35 replies to this topic

[vidmouse]

I'm having a problem with a lot of the tables that use the alpha ramps. The decals and images are all pixelated:



I've tried turning Hardware Rendering on, but then Visual Pinball goes all non-responsive on me.
Given my PC specs below, what are the minimum recommended upgrades?

PC Specs
$50 Mobo: Biostar K8M800 Micro Motherboard - Via K8M800, Socket AM2, MicroATX, Audio, Video, AGP 8xk ...
$60 CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Processor 2.40GHz, 1MB Cache, 1000MHz (2000 MT/s) FSB, Brisbane, Dual-Core, Retail, Socket AM2, Processor with Fan
$36 Memory: 2GB (2x Patriot Signature 1024MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Memory or similar brand)
$25 Video Card: PNY/Nvidia 256MB FX5200 PCI w/ dual VGA outputs
$200 Monitor: Hannspree HF-259HPB 24.6" Widescreen LCD HD Monitor - 1080p, 1920x1080, 16:9, 1000:1 Native, 3000: Dynamic, 2ms, 60Hz, Integrated Speakers, VGA, HDMI
$--- Backglass monitor: unknown, about 19"
$100 IPAC2 (which in hindsight I didn't really need, I have a spare gamepad I could've hacked but oh well)
$22 Altec Lansing Speakers w/ sub from office depot
$10 Logitech keyboard
$--- optical mouse


Thanks in advance

[ta2686]

The best thing I can recommend you do is upgrade that video card to have at least 1 Gb of memory. 256Mb is definitely not enough to avoid pixelation.

[kruge99]

The best thing I can recommend you do is upgrade that video card to have at least 1 Gb of memory. 256Mb is definitely not enough to avoid pixelation.

Yeah, 1Gb video ram is pretty much required for Alpha ramp transparency. Do they make any AGP cards with 1Gb?

[vidmouse]

The best thing I can recommend you do is upgrade that video card to have at least 1 Gb of memory. 256Mb is definitely not enough to avoid pixelation.

Yeah, 1Gb video ram is pretty much required for Alpha ramp transparency. Do they make any AGP cards with 1Gb?

I've been looking now and there's not many. And they're all about $100-120 or so.
If I'm going to spend that kind of money, is it better just to upgrade the mobo and cpu
and video card altogether? (ie. do I already have enough memory?)

Edited by vidmouse, 23 April 2012 - 03:18 PM.

[DSocrates]

The best thing I can recommend you do is upgrade that video card to have at least 1 Gb of memory. 256Mb is definitely not enough to avoid pixelation.

Yeah, 1Gb video ram is pretty much required for Alpha ramp transparency. Do they make any AGP cards with 1Gb?

I've been looking now and there's not many. And they're all about $100-120 or so.
If I'm going to spend that kind of money, is it better just to upgrade the mobo and cpu
and video card altogether? (ie. do I already have enough memory?)

Can someone explain why video card RAM is linked to transparency not working properly? Seems kind of ridiculous that 1GB is needed for Visual Pinball when brand new fully 3D games have transparencies all over the place which work fine on my 512MB card. I have many new games on my 512 card and haven't seen this problem in any of them. :-/

[oooPLAYER1ooo]

Because vp is a 10 yr old program that uses direct x7 and therefore modern gfx cards need to emulate it

All your modern games use direct x 10 or 11 using all the modern cards features, every effect you see in vp has been faked

[Arcade4]

Because vp is a 10 yr old program that uses direct x7 and therefore modern gfx cards need to emulate it

All your modern games use direct x 10 or 11 using all the modern cards features, every effect you see in vp has been faked

Which makes it even more impressive.

Does Unity with the FP graphics use the latest direct X stuff?

Edited by Arcade4, 24 April 2012 - 12:40 AM.

[vidmouse]

Ok, I finally installed a new (used) 1GB video card and am still having some issues.
At first I got everything all whited-out, then I adjusted the alpha settings to lowest
level. Now, it plays w/o the pixelation, but it stutters and it's slow. Any reason for
this given my system specs? (1st post)

[Wahreez McDermot]

Do you have hardware device rendering turned on? That is usually necessary to play newer tables at a decent speed. Worth a shot anyway.

[vidmouse]

Do you have hardware device rendering turned on? That is usually necessary to play newer tables at a decent speed. Worth a shot anyway.

Yes, it's turned on. Here are my video settings:

Fullscreen
1280x1024x32
At Full Screen anti-stretch ball 16:9

Draw ball shadows
Draw ball decals
Antialias ball

Hardware Device Rendering

Max texture dimension 1024

Alpha Ramp Accuracy slider all the way left

EDIT:
Alright, this is weird... I just tried these settings on my desktop, and it appears to work fine.
The PC has similar specs to my cab pc... except that the video isn't 1 GB! (I think it's only
256MB? -- a Geforce 6200). I wonder if using UVP in my cab is slowing things down?

Edited by vidmouse, 06 May 2012 - 05:29 AM.

