should not become "weird". At some time, tables might get updates for the new feature.

Oh, how 'bout that?!  Thanks!  I'll give it a look!  I wasn't even going to mention anything since... well... it's a beta!  Things like that happen in betas.  In that case...  Maybe I will switch over to 10.7 for real!

[lukpcn]

and for everybody without github login: https://github.com/v...7.0-127-c9c069f

@Toxie, I've always Used the 32bit executable and here is also the x64 version... so which one should I use ? I'm puzzled

[jpsalas]

 

and for everybody without github login: https://github.com/v...7.0-127-c9c069f

@Toxie, I've always Used the 32bit executable and here is also the x64 version... so which one should I use ? I'm puzzled

 

 

Just use the 32 bits for now. Later when everything else is in 64 bits then we may use the 64 bits version.  All the other programs must also be 64 bits, like freeimage.dll, bass.dll, SciLexerVP.dll, vpinmame, db2s, pup...