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

[vfpcoder]

Thank you for this detailed description of FarSight/Arcooda’s support in this matter!

This has to be a very frustrating period for both companies; and it’s gratifying to know that they are dedicated to doing everything possible to ensure that their customer base’s needs are being dealt with in spite of the bizarre circumstances.

I’m one of the lucky owners who have had zero slowdown issues and am 90% satisfied with the product. Indeed, this is now my “go to” simulation for “Attack From Mars”, “Medieval Madness”, “Funhouse”, “Circus Voltaire”, and dozens of other tables. When “Gorgar” and “Creature” are both fixed (minor bugs) I’ll be knocking at 100% satisfaction. And it just *kills* me that future pinball enthusiasts cannot enjoy this product on their cabs (unless they had previously purchased the tables) due to the licensing issues. Just the other day I had a visitor over that owns a real “Funhouse” table and he was astonished at how close my cab came to capturing the look, feel, and sound of the real thing. He immediately asked me about the cabinet and the software and I had to reveal the whole gory mess to him. I did point him to the Arcooda site and told them they may still have a few limited packages left to sell. But the key word here is “limited”.

But through it all these companies are both demonstrating a dedication to resolving the issues.
Kudos all around!

 

[gust334]

No change in symptoms with beta Cabinet v1.70.28c. Three slow cameras persist.

 

[GAH1068]

Just posted in the other Beta thread but performance seems impoved to me but I have no offical metrics or benchmarks. Just seems like the ball movement around the playfield has improved. I was not having FPS issues with views 1-3 on my Cab though.

Black playfield screen on startup is still present for me. DMD and Backglass are displaying properly on startup.

 

[FlippyFloppy]

We've updated the build to beta version 1.70.28d with another possible fix. Please let us know if there is the issue is resolved.

 

[gust334]

Hooray for FarSight!

tl;dr: slow cameras fixed for me in beta Cabinet v1.70.28d!



On my system, TPA Cabinet beta v1.70.28d has substantially improved functionality over TPA Cabinet beta v1.70.28c and TPA Cabinet release v1.70.27.

Improvements:

• All four camera views run at full 60fps in DX11 Windowed mode.
• All four camera views run at full 60fps in DX11 Fullscreen mode.
• Cycling between all four camera views is absolutely fluid even during multi-ball (not recommended!)
• All menus run at full 60fps irrespective of which camera was in use when exiting table.
• Zero page faults of any flavor associated with TPA once the game reaches steady-state play.
• On my system, GPU utilization hovers around 22% and CPU utilization about 12%, and is consistent across all four camera views. Unclear if fans are off or idling at lowest setting.
• I have run through about eight tables so far and plan to hit the full set of 76, but so far I see no difference between tables. (All 76 tables demonstrated the original slow camera issue.)
• The in-game fine-adjustment GUI works at 60fps, which makes it tolerable for pixel-level tweaking.

Other observations:

• I never experienced the Cabinet key issue, so I don't know how the beta affects that.
• I have been able to reproduce a reported black-screen-on-program-launch issue. For me and my configuration, it only occurs when running in DX11 Fullscreen mode; the playfield/menu region appears empty black, and the backglass and DMD displays appear normally. The instant I Alt-Tab to *any* window, the playfield/menu region appears with the program logos and "Press to Start" works as expected. If I run in DX11 Windowed mode, all three (playfield/menu, backglass, DMD) all appear normally, on top, at program launch. Note to those worried about Windowed mode... on my Win10 Home system, the TPA "windows" appear to be borderless, using dimensions set by the configuration utility.

 

[seattlemark]

slow cameras fixed for me in beta Cabinet v1.70.28d!

Me too! I just tested with beta Cabinet version 170.28d on my older system that earlier had the slow camera problem. This beta version 170.28d has fixed it for me on Views 1-3 on this system. I am getting at least 60fps now on all 4 views! In addition, I brought up Task Manager, and now the soft Page Faults Delta for "PinballArcadeCabinet.exe *32" remains around 0 in views 1-3, just like it had before in view 4 .

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Question, mainly to [MENTION=3799]FlippyFloppy[/MENTION], will this fix need to be put into the regular DX11 build and might it fix the Ghostbusters stutter/lag issue?

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

 

[vfpcoder]

Gust334:

I won’t have time to check out the new beta until late tomorrow.

It’s *great* to hear that the frame rate issues have been resolved!
I wasn’t haven’t those issues, though.
I was just wondering if the following (minor) issues have been resolved in this build:

* Backglass scoring on “Gorgar”. (Two Monitor Mode)
* DMD brightened on “Creature” (Two Monitor Mode)
* Shaker motor emulation restored on “Earthshaker”, “Red and Ted”, and other tables with “shakers”.

Thanks!

 

[Nomorestalker]

Only briefly tested twilight zone and monster bash, can confirm after beta update no slow down on cameras 1-3

 

[gust334]

Gust334:
* Backglass scoring on “Gorgar”. (Two Monitor Mode)
* DMD brightened on “Creature” (Two Monitor Mode)
* Shaker motor emulation restored on “Earthshaker”, “Red and Ted”, and other tables with “shakers”.

No scoring visible on Gorgar backglass (2 or 3 monitor mode).
DMD remains faint on Creature (2 monitor mode), looks normal (3 monitor mode).
Game controller does not rumble in Earthshaker, for any setting of rumble on/off.

I would not have expected any change to these symptoms, as FarSight appears to be following best debugging practices of changing one thing at a time. In that respect, the 28d beta did what it needed to do.