[GSGregg]

Hello, vidmouse;

Ok, I finally installed a new (used) 1GB video card and am still having some issues. At first I got everything all whited-out, then I adjusted the alpha settings to lowest level. Now, it plays w/o the pixelation, but it stutters and it's slow. Any reason for this given my system specs? (1st post)

It's one thing to have adequate memory to render demanding tables, especially with Alpha transparencies; it's another to get that data where it has to be in a timely fashion. Is your 'new' vid card a PCI, as was your FX5200? If so, bear in mind that AGP8X is theoretically sixteen times as fast as PCI. Even if your mobo has the 66MHz PCI, which the manual doesn't mention, the bandwidth multiple is still eight.

Here are my video settings:

Fullscreen, 1280x1024x32, At Full Screen anti-stretch ball 16:9. Draw ball shadows, Draw ball decals, Antialias ball.
Hardware Device Rendering, Max texture dimension 1024, Alpha Ramp Accuracy slider all the way left.

1280 x 1024, a 5:4 aspect ratio, seems weird for a 16:9 FS table on a 16:9 monitor, but if you're happy, so am I. As for the Details, I don't run any of them, but past experiments seemed to show me that Antialiasing delivers the biggest hit to FPS. And if Hardware Render works, definitely use it. (I say 'if', because my ATI Radeon HD4670 (AGP) can't use it on all tables. $125, and HDR iffy---go figure!)

Alright, this is weird... I just tried these settings on my desktop, and it appears to work fine. The PC has similar specs to my cab pc... except that the video isn't 1 GB! (I think it's only 256MB? -- a Geforce 6200). I wonder if using UVP in my cab is slowing things down?

Would that GeForce 6200 happen to be an AGP-8X, by any chance? If so, this demonstrates what that sixteen-to-one does for you. If not, then maybe the UVP is suspect; all I play is desktop without a frontend, so I have no experience with UVP.

As far as one-gig cards for AGP go, I've seen no evidence that NVidia ever made one; that's why I wound up with ATI. NVidia did make several PCI versions, though. I guess that since PCI's evolution to PCI-E was right around the corner, NV figured AGP to be a dead horse. That left all of us hesitant-to-upgrade types at the mercy of a company that hasn't even provided WHQL certified drivers for products with which they have this market cornered. I replaced an AGP-8X GF6200 512MB, simply because I wanted 1GB---and I have to go Onboard if I want to play Pro Pinball or FullTilt! because the HD4670 can't handle their flippers or launcher/plunger!

GSG

[Wahreez McDermot]

It is possible UVP could be slowing your performance down. I think most people here use one video card for the playfield and another video card for the backglass & DMD. So using both on one video card might be the issue.

Personally I just use 1 rotated monitor for the playfield and I stick the DMD at the bottom on the apron.

I'd try running some tables by themselves on just a single monitor and see how that goes. Then work from there to try and isolate the problem. Also which Nvidia Drivers are you using? I'm on Win7 64-bit and the latest beta 300 series drivers are working quite well for me.

Edited by Wahreez McDermot, 07 May 2012 - 07:27 AM.

[vidmouse]

Sorry, forgot to mention that in order to use my new PCI E x16 1GB card,
I had to swap motherboards... my new mobo is still an Athlon x2 though, and
same RAM, just has a PCI E slot instead of AGP.

I may play around with adding my PCI 256MB card back in to run the backglass, we'll see.

Also: I ran further tests on my desktop and while it's still faster than
my cab pc, it's not perfect either... must've been some fluke the
other day?

EDIT: I also might try to run the backglass from the onboard video... is
this possible? (going to do a search but figured I'd ask in my own post)

Edited by vidmouse, 07 May 2012 - 05:42 PM.

[Wahreez McDermot]

It probably isn't possible to run the onboard video with your discrete card at the same time. Unless your motherboard specifically advertises that future. I don't believe that was something available yet during the Athlon x2 days though.

"For there to be even any chance of it working the onboard gpu has to be the same brand as the discrete one."
The above statement was later proven to be false and possibly malicious!

I added in the malicious part to make it more dramatic!

Edited by Wahreez McDermot, 09 May 2012 - 12:56 AM.

[koadic]

It probably isn't possible to run the onboard video with your discrete card at the same time. Unless your motherboard specifically advertises that future. I don't believe that was something available yet during the Athlon x2 days though.

For there to be even any chance of it working the onboard gpu has to be the same brand as the discrete one.

This isn't entirely accurate I am using a gtx 460 along with my onboard ati 4290

[vidmouse]

Ok, I think I'm starting to nail this down, thanks to all your help!

I read my mobo manual and in fact I was able to get the onboard video
and my 1GB video card working at the same time tonight. However,
even with doing this, I didn't notice any improvement in speed/stuttering.

I tried moving the DMD to the primary display and I noticed that
the speed improved considerably, good enough for play, etc. I guess
in a pinch I could just move the problem tables to the apron like
you suggested but I'd still like to see if I could figure this out.

When I moved the DMD, the backglass still functioned ok (flashing
lights, etc), just no DMD there of course.

A couple of things I'm wondering:

Did I have to change any visual pinball, vpinmame, or uvp settings
when I started using the onboard and video card combination to
take advantage of the two video processors?

I think I've seen a thread (will search after this) that others have
slow-down issues with the DMDs... what else can be done?

