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This is my ‘message in a bottle’ post on this topic as I have not been able to figure it out and maybe someone will have the same problem and be able to help me out. Until then ….
I have a fast PC, the latest everything (pinup system files, VPX, VPinMAME, Freezy’s 1.71, etc), Windows 10 64 Bit (latest patch levels as I type this), Defender exclusions, latest BIOS, latest Nvidia drivers, you name it. I think most VPX tables without any pup packs load in typically standard times (see below). Tables with pup packs though are slower and maybe that’s expected anyway. I know the transparent videos inside popper should add some load times to the process but still.
Full 4K playfield (3840 x 2160), backglass is a 28″ LCD (1900 X 1200), and DMD monitor is a small LCD (800 X 600). Once any table is loaded, things run fast, smooth, no hint of any stutter, most video options are set to high.
Time to fully load:
STTNG: Outside popper – 28 seconds / Inside popper – 35 seconds
Funhouse: Outside popper – 38 seconds / Inside popper – 43 seconds
TOTAN: Outside popper – 33 seconds / Inside popper – 38 seconds
Master of the Universe (using UDMD): Outside popper – 44 seconds / Inside popper – 53 seconds
Stranger Things: Outside popper – 38 seconds / Inside popper – 47 seconds
HPGF: Outside popper – 75 seconds / Inside popper – 104 seconds (!)
I hope I can find a fix at some point but until then I am trying to simply find a way to make the pf and bg videos keep running until the table loads (using the T-ARC 4k Theme).
Thanks y’all.
My PC:
ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming Motherboard (latest BIOS)
SAMSUNG 970 EVO NVMe M.2 512GB SSD
Intel Core i7-8700K 6-Core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) CPU
G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 (PC4 24000) Memory – 2 8GB modules
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB Graphics card (latest NVidia driver)
Windows 10 1909 64 Bit (latest patch level)(nothing running in startup, no weird utilities running, etc)You need to login in order to like this post: click here
I do not have DOF enabled in VPX. Would this create any slowness in initially loading this table? I use DOF for SSF in all of my FX3 tables but again, have disabled the plugin in VPX. It takes 75 seconds to load on my cabinet (3 screen), and inside popper it takes 114 seconds or so. I’m at a loss. Thx.
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Even with the LaunchTimeoutSecs=120 ; in the Global Settings script and the line: START “” “[STARTDIR]Launch\VPXSTARTER.exe” 10 20 120 “Visual Pinball Player” 2
in the VPX emulator script, popper still dumps to the desktop after exactly 60 seconds. Any ideas?
Thanks.
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So I leave that line in the global script and change the 60 to 120 in the vpx emulator script. Hopefully I’m understanding that right. Thanks.
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I added the LaunchTimeoutSecs=120 ; in the Global Settings script but I still drop to the desktop at 60 seconds. Is this where that parameter goes?
My VPX emulator script looks like this:
START “” “[STARTDIR]Launch\VPXSTARTER.exe” 10 20 60 “Visual Pinball Player” 2
cd /d “[DIREMU]”
if “[RECMODE]”==”1” (
START /min “” vpinballx.exe “[DIREMU]” -DisableTrueFullscreen -minimized -play “[GAMEFULLNAME]”
) else (
START /min “” vpinballx.exe “[DIREMU]” -minimized -play “[GAMEFULLNAME]”
)
Can you help me get this implemented? Aside from popper adding some time to load, which is fine, the shortest I can get the Harry Potter table to load outside of popper is 1 minute and 15 seconds. Inside Popper it’s at 1 minute and 38 seconds. I have spent hours and hours troubleshooting and I just can’t spend any more time on it. The game(s) all play and look killer and run smooth at 4k which is fine for me. I installed popper because PinballX was doing the same thing (dropping to the desktop because of the longer Harry Potter loading times) and I was hoping Popper could just keep the loading screen alive until it loaded. Thanks again for the help.
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Thanks! I am definitely working on the longer load times. It’s been a real challenge trying to figure out what the heck is going on there.
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MOTU loaded from .vpx in 35 seconds so still slower but not terrible. Installed the new Samsung me 1.2 970 pro. Thanks for the minitools tip on cloning the drive. Worked slick. Next I’ll follow your instructions and test again. I’m assuming Harry Potter is still a slow load. The wife is out of town so trying to find time between the dogs and work has been a royal pita haha. As always, thanks for your help.
