- This topic has 12 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 1 month ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I’ve setup pretty much everything from SSF, DOF, ect. Most tables work very well now. However, I’ve noticed slowdown from color roms and pinup player being enabled. I’m not worried about color roms anymore. But would like to get pinup player working smoothly. Last night I went into VLC and looked at its settings for video playback as I noticed my cpu threads were getting pretty loaded. I changed to DXVA2 under the codec tab, which offloads to the GPU. This seemed to improve ball FPS. Video playback and table animation all seems to be fine. It’s just the ball fps that gets annoying. I’m using Pinfinity which seems to help a bit. I’ve gone through the pinup player guides a few times, I believe I’m setup properly. So far it seems like, if there’s issues its usually config and not my system. I did however, search i7 920 and it came out a long while ago. I’m sure it overall would play better from a computer upgrade, but is there something I’m missing that’s causing the slowness?
My VP video settings are pretty maxed out. It never played well until I got my Nvidia Control Panel settings tuned in. Now it all seems to play just fine. Just not when pinup player or color roms(maybe virtual dmd?) are enabled. I’ve tried ACDC, Tron and Beatles pup-packs which all had very similar issues. Thoughts on next steps to resolve?
System Specs:
i7 920
6Gb ram
SSD Hard drive
Nvidia 1080 GTX
Windows 10
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
Don’t use GPU for VLC – VPX is highly dependent on having GPU available, which is going to negatively impact gameplay if you let VLC play in that space. It’s probably fine if you’re running 1080 for your playfield, but I’m betting that trying to go 4K will cause you no end of grief trying to also let VLC use the GPU.
You might need to back off your VPX graphics options slightly, otherwise, you will probably need a better processor.
Creator of the first PinupPlayer PostDMD mods for VPX - PostDMD for Masters of the Universe VPX and Jaws VPX.
Head Proprietor of Pisces Pinball, a VPX table developer.
Lead Technician of MC Chase Amusements, a private arcade in our home basement.You need to login in order to like this post: click here
You might need to back off your VPX graphics options slightly, otherwise, you will probably need a better processor.
When I compare cpu specs with later processors, it seems like the i7 920 can handle the load. Perhaps the later models have newer instructions to simplify some things. Is there a particular model people move towards that can handle it all but not super high end where it bloats the cost? I was looking at an i5-9600k, but that involves new motherboard, memory, ect. Is that CPU going to cover everything and a little future proof or is it overkill?
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
Pinfinity has not been a friend when I’ve run pup-packs. I recommend that you try both with and without and compare. It makes a lot of sense what Terry said about NOT updating VLC. But, of course, there will be a limit to what your system can handle. If the CPU’s ain’t good enough, then an update might be the only way around the issue.
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
Pinfinity has not been a friend when I’ve run pup-packs. I recommend that you try both with and without and compare. It makes a lot of sense what Terry said about NOT updating VLC. But, of course, there will be a limit to what your system can handle. If the CPU’s ain’t good enough, then an update might be the only way around the issue.
Interesting. I saw a performance increase making it playable by turning on vlc’s codec setting allowing the GPU to handle this. If I turn this off, the game will be unplayable. I’ll try with Pinfinity off. Pinfinity definitely causes some IO issues on the system. While activated, if you try to move a file or open a browser the system becomes terribly slow on these processes.
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
I went from Force 4x FXAA to SMAA and it made a world full of difference. The CPU cores/threads are no longer getting hit hard which usually this caused ball stutter or dmd audio problems. Beatles had decent ball FPS but it was still a touch slow, but playable. Tron with a pup pack played great too.
There’s a few processes that pinfinity doesn’t add automatically, like ultradmd. It looks like it has most of the pin-up player processes, I need to check on vlc.
Looking into SMAA, it sounds like its a more intense process but for whatever reason, it moves along just fine on the 1080 compared to FXAA.
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
I’ve gotten Pin-up popper videos to play smooth. Now it seems like specifically my problem is with VirtualDMD if I want colordmd. Mostly the problem is with garbled, stuttering audio from the rom, rom animations look fine mostly. The non-color version in virtual dmd also has this problem. Not using virtual dmd, performance is fine on the non-color rom. The CPU and GPU are no longer spiking or reaching close to 100%. Memory and disk io don’t appear to be a problem. I installed pinmame 3.2 and installed freezy’s later version to see if that would correct the problem, it didn’t. I ended with trying rom settings to see if there’s something that’s missing. I’m going to try to continue on with that today.
