Arcooda Cab Views 2 to 4 play in Slow Motion. View 1 fine - Build 1.70.18 (5th June)

[MadAxeMan]

I have found rebooting the pc prior to launching TPA will yield me a constant 60fps in all views and tables.
I noticed it running with 1.70.17 and 1.70.21

But, I will lose it after the pc has been in sleep mode (drops down to 50fps and slow mo again)
until I reboot the machine again

 

[Nomorestalker]

Hello GAH1068,

Same system specs except I have an older i7-6700. I will be running 3 monitor mode with the PinDMDv3.

Are people having the slow FPS in 2 monitor mode? 3 monitor mode? or both?

I'm waiting to buy near the end of the month. I figure more bugs reduced by then and less frustration for me.

I have slowdown on 3 monitor setup with cameras 1-3. I haven't tested in about a week though.

 

[SilverBalls]

The thing is I can run BlackFlaggers on max settings with my desktop hardware, but the 3 views in the Arcooda build are still unusable. This points to a coding issue rather than hadware. I know Farsight are on the case so I will wait, and if it can't be resolved I will just get a refund (oh that old chesnut).

 

[Franco]

Did anyone else with the speed issue try Alt-Tabbing to see if the FPS went up?

I have slowness on all the 3D views. As soon as I Alt-Tab the slowness goes away until I exit the application. Slowness returns. Alt-Tab clears it every time. Running an i5 with and Nvidia 960.
Franco

 

[FlippyFloppy]

Thanks everyone for your feedback, we are working on addressing the issues reported.

 

[SilverBalls]

I have slowness on all the 3D views. As soon as I Alt-Tab the slowness goes away until I exit the application. Slowness returns. Alt-Tab clears it every time. Running an i5 with and Nvidia 960.
Franco

Although the alt-tabbing helps the FPS increase from 30 to 55ish the ball movement isn't smooth with intermittent stutters so it is quite unplayable for me. Is is completely smooth for you after a alt-tab like it is in the flat view?

 

[Franco]

Although the alt-tabbing helps the FPS increase from 30 to 55ish the ball movement isn't smooth with intermittent stutters so it is quite unplayable for me. Is is completely smooth for you after a alt-tab like it is in the flat view?

Yes for me it’s very smooth after I Alt-Tab. Before Alt-Tab it is completely unplayable.
Franco

 

[seattlemark]

I have the slowdown problem as well on non-flat views 1-3, and it is severe in my case. But Alt-Tab doesn't seem to help at all for me. I have an I5-2300 processor with a GTX-960 graphics card.

 

[Doombrowski]

I have slow down to 30-31 fps on views 1-4 in cabinet mode. if i reinstall my graphics drivers and start cabinet more right after, without restarting the pc, i get a steady 60 fps in view 4 only. Views 1-3 stay at 30-31 fps. once i shut down the pc, it all goes back to 30-31 fps in all views. alt tab doesn’t make any differences. i’ve tried all suggestions in this thread but nothing has worked aside from reinstalling graphics drivers each time i want to play. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. It seems like several people with GTX 960’s are having the issue...coincidence?

My pc is running windows 7 64 professional. AMD 860k cpu, GTX 960 2gb.

 

[SilverBalls]

I have slow down to 30-31 fps on views 1-4 in cabinet mode. if i reinstall my graphics drivers and start cabinet more right after, without restarting the pc, i get a steady 60 fps in view 4 only. Views 1-3 stay at 30-31 fps. once i shut down the pc, it all goes back to 30-31 fps in all views. alt tab doesn’t make any differences. i’ve tried all suggestions in this thread but nothing has worked aside from reinstalling graphics drivers each time i want to play. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. It seems like several people with GTX 960’s are having the issue...coincidence?

My pc is running windows 7 64 professional. AMD 860k cpu, GTX 960 2gb.

Weird how view 4 plays smoothly for so many of us who have a performance hit with views 1-3. What is it about the coding/rendering of those views that impacts the performance so much? And with high-end graphics cards too? If it is related to having to render a second or third screen then why does view 4 not struggle for most of us? It must be some kind of contention that occurs only with some kinds of graphic card.... maybe some process competing for the rendering resources of the graphics card in a way that is creating a bottleneck and reducing the FPS. What does the stretching do which impacts only views 1-3?

Incidentally Farsight told me in an email yesterday that they still haven't had any luck finding the cause of this.

 

[seattlemark]

Yes please that would be really great and should help me. I am tearing my hair out trying all kinds of things and no matter what I do (eg: decrease graphic settings, etc.) the FPS is locked to 30 for all views except the flat one. Knowing the 4 FPS values for each view for you (using the Steam FPS counter) would really help.

You may already know but if not: the Steam FPS counter is turned on in the Global Steam Settings under 'Settings/In-Game'. The Pinball Arcade Properities need to show the game overlay (usually on by default).

