13 replies to this topic

[rob046]

I was playing around with pinmame display antialias the other day, which I never really bothered with, but I found the results interesting.
I took screenshots of a DMD display at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% antialias.

I found that the 50% default is a bit too much.
For those that aren't even sure what it did (which I didn't for the longest time), check the attached image. Within this image are 3 different displays, you'll see the bottom image makes the orange dots all seem to blend together, you might say the whole thing looks blurred over. That is 100% AA. The middle image is 50% AA, the default. It doesn't look bad, but you still lose some of that clear orange/black checkerboard effect. Then the top image is 0% AA, no antialias at all. To me, that looks the most realistic, not to mention it might improve performance a tad for some people.

For those who haven't seen a real DMD in a while, they of course do not have any kind of AA. I'm curious as to why AA was ever added to pinmame, maybe one of the devs can answer that.

I might say that the orange dots on a real DMD (or even LED segments for that matter) could have a little bit of glow around them depending on how good your eyes are.
I personally found that a perfect setting for the VPM display is about 20% AA. It keeps the display looking natural & real, while adding just a tiny touch of AA for a very slight glow effect around the orange dots. Perfect!
But 0% AA looks good too.
As I said, for anybody who prefers this, you'll also get a performance boost. How much I'm not sure, but anytime you are removing antialias from an image, its gonna take up fewer resources.

So I guess I just wanted to put my thoughts out there, along with a comparison image. Note you can really tell the difference between 50% and 0% if you layer them in photoshop & keep ticking & unticking the top layer.
I'm wonering why AA is there in the first place, and if anybody else thinks that 50% AA by default is a bit too much.

Edited by rob046, 03 July 2010 - 06:44 PM.

[Noah Fentz]

I like the first one. It is, after all, a DOT matrix.

[destruk]

my default is 0%, but your 'screenshots' look really really bad.
Your dots don't line up, they overlap and aren't equadistant. It's almost as if your vpm display window was composed of emreel images.

This is what it looks like for me. Sharp, and like a DMD IMO.
Notice how mine have clear black lines at equal spacing between the dots all the way across? Why does yours look worse?

Edited by destruk, 03 July 2010 - 08:29 PM.

[Rawd]

I noticed that my DMD looked alot different after I went to XP from Vista. On Vista, it looked more like Destruks screenshot, and on XP it looks more like Robs first shot. I haven't really played with the settings too much to try to correct it.

[destruk]

As for why AA is there to begin with - remember, PinMAME is based on MAME. MAME has AA as an option. Some people might like it, it isn't causing any problems, and it can be disabled or adjusted to your own preference, just like you can change the size of the display window and the colors and shading properties - even for machine that never used a purple DMD, you can have one.

[FDSystems]

If I understand well, I can right click on the DMD, Click game setting & put the anti-alias to 0, & gain some more ressources to help my problem tables run better?

[destruk]

You could, sure.

This is what it looks like on my Ultrapin, which runs windows XP embedded.



Are you sure you guys aren't running the window at a smaller size than it's standard dimensions? It could be it's trying to squeeze more dots into a smaller area which throws some of them off?

[StevOz]

Actually I've noticed the 'tile' effect does happen here on occasion when resizing the DMD, certain resizing seems to produce that effect, whilst resizing it again by as little as 1 or so pixel returns the DMD to a perfect image as destruk posted.

[destruk]

hmm..thanks StevOz. Noah thinks it has to do with the aspect ratio. You could try to right-click the dmd window and choose "restore display size" to get it back to standard sizing and see if it's clearer.

[rob046]

my default is 0%, but your 'screenshots' look really really bad.
Your dots don't line up, they overlap and aren't equadistant. It's almost as if your vpm display window was composed of emreel images.

This is what it looks like for me. Sharp, and like a DMD IMO.
Notice how mine have clear black lines at equal spacing between the dots all the way across? Why does yours look worse?

Yeah I noticed that with my pics. I think this could be because I was messing with dmd size so I could better show the antialias. I just fired up the game again, set display to original small size & it looks fine again, i even set it to double size & it still looks fine.
But whenever you manually try to resize, I think that is when the weird effects start happening.

However, I noticed that once you make the display really big, there also comes a point where its big enough that you can mess with it and the dots won't get all glitchy. Its just that area in between original size & extra large size that is troublesome.

& it makes sense. Think about it. Actually think about many of VP's semi transparent ramp textures or clear plastic textures. They are basically a checkerboard texture to get the desired effect, just like the dmd window. Whenever you view these textures at a size other than which they were inteded, they will look all funky. Like if you take a screenshot of a table with these textures & resize it, it doesn't handle the resize very well. But if you zoom into the texture far enough to where the dots aren't cramming into eachother anymore, all looks fine again.
So...checkerboard textures in general, best at original size or extra large size, or in pinmame's case also good at double size since it does a perfect 2x enlargement, which is important.
I think my 2x just got screwed up cuz I was also messing with it manually.

But anyhow, it shows what the antialias does.
Surprised desktruk doesn't use any AA. Looks good though. I again just use about 20% AA just to give a very slight "pop" of the orange, & a very slight glow effect, which feels realistic to me. But 0%, I could live with that too. Now I'm curious as to just how much of a performance boost can be had.

On tables that are obviously intensive because of what they do in VP (say the latest ToM or whatever), I doubt eliminating AA will help much, especially since pinmame runs those era of roms pretty damn smoothly, all things considered. Now the newer Stern's might be a different story. They of course take more resources to run, I haven't messed much with the Stern's, but I've heard the roms can be pretty resource draining on the very newest VPM Stern's. So maybe on those tables, ditching antialias on the dmd could help quite a bit, even on good strong rigs? IDK, I'd like to find out though.

If I understand well, I can right click on the DMD, Click game setting & put the anti-alias to 0, & gain some more ressources to help my problem tables run better?

Its a win/win. You get a more realistic looking DMD, & you get better performance! Cha-ching!

[The Trout]

I have 100% AA on mine, actually. I think it makes the DMD look more like a series of glowing bulbs instead of just dots, and thus more realistic. But different strokes, eh?

[rob046]

I have 100% AA on mine, actually. I think it makes the DMD look more like a series of glowing bulbs instead of just dots, and thus more realistic. But different strokes, eh?

But don't you notice the detail you can lose on some DMD's? That was the main reason why I experiemented with lowering it, the AA effect was trashing dmd detail.
100% AA doesn't look realistic at all. For me to get my 20% value, I went downstairs to look at the DMD's on my real pins, only seeing very slight glow from the dots, hence the 20%.

As noah said, after all, it is dot matrix. With that 100% AA, its more like "blur matrix". Orange dots spill over into where black dots should be (again causing the dmd to lose detail).

You are right though, I can't really tell you what you like is wrong. All I can say is that a real DMD looks nothing like VPM 100% AA.
I would suggest to at least compare a nice DMD like on a new Stern or later WMS/BLY pin, try it with 0% AA and 100% AA, see for yourself how much more detail gets to be clearly shown without the AA.

[chriz]

thanks for the advice, rob046!
25% AA looks awesome here, better than the previous standard 50% AA .

cheers
chris

[bladexdsl]

i changed my AA to 0 it didn't help the stuttering ball on some tables must just be my crappy ram. dmd looks way better though at 0%

Edited by bladexdsl, 06 June 2011 - 09:50 PM.