I also noticed in Pinfinity that I can’t set the pinball affinity to the virtual dmd. It’s set on Visual Pinball X, virtual dmd is a subprocess of Visual Pinball X. I’ve seen programs not labeled as Pinball in Pinfinity have latency issues too, like copying or opening a file in explorer has significant delays. When not using Pinfinity, CPU 0 gets taxed by all programs which causes other issues since the processes aren’t spread to all 8 threads of the processor.
One forum posting I read, Outthere mentioned only have the freezy dll in vpinmame folder and “know” where else. I searched vpinmame for dmddevice.dll and dmdext.exe and there was a subdirectory called dmdext underneath that had these files as well as the pin2dmd directories. I removed all these directories and files. Initially it seemed like it resolved the stuttering issues but needs more testing.
Should a computer upgrade really be considered if the virtualdmd is the only program with issues? I’m thinking at this point it should handle everything and most performance issues are a result of configuration. I don’t see any settings for tuning the virtualdmd. External dmd is checked, the standard pinball dmd is unchecked in vpinmame settings.
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
I’m only guessing now, but, maybe it would be a good idea to see to that the scale of your dmd is easily divided by the standard for the table. Ie. 128×32 * 2 = 256 * 64 * 2 = 512 * 128 ?
Freezy. I’ve struggled with a few different version’s performance. Right now I’m running the latest that was compiled by vbousquet in this thread : https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=43569&page=1 – before that I ran this release : https://github.com/mjrgh/dmd-extensions/releases ( version 1.7.1 )
Hope this helps.
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
This was trying to utilize most of the space on the dmd monitor
This was setting the dmd height and width to 1280×320. It’s interesting the stutter is much less.
Initially, I had cpu threads hitting 100% which made sense why the audio garble was happening. Now, after tweaking everything I have room to spare on the GPU and most cpu threads are 25-50%. Memory utilization is about 3-4GB out of 6. So now, I have pinup player, vpx and vpinmame working just fine, max settings no issues. Its just enabling VirtualDMD that’s the problem. I did open a ticket up on the Freezy GitHub. But based on my performance analysis, I’m very doubtful that a cpu upgrade would make this any better. Running out of ideas.
I looked at your link Thalamas for compiled by vbousquet. From what I’m reading its a replacement for UltraDMD tables, not vpinmame or virtualdmd replacement, correct? Due to animations not showing up in VirtualDMD for some tables, the only reason I would use it is for colorroms unless I’m overlooking another feature.
Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas.
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
I don’t have experience with LCD. But, there is no way 1240×320 matches what I suggested to try. And, yes, FlexDMD is a “fix” for UltraDMD, first and foremost. What I said though is that I started using the version he provided and it worked well for me. Dmddevice is a replacement for Pinmame’s virtual dmd and more.
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
there is no way 1240×320 matches what I suggested to try.
I’m confused. I thought it had to be a multiple of 128×32. I started with that size, then started multiplying up to get the best coverage with the monitor. So I did 128*10 and 32*10 to reach those numbers. 1240×320 fits well in terms of size. Would 1024×256 work? (512×128*2)
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
128 * 10 is not 1240. And when you are talking about pixels. The ideal thing is to in this case to multiply by “squares” or doubling – eg. two pixels in both directions or you are stretching in on or the other direction. Again. NOT saying that it WILL help, just recommending it. And, I know one thing. It will look much more near to the real deal this way. I knowthat dmddevice supports stretch and shrink for that matter. But, still doesn’t mean you should do that when NOT really really need to.
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
I took my desktop over the weekend and replaced my vpin computer. It now has an i7-6700k, 16gb, m.2 drive. No stuttering when virtualdmd is used or color roms. I was trying to prove out the I’m not using 100% of my cpu threads as they still had room when reviewing cpu performance.
I did this:
- Switched Virtual DMD and VPinmame dmd to 1024×256
- Changed Pinup display config for the dmd, to full screen.
- When it was taking a small window of the dmd, the dmd movies weren’t playing accurately.
Interesting that I didn’t need pinaffinity to improve gameplay. It just worked out of the box.
I probably don’t need any more horsepower, but is there a means of benchmarking for visual pinball and a database of these benchmarks to review with their hardware specs?
You need to login in order to like this post: click here
Forums are currently locked.
