Settings help regarding multiball slowdown when using high ball reflection?

[gameaddict4life]

Hey everybody, I haven't posted on the forums in a while but I still play the game every now and again on PS3. I'm thinking of getting into the PC version because Season 3 is out right now and it takes the PS3 a while to get caught up. Anyway, after doing some testing with my PC in regards to TPA it seems I can run it just fine with all settings maxed out at 1366x768, I have a 16x10 1440x900 monitor. The only problem I have is when I have ball reflection set to high I get slowdown during multball, I assume on every table but for sure on Arabian Nights. I've seen a few posts on here about the issue and sure enough if I turn the ball reflection down to low it doesn't do that but I would like to know if this is a GPU or CPU problem and if there are any graphics card settings I could tweak.

I meet or exceed all the recommended specs except for RAM. I have 2 gigs not 4. My Processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, exactly what the recommended processor is, and I have a Radeon HD 4650 512 Mb card. The card does not support DirectX 11 so I guess I'm not going to get the pretty lighting if I go PC which isn't a huge deal. I already have the Season 1 Pass for PS3 and I don't really want to buy it again for PC but maybe I might just get Season 3 on it or something. This mulitball issue is a deal breaker though. I'm sure the PS3 has high ball reflection and it really does take away from the look of the ball when it's on low. So are there any tweaks or maybe even mods out there that fix the issue without having to turn down the ball reflection? Oh, and can you use a PS3 controller with the PC version? I have a wired 360 controller which works but I do like the PS3 controller. Also are there tournaments on the PC version? It says coming soon in the game or is that just in the free version? I guess right now the PC version works well as a trial mode for tables I'm interested in because there are no trials on PS3 but my actual play is still on PS3.

So thanks for any input and if you want to try to convince me to switch from PS3 to PC go right ahead.

 

[gameaddict4life]

Well after messing with it for a bit it does the same thing even if everything else is on low and ball reflection is set to high. So it seems to be something with that setting that's causing the issue. Oh well. I can still use the PC version to do the free trials of the tables since the PS3 version doesn't allow that. Thanks for the views!

 

[netizen]

I think it's a GPU issue; AFAIK Ball reflection adds an extra frame of processing, and in multi ball it's an added frame for each ball. I am sure that [MENTION=132]Mike Reitmeyer[/MENTION] could explain how it works much more indepth.

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Each ball reflection requires rendering the scene 6 times. (one for each side of the cube map). This rendering is done in real time. So it renders that every frame. If you have one ball on the table, it will do 7 table renders per frame (one for the game and 6 for the ball). If you have say 3 balls going, then it's doing 19 renders per frame. Only high end GPU's are going to be able to handle rendering the scene that much.

Ball Reflection set to Low, makes it only update one ball's reflection per frame. So in the case of multiball, it's still only doing 7 renders. Then it alternates which ball's reflection gets updated. So in the case of a 3 ball multiball. Frame 1 it'll update ball 1, frame 2 ball 2, frame 3 ball 3, frame 4 ball 1 and so on.

My suggestion is leaving the settings all on highest and put ball reflection on low. When you are in multiball, you barely notice the reflection anyway cause you are focused on keeping all balls in play.

 

[gameaddict4life]

Thanks for the explanation Mike, much appreciated. Do you know if the PS3 version of the game uses high reflection ball rendering or low? Just curious.

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Thanks for the explanation Mike, much appreciated. Do you know if the PS3 version of the game uses high reflection ball rendering or low? Just curious.

PS3 uses a different rendering technique for doing reflections. I don't know how to explain it since I didn't write the tech for it.

 

[gameaddict4life]

Alright, thanks!