[vidmouse]

Ok, I think I got this licked!

I read the posts on DMD issues and tried setting ddraw in my registry to 0...
made a ton of difference for both Black Rose and White Water, and they're
playable now. Also tried it with TOTAN and TOM and it made a difference there too.

I'm going to also try the suggestion to set the backglass res to 16 color depth
tonight and see if that helps even more.

The DMDs did resize themselves, as warned, but I was able to reset the sizes in
the registry.

Thanks for the help!

[Wahreez McDermot]

.....I am using a gtx 460 along with my onboard ati 4290

Interesting, I knew that onboard video would only work with discrete if the motherboard bios supported it, but, I wasn't aware that you could use onboard video from one vendor with a discrete card from another!

Did that require any kind of hack or workaround to accomplish? I'm just asking because I know from the research I did about 1.5 years ago when building my compy that the Nvidia & ATI drivers apparently did not play well together. However, I have no first hand experience with that.

There was/is also that nonsense about not being able to use SLI on a motherboard chipset that wasn't Nvidia or Intel. Thankfully somebody found a workaround for that a while back, but, its viability is in peril with each new driver update. You can't use SLI for this pinball stuff anyway so it is a moot point.

Also... glad to hear you've started to make real progress in getting everything working vidmouse! I should've mentioned the ddraw thing! oops!

Note you can also reset the DMD sizes by right clicking on them and 'showing border' then I just shrink them down as small as possible, to get the proper aspect ratio. Then depending on preference you can double size them and retain the proper aspect ratio.

Edited by Wahreez McDermot, 09 May 2012 - 12:55 AM.

[vidmouse]

...Note you can also reset the DMD sizes by right clicking on them and 'showing border' then I just shrink them down as small as possible, to get the proper aspect ratio. Then depending on preference you can double size them and retain the proper aspect ratio.

I've found that when I show the border and resize the DMD, if I try to un-show
the border the DMD returns to its original size. If I modify the size in registry
or the script it stays that size.

I tried setting the backglass res to 16 color depth last night and saw a SLIGHT improvement,
about 10-20 using the F11 fps. I'll keep it like that, every little bit helps I guess.

I do notice that my FPS numbers seem way off compared to others I've seen reported
on the board. On some tables I've seen others report around 800-1000 fps where
mine is at best 100-200 fps, and yet it seems fine when I'm playing it, I don't really
notice it being slow or any stutter. Not a problem, just curious why that is.

EDIT:
FYI I've been testing with Black Fose (Lord Hiryu's FS beta version), Whitewater,
Theatre of Magic, and TOTAN, mainly. Is there another table I should try to
really test out if I have this alpha problem solved (ie with a lot of the ramps or
other things that might make video difficult)?

Edited by vidmouse, 09 May 2012 - 09:25 AM.

[koadic]

I've found that when I show the border and resize the DMD, if I try to un-show
the border the DMD returns to its original size. If I modify the size in registry
or the script it stays that size.

If you click on something else and then go back and 'un-show' the border, it should work (sometimes it doesn't though for me), but either exiting the table or resetting the rom with F3 should work. Also, I believe that when ddraw is turned off, it will add black borders around the dmd in the window until you hit the next multiple of width or height... for example a 128x32 dmd starts at double that size (+3 pixels for border), so 256+3 by 64+3, and will get up to 3 times wider (256, 512, 768 (+3)) and 4 times taller (64, 128, 192, 256 (+3)) filling in the rest of the space with black.

I tried setting the backglass res to 16 color depth last night and saw a SLIGHT improvement,
about 10-20 using the F11 fps. I'll keep it like that, every little bit helps I guess.

I do notice that my FPS numbers seem way off compared to others I've seen reported
on the board. On some tables I've seen others report around 800-1000 fps where
mine is at best 100-200 fps, and yet it seems fine when I'm playing it, I don't really
notice it being slow or any stutter. Not a problem, just curious why that is.

EDIT:
FYI I've been testing with Black Fose (Lord Hiryu's FS beta version), Whitewater,
Theatre of Magic, and TOTAN, mainly. Is there another table I should try to
really test out if I have this alpha problem solved (ie with a lot of the ramps or
other things that might make video difficult)?

Which version of TOTAN are you using to test? the newer mod by haddonfield (LINK) has a lot more alpha ramps I believe and drags my home system down to a crawl, and have yet to try it out on my cab with my 460 though.

.....I am using a gtx 460 along with my onboard ati 4290

Interesting, I knew that onboard video would only work with discrete if the motherboard bios supported it, but, I wasn't aware that you could use onboard video from one vendor with a discrete card from another!

Did that require any kind of hack or workaround to accomplish? I'm just asking because I know from the research I did about 1.5 years ago when building my compy that the Nvidia & ATI drivers apparently did not play well together. However, I have no first hand experience with that.

I just made sure everything was running without the 460 installed, and then put it in and loaded the nvidia drivers. I also needed to make sure that the onboard graphics were the first in the list to be detected in the bios (Onboard->PCIe->PCI->etc...), if any other selection was set before the onboard graphics, it finds the external card first and turns off the onboard card.