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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.
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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 :(.
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Not that this fixed my issue but I did realize that my SSD wasn’t performing as well as it should.
- 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.
- 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!
- Make sure AHCI is enabled in your bios.
- Re-run speed tests if you had to make changes.
- 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.
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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.
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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 :).
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Old post but what if I wanted to have an option to have classic be available to more than one player as well so in other words I want both options, classic and hotseat to be able to select multiple players. Thanks!
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What operating system are you guys running? I’m at a loss. These slow loading times must be system related but I can’t figure it out.
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Can anyone else provide some approximate load times for tables (Harry Potter or even a pure VPX table like STTNG)? Outside of any front end, just double clicking the vpx file, is how I am timing these. I am not sure I know what normal even looks like. The STTNG table loads for me in 28 seconds ready to play. The Harry Potter tables loads in 90 seconds. Again, once the tables load they all play perfectly.
Latest VPX (10.6), VpinMAME 3.3, Freezy’s 1.73, using colored roms where available. Latest Nvidia drivers, latest Windows 10 64 bit and Defender is turned off. Not running in administrator mode.
Here is my DMDDevice.ini. I don’t see much to change. Using an LCD for my DMD (3 monitor cabinet). In the Harry Potter table I am not even loading a DMD and using the score that is on the backglass.
———
[global]
; how to downscale SEGA 192×64 pixel games to smaller displays: fit, fill or stretch
resize = fit
; flips the image horizontally
fliphorizontally = false
; flips the image vertically
flipvertically = false
; enable or disable frame-by-frame colorization (inactive in VPX bundle)
colorize = true; a DMD that renders with nice dots on a computer monitor
[virtualdmd]
enabled = true
; virtual dmd stays on top of all other windows
stayontop = false
; hide the resize grip
hidegrip = true
; ignore the aspect ratio of the rendered dots when resizing
ignorear = false
; use VPM’s registry values when positioning the virtual dmd
useregistry = false
; x-axis of the window position
left = 5778
; y-axis of the window position
top = 388
; width of the dmd in monitor pixels
width = 759
; height of the dmd in monitor pixels
height = 207
; scale the dot size (set to 0.8 for same size as pre-1.6.0)
dotsize = 1.0[pindmd1]
; if false, doesn’t bother looking for a pinDMD1
enabled = false[pindmd2]
; if false, doesn’t bother looking for a pinDMD2
enabled = false[pindmd3]
; if false, doesn’t bother looking for a pinDMD3
enabled = false
; COM port, e.g. COM3
port =[pin2dmd]
; if false, doesn’t bother looking for a PIN2DMD
enabled = false[browserstream]
; if enabled, stream to your browser in your LAN
enabled = false
port = 9090[vpdbstream]
; if enabled, stream DMD to https://test.vpdb.io/live
enabled = false
endpoint = https://api-test.vpdb.io/; if enabled, writes frames to an .avi file
enabled = false
; path to folder or .avi file. if folder, gamename.avi is used.
path =[pinup]
; if enabled, send frames to PinUP.
enabled = true[alphanumeric]
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I don’t have it in startup. I am simply clicking the files manually.
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I made sure that pinupmenu.exe and the vpx exe were not running as admin. Are there any other exe’s to check? Same behavior happened this morning. Thanks.
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It happens on most tables but not as exaggerated. SSTNG was 8 seconds slower or so, Stranger Things loaded outside of Popper in 45 seconds, inside popper it was 20 seconds slower.
Here’s a copy of my video settings in VPX:
Thanks for your help.
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This is truly an unbelievable work of art for the visual pinball scene. Just phenomenal. When I load the table from VPX it plays fantastic on the cab. When I load it from PinballX, none of the controls work. That wasn’t the case with the .49 version (running .51 now). Latest everything including PinballX, VPX, pup, etc. Windows 10 64 bit OS. I do have Orbital disabled at the moment. Thanks for any tips.
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This is just a beautiful table. The family really enjoys playing this one. One quick question – the mp3 files that are used for the background music are incredibly hard to hear. I looked for a volume setting for the music but couldn’t find any. Does anyone know how to turn up the background music? TIA.
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