Britman

[Britman]

I ended up doing a full size 49″ cab build in the end. SSF is freakin’ amazeballs!

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[Britman]

Never mind I figured it out. It was Freezy causing the issue. If I set the pin2dmd option in the ini file to false then it works fine. Not sure why that is.

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[Britman]

TerryRed wrote:

If VPX is running in exclusive fullscreen…then it’s not unusual to have the screen go black for a few secs when entering a table and exiting a table because it’s switching to a different screen mode in Windows. That isn’t a Popper issue…it’s a Windows limitation (its called exclusive for a reason).

On newer updated versions of Windows 10, it might be able to have exclusive fullscreen apps run in “new fullscreen mode” (fullscreen optimizations), so that it acts like Borderless Windowed, and you may be able to ge a seamless transition.

Otherwise, there’s nothing else Popper can do.

OMG I can’t believe that’s all it was!! I think I tried every setting imaginable except that one. It also fixed the pixelation issue I was getting.

Thank you!!!

me

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[Britman]

Give this a try and let me know your results. This almost completely solved the Pinup Popper delay when transparent videos are loading (got it close to load times as outside PP).

Download Nvidia Inspector from: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-profile-inspector-download.html

Unpack and run nvidiaInspector.exe

When it opens you need to RIGHT click the button bottom right where it says “Show Overclocking”. Select “Multi Display Power Saver”.

When the dialog opens, Check your 1070 as Target GPU, leave run at startup unchecked for now, check both boxes at the bottom.

Right click in the window under “Full 3D Applications” and choose “Add From File” then navigate to the PinupSystem folder and select “pinupmenu.exe”.

When done just X out. See attached what it should look like.

Then run PP again and see if it loads any faster. If it works, you can install NvidiaInspector properly and set it to run when Windows starts. Note I haven’t tested it with anything else other than PP or VPX.

me

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jdsabin1

[Britman]

jdsabin1 wrote:

Thanks for confirming the timing for regular VPX/B2S tables are in line. I did turn off the Orbital stuff and the DMD stuff in the Harry Potter table script (just using the scoring on the backglass for now). I wonder if there is something else in there that is tripping me up. Or perhaps something in the pinup menu pup pack or the harry potter pup pack is misconfigured. I’ll go back and revisit all of that tonight.

No problem!

Can you try a different table with pinup player enabled? Maybe Masters of the Universe since I got that one all working good. My load time is as follows:

From .VPX launch: 28 seconds.
From Pinup Popper: 34 seconds.

me

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[Britman]

jdsabin1 wrote:

Your testing is accurate! I performed the same steps as you above with transparent videos and it shaved 15 seconds off load times within popper!

Unfortunately for me, I am still fighting the slow load times problem so while it’s faster, it’s still a slug. As an FYI, I changed the timing in the VPX script within popper to have the playfield video on the screen longer (from 60 to 120) but it didn’t make a difference. After 60 seconds it dumped to the desktop while things were loading.

I did discover that the SSD is likely not the problem. Here are the timings after I ran some benchmarks:

I reinstalled pinup system just in case I missed something the first time. I checked Defender settings again to make sure I was excluding the right things (I have all the C: drive excluded now), checked BIOS settings and see nothing there, checked the hardware channel timings for the graphics card and the SSD, all look fine.

For some timings examples, from the time I double-click on the table name (outside of having vpinball.exe open) to having the table fully loaded and ready to play, I get the following (running 4k and the latest or what is considered the best table versions):

Funhouse (regular B2S) – 35 seconds (is this normal?)

Star Trek The Next Generation (regular B2S) – 28 seconds (again, is this fairly normal?)

Harry Potter – 1 minute and 14 seconds (in Pinup Popper you can add 30 seconds to that load time). What I did see was that the playfield never loaded ahead of the backglass (or it was minimal if it did).

I went so far as to try older versions of vpinball.exe to see if something was amiss there but didn’t see any difference either. My specs are i7-8700, 16 GB memory, GTX 1070 Ti 8 GB, 250 GB SSD, Windows 10 64 bit, the latest NVidia drivers and the latest code base for Windows (1909), latest version of everything related to VPX, including Freezy stuff. Is there any way to see what else is loading as vpinball.exe opens? Maybe there are some file/dll conflicts happening when it all loads or something. I just have no idea what to look for any longer. As a final note, when everything is loaded, the tables all play amazingly well. Zero stutter in glorious 4k (my video settings are on the first page of this thread). This is a real odd problem to have :(.

Funhouse for me takes 38 seconds to open from double-clicking the .vpx file. That’s without a backglass mind you.
Star Trek The Next Generation (regular B2S) – exactly the same as you – 28 seconds.

So it looks like just tables with pup packs loading slower (edit: I think HPGF is just DOF and not a pup pack, right)?