Many thanks

Now that I know that I too have the performance problem on 3 out of the 4 views, I am also seeing if I can find something that helps. Using the directions in Silverballs' note I am having problems getting the Steam FPS counter to show while in TPA, unless I do an additional workaround, even on the DX11 Non-Cabinet version. Here is what I tried:

1) In Steam Settings/In-Game: In-game FPS counter is set to Bottom-Right , and High Contrast color is checked

2) I right clicked Pinball Arcade within my Steam Library, then Properties/General, and I put a check mark in "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game"

For simplicity, I tested with just the DX11 executable. No FPS counter showed.

3) To get the FPS counter to work for me, I then took the additional step of putting in "-fps" (without the qutoes) in the Set Launch Options. I saw that in an old Steam Dicsussion at https://steamcommunity.com/app/238260/discussions/0/305510202671811099/ , and the tip came from MikeFarSight.

Question, am I doing something wrong in my above steps 1 and 2, or was my step 3 above actually necessary too? (I would rather not have that additional step, as then it's harder to turn it on and off).

 

[seattlemark]

Oh now the FPS counter isn't showing for me when I put the step 3 back in after taking it out. Any ideas?

 

[seattlemark]

Oh now the FPS counter isn't showing for me when I put the step 3 back in after taking it out. Any ideas?

Turns out the FPS counter does work for me with the Cabinet version, even without my Step 3. But it doesn't work in the regular DX11 version no matter what I have tried so far.

 

[SilverBalls]

I only did the first two steps exactly as seattlemark mentioned and it worked for me. I didn't add any launch.options. Not sure if it makes a difference but I also had the enable steam overlay ticked in the global steam options under in-game.

Also make sure your playfield dimensions are allowing the full playfield to fit just in case it is off the screen.

EDIT:. I failed to read your last post, but will leave my reply above. That teaches me for reading the forum on a phone

 

[SilverBalls]

seattlemark - so what FPSs do you get with the 4 views?

 

[seattlemark]

seattlemark - so what FPSs do you get with the 4 views?

As a random test, I tried Diner. Even with the ball not yet launched, I saw a dramatic difference of Views 1-3 compared to View 4 once the table was started:

View 1 - typically 34 FPS
View 2 - typically 34 FPS
View 3 - typically 34 FPS
View 4 - Solid 60 FPS

 

[Kjenkins]

hi all, just checking in, I bought in for all the tables / cabinet in steam and am currently impacted by these issues as well. im hoping what fixed looks like is the same responsiveness that the x11 versions. ready to test an updated beta!

 

[gust334]

Someone on Steam's forum tried to explain that Alt-NumPadEnter will switch back and forth between Windowed and Full Screen mode, and questioned the utility of Alt-Tab. I've copied my response below:

Alt-Enter blanks the screen momentarily, but has no effect on reported FPS. I usually run Pinball Arcade in windowed mode, but with the window set to full screen dimensions in the utility, so there is no visual difference. This was with release v1.70.21.

Alt-Tab allows me to switch to any other open program, such as Windows Task Manager. I thought somebody had posted earlier in the thread that s/he recovered the frame rate by leaving the program and going back in, but I could be mistaken or misread it. Steam's text is much too small for me to read easily, and I haven't found where to change it.​

 

[gust334]

I think the most useful bit of data is observing the CPU and GPU activity, reported by Windows Task Manager, as the camera views change. If accurate, it is showing that neither one of them is working very hard at all. (I am using an i7 laptop with a 980M GPU.) When the slow camera views are selected, the GPU is in the sub-5% range, and when the fast camera is selected it jumps up to ~23%.

On this basis, I would expect that raw performance available from the system should be sufficient for the game.

Games that really stress the system show much higher GPU and CPU activity, and the system cooling fans have to turn on. If I have a really big city loaded in Cities:Skylines, or am playing a shooter with a lot of smoke or water, then the fans go on. The fans have never turned on when I am playing Pinball Arcade.

One observation I did make is that in the three slow camera views, the main CPU utilization is unexpectedly high, ~25%. Windows Task Manager shows that McAffee VirusScan is loading the CPU up. In the fast camera view, McAffee has almost no activity. This might point to some optimization in the code that looks suspicious to AV software, or the slow views are using some shared Windows resources that McAffee also needs.

I did try disabling McAffee, and that improved the slow cameras from 6-10fps to the mid 40's, but the GPU utilization is still very low.

Unfortunately, I do not have any experience as a DX11 developer, so it is near impossible to guess what might be the problem. But based on my experience with embedded real-time systems, I would think some sort of handshake between threads is happening out of order or timing out. I wonder if the software is dependent on some Windows resource or component for communications between threads... the issue could be outside the Farsight code.

Hoping to get more suggestions from Farsight sometime soon.

 

[SilverBalls]

gust334 - Just to clarify it was Alt-Tab that I mentioned (not alt-enter) increases the FPS for me from 30 to 54 but the ball is not smooth, it is stuttery but I told Farsight in case it gives a clue - this does not work for everyone. I tried alt-enter also as I knew about that but didn't help. The Alt-Tabbing only does this if Desktop Composition is on and Windows has an aero theme. Again to emphasise this is not a cure, and with my hardware gameplay would be at 60 FPS with no jittering normally.