However, FarSight has clearly demonstrated they are being responsive to issues reported from the field. I would fully expect they will turn their attention to cosmetic issues such as these once they resolve any outstanding functional issues.

 

[SilverBalls]

That's great news indeed. Thanks for the detailed description. As a techie would love to know what the cause was - page faults maybe?

 

[seattlemark]

Regarding the great work that has already occurred in fixing the slow camera issue, I salute FarSight for their debugging and coding fix and Arcooda for issuing the Survey (who subsequently passed on survey data about issues onto FarSight). I also salute our digital pinball community for our weeks of testing on this issue and reporting on it here, plus in trouble tickets and in our responses to the Survey. A special shutout to guest334 and their debug session with FarSight.

I now look forward to hearing if it has resolved the problem for this thread's Original Poster, SilverBalls.

 

[vfpcoder]

No scoring visible on Gorgar backglass (2 or 3 monitor mode).
DMD remains faint on Creature (2 monitor mode), looks normal (3 monitor mode).
Game controller does not rumble in Earthshaker, for any setting of rumble on/off.

I would not have expected any change to these symptoms, as FarSight appears to be following best debugging practices of changing one thing at a time. In that respect, the 28d beta did what it needed to do.

However, FarSight has clearly demonstrated they are being responsive to issues reported from the field. I would fully expect they will turn their attention to cosmetic issues such as these once they resolve any outstanding functional issues.

Thanks for the report!

I am not worried at all about these minor issues, especially after this tremendous response!

In fact, when I get home tomorrow I’m going to fire up my cab and play the Farsight/Arcooda “Attack From Mars”!

 

[SilverBalls]

I now look forward to hearing if it has resolved the problem for this thread's Original Poster, SilverBalls.

And guess what, I can't try until 24 Aug . I am on a combined work and holiday trip, but I am pretty confident it will be all good .

Enjoy!

 

[seattlemark]

As a techie would love to know what the cause was - page faults maybe?

In all 4 views, Page Faults Delta is now hovering down at around 0 for me in Task Manager for the "PinballArcadeCabinet.exe *32". (Unlike those huge numbers we saw before in views 1-3.)

And guess what, I can't try until 24 Aug . I am on a combined work and holiday trip, but I am pretty confident it will be all good .

Enjoy!

Have a great time until August 24th, SilverBalls! Based on all the reports here, I am confident as well that you will not be seeing the slow camera issue when you get back and try Cabinet mode.

 

[gust334]

Have run through all the cabinet tables, no slow cameras on my system with cabinet beta v1.70.28d.

 

[Pantah010]

Have run through all the cabinet tables, no slow cameras on my system with cabinet beta v1.70.28d.

Also checked some tables on the beta version, slow ball seems gone

Although the CPU usage is higher than before (99% usage), the GPU usage is lower than before (45% usage) (in all views, even the flat view has same cpu and gpu usage)
No slowdowns but it does stutter a bit when multiball kicks in, does not seem to make anny difrence what view i tried, i did not have this problem before (in flat view)
Seems all views 1 to 4 preform the same, thats great news!


And i did knowthis the tables are a bit darker? (could be my setup)

My setup:
3 screen Cab
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ (4g)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti (2g)

 

[SilverBalls]

In all 4 views, Page Faults Delta is now hovering down at around 0 for me in Task Manager for the "PinballArcadeCabinet.exe *32". (Unlike those huge numbers we saw before in views 1-3.)



Have a great time until August 24th, SilverBalls! Based on all the reports here, I am confident as well that you will not be seeing the slow camera issue when you get back and try Cabinet mode.

Thanks!

 

[gust334]

[MENTION=2038]Pantah010[/MENTION], Steam recommends GPU nVidia GTX 560 or higher for the base game. Your GTX 750 Ti confusingly benchmarks about 12% under this threshold. http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-560-Ti-448-Core-LE/2187vsm8215... I write "confusingly" because one would naturally assume that higher model numbers would be better.

Regardless of the relative performance of a 560/750, it seems plausible that the higher compute and rendering requirements of cabinet mode might need a more powerful system than the base game, although to my knowledge no such specs have been published yet.

My GPU utilization hovers around 22% and CPU utilization about 12% during single-ball play, as measured by Windows Task Manager. During multiball, I am too busy to monitor those numbers!

These results are on an nVidia 980M with 8GB GDDR5, and an Intel i7 at 2.5GHz, with 32GB of RAM available. My laptop 980M is roughly comparable to a nVidia GTX770 or AMD HD7970.

I speculate the true cabinet recommendation should be somewhere above the GTX 560, but not necessarily needing to exceed a GTX 770.

Although running maxed, your CPU might not be the true limiting factor. With the game loaded and practically nothing else, I see 4.2GB of RAM in use (Windows 10 Home 64-bit). Some of your CPU usage might thus be the result of paging. If your motherboard allows it, you might consider adding RAM as the cheaper alternative to upgrading the CPU.

I am finding the experience with the performance of the beta to be very enjoyable, on par with what was promised by Arcooda and FarSight. This weekend I have played many tables with multiball, have set three grand champions and maybe five more high scores, and see no stuttering or slowdowns on cabinet beta v1.70.28d.

 

[Pantah010]

Some of your CPU usage might thus be the result of paging. If your motherboard allows it, you might consider adding RAM as the cheaper alternative to upgrading the CPU.

Ok, i will try more ram (can take a while) and report back, thanx for the info [MENTION=7347]gust334[/MENTION]