Changing the timeout value should work in theory unless 60 seconds is the upper limit. If it isn’t, I would make the change then reboot to make sure no pinup processes are lingering.

me

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jdsabin1

[Britman]

I think I’ve figured out what’s going on.

Whenever Pinup Popper is active on the main screen VPX takes longer to load. I noticed that the rendering table was taking longer in VPX so I’m assuming that PP is consuming more of the GPU memory/processing. I tested this theory by adding back in the VPXLauncher.exe and setting it to timeout really low ie. 5 5 5. Launch the table again and after 5 seconds PP minimizes and when it does this VPX speeds up and loads pretty fast! Give it a try and let me know if the playfield loads faster for you (although I still think you’ve got some SSD issues there anyway).

So this could be a GPU issue but I’m also having the issue on my Geforce 1080 which is a very fast card. The next thing I’m testing is the transparent loading videos. Do you have that enabled on your install?

UPDATE: Removed the sparkly stars playfield video and this shaved off 10 seconds of load time. Progress!

UDPATE2: I removed the transparent loading videos and that solved my issue. I ran it with and without while monitoring the GPU usage and it’s certainly getting high when videos are active on the playfield and VPX is rendering behind it.

Here’s something you can test:

Go into pinupmenusetup and click Popper Setup tab > Global Config > Game/Wheel Toolbar > Uncheck transparent Wheelbar > Save.

Then click Screens/Themes > Look for the line with “Loading” and uncheck Transparent option if it is checked.

Re-launch HPGF and time it. While it won’t solve the issue I’m interested to know if it speeds up the load times for you.

Tomorrow I’m going to try moving display 2/3 off to my 2nd GPU and see it that offloads the GPU processing a little bit.

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[Britman]

jdsabin1 wrote:

mrl72 wrote:

Not that this fixed my issue but I did realize that my SSD wasn’t performing as well as it should.

1. Download a SSD speed tester (google SSD Speed Test and download the free AS SSD Benchmark – 2nd link). Capture read/write times on your SSD.
2. Make sure the SSD is connected to a SATA 3.0 port. Mine was connected to my 2.0 port and I just switched it and now it has double read/write speed!
3. Make sure AHCI is enabled in your bios.
4. Re-run speed tests if you had to make changes.
5. Test table in VPX.

You should be getting a minimum of 500 mb/s read/write and I would expect to see similar load times in VPX (25-30 seconds) as mine.

Let me know your results.

Thanks so much for your help. I really appreciate it. I think you are correct. The SSD is an area where I haven’t really done much at all in terms of testing or investigating. I did everything else I could think of (updated the BIOS, SFC scans, you name it). All came back great. At the sake of working with technology that isn’t the latest, I went ahead and got the Samsung 970 PRO M.2 2280 512GB PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 SSD to replace my earlier Samsung 250gb SSD. Supposedly the performance gains are through the roof so we’ll see if that had anything to do with it. It arrives tomorrow so I will be installing that and seeing how hard it is to clone the contents of the old SSD to this one. I hope it isn’t a situation where I spend a week trying to get it to work ;). I will report back once that is completed. Thank you again.

Since it’s a Samsung drive install Samsung Magician if you haven’t done so already. Then enable SSD performance boost or whatever it’s called. You’ll get crazy read/write times, although I believe they’re not “true” speeds.

I went through 3 different clone apps and a weekend trying to clone my system drive. In the end the only software that worked for me was MinTools (it’s free). That’s the only one that did a 1:1 replication and worked. The others pretended they worked but didn’t.

Incidentally, I loaded up PinballX and HPGF started in 25 seconds. PP is definitely one of the issues.

 

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jdsabin1

[Britman]

Just an update on my testing so far.

I changed the launch script to remove all the minimize options so I could watch how VPX starts up. I also removed VPXLauncher.exe from the equation as I thought perhaps that was the root of the issue, it apparently is not since I still get slow load times without it running.

I run the same command from windows command line outside of PP:

start “” vpinballx.exe “c:\visual pinball” -play “c:\visual pinball\tables\hpgf.vpx”

Playfield appears in 25 seconds.

When launching HPGF from PP with same command in the launch options, here’s what I observed:

VPX editor window appears (with title: unresponding). Loading bar at the bottom.
VPX table finally appears in editor at 40 seconds.
Playfield appears at 45 seconds.

UPDATE: I think I figured this out, will post response below.

me

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[Britman]

jdsabin1 wrote:

I have officially given up. I have done everything but reinstall Windows at this point. New VPX files (all of them) and the results are the same. Long load times. Once the tables load, everything runs great so it is what it is. Specs are i7-8700, 16 GB memory, GTX 1070 Ti 8 GB, 250 GB SSD, Windows 10 64 bit, the latest NVidia drivers and the latest code base for Windows (1909). Running Windows Defender and have exclusions for nearly everything.

I have a Samsung 40″ 4k monitor as an FYI so running the playfield in 4k resolution. Second monitor runs 1900X1200 and third for DMD is a smaller Dell LCD.

Inside Popper it takes 45 seconds to load the latest Funhouse table and the Harry Potter table takes 1 minute and 38 seconds.

With that said, is there a timing setting somewhere that forces the playfield video to play for say … 2 minutes before it dumps to the desktop? Right now it does that at 60 seconds.

Thx.

Oh, in regards to pinup popper dumping to desktop after 60 seconds, go into pinupmenusetup, Popup setup tab then Emulators. Click over to VPX then click the Launch Setup tab. In there you’ll see some numbers like 30 10 60. Change the 60 to whatever you want ie 120 for 2 mins.

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[Britman]

Not that this fixed my issue but I did realize that my SSD wasn’t performing as well as it should.

1. Download a SSD speed tester (google SSD Speed Test and download the free AS SSD Benchmark – 2nd link). Capture read/write times on your SSD.
2. Make sure the SSD is connected to a SATA 3.0 port. Mine was connected to my 2.0 port and I just switched it and now it has double read/write speed!
3. Make sure AHCI is enabled in your bios.
4. Re-run speed tests if you had to make changes.
5. Test table in VPX.

You should be getting a minimum of 500 mb/s read/write and I would expect to see similar load times in VPX (25-30 seconds) as mine.

Let me know your results.

me

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[Britman]

jdsabin1 wrote:

I have officially given up. I have done everything but reinstall Windows at this point. New VPX files (all of them) and the results are the same. Long load times. Once the tables load, everything runs great so it is what it is. Specs are i7-8700, 16 GB memory, GTX 1070 Ti 8 GB, 250 GB SSD, Windows 10 64 bit, the latest NVidia drivers and the latest code base for Windows (1909). Running Windows Defender and have exclusions for nearly everything.

I have a Samsung 40″ 4k monitor as an FYI so running the playfield in 4k resolution. Second monitor runs 1900X1200 and third for DMD is a smaller Dell LCD.

Inside Popper it takes 45 seconds to load the latest Funhouse table and the Harry Potter table takes 1 minute and 38 seconds.

With that said, is there a timing setting somewhere that forces the playfield video to play for say … 2 minutes before it dumps to the desktop? Right now it does that at 60 seconds.

Thx.

 

I didn’t get a chance to do any testing yesterday, but here are my load times for HPGF (with Pinup Pack enabled):

My current system build: i5, 16gb ram, GTX970, 250gb PNY SSD:

Launching from windows explorer (VPX not open): 25 seconds from click to playfield.
Launching from Pinup Popper: 40 seconds to playfield.

I also tested it on my other machine (which was originally used for testing before porting to the new machine):

i7, GTX1080, 500gb Samsung SSD, 64gb mem.

Launching from windows explorer (VPX not open): 25 seconds from click to playfield.
Launching from Pinup Popper: 28 seconds to playfield.

So I also have something going on with my new build to almost double the load times, unless the lower CPU is causing it. So off the bat it doesn’t look like a Pinup Popper issue to me because I did the same install on both machines.

But your load times should not be as high as they are. The only things I have done that stick out are adding my entire F: drive (where all the pinball software resides) to Windows Defender exclusions.

Also, try running a read/write test to your SSD. Thinking about it, that’s the only thing I haven’t checked on my new machine. My Samsung SSD uses Samsung Magician and so I get crazy good read/write times. I haven’t tested my new SSD yet.

I’ll keep running some tests today so if I find something I’ll let you know.

EDIT: Here’s my SSD read/write times:

Samsung 500gb: Read: 3117 mb/s. Write: 1653 mb/s.
PNY 25g0b: Read: 284 mb/s. Write: 248 mb/s.

 

 

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jdsabin1

[Britman]

jdsabin1 wrote:

This is still a problem for me although I have come to the conclusion that it must be something with my VPX setup just based on other’s load times in general. I plan to reinstall ALL of the VPX stuff starting with the all-in-one installer and then upgrading the SAMBuild and Freezy stuff. Pausing along the way to take timings to see if I can figure this out. I have a very fast PC and over the last week I have run a lot of general performance benchmarks, did some tweaks, and outside of VPX everything tells me all is well and is running extremely fast (including testing other apps that snap open without any delay).

I do plan on reporting back in this thread.

If I can get Harry Potter to load in 30-ish seconds I will consider it a success :).

If I discover anything useful my end I’ll report back. Mine is a brand new VPX install so I’ve got nothing unusual going on.

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jdsabin1

[Britman]

I stumbled upon this thread after having the same issue testing last night on a brand new system. AC/DC Luci (non pup pack) as example takes 25s to load outside Popper and 45s from it. Using the loading transparent videos and similar spec system as most of you. 3 screens. Haven’t tried the suggestions above yet but curious if the OP solved it.

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