Volume 6: Glitches and Slowdowns Galore

[shogun00]

Just adding onto to what Trash80 has said.

Music channels are tied to Sound channels in the ROM, this is different from all other tables.

This is very true. I own 3 pinball machines, which 2 are Alphanumeric (Rollergames, Robocop) and the other is a LCD (Black Knight: Sword of Rage). The LCD machine has many audio adjustment options available, while the 2 alphanumeric tables use a manual potentiometer (aka POT) switch to adjust the volume.

Alpha Numeric display does not work correctly with the proprietary Zen DMD display layer.

Yup! When Pinball FX 3 (and its predecessors were) released, the game was only designed to work using a dot-matrix display. I can just image the struggle Zen had with incorporating the alphanumeric display into an already released piece of software.

The physics are still the same old Zen and Classic/Pro physics found on the previous pack but with table specific tuning (like always), including a slightly lower perceived playfield slope which results in period correct "floatiness."

Something that I can point out from my 3 machines is that the default inclines vary from era to era (EM, Numeric, Alphanumeric, DMD, LCD) and they also vary by company to company.

FWIW, Williams used a default of 5 - 5.5 degree incline for their alphanumeric tables, while their DMD tables defaults were 6 - 7 degrees.

Why doesn't Zen tell us everything? Zen is a company that manages many licenses and platform partners. You cannot announce things before contracts are official, business doesn't work that way.

Breaking a contact (NDA; NonDisclosure Agreement) can get real nasty real quickly. The repercussions range from termination of contract to lawsuits.

 

[jaredmorgs]

[MENTION=8007]ODB123[/MENTION] Alpha-numeric displays are quite tricky to emulate, depending on how you draw them on-screen.

When FarSight introduced their first batch of alpha-numerics (starting with Bride of Pinbot from memory) they had such a huge issue with performance across all their platforms that they needed to drop frames in the alpha-numeric segments just to keep the games running at the required 60 FPS.

If you still have entitlements to the Williams tables on Steam for The Pinball Arcade, you'll notice it heaps on the Funhouse "Mystery Mirror" display animations. There are stalled frames everywhere. And sometimes the whole display row is out making the bottom message hidden.

FarSight got it to the point that it "worked" but to this day it remains a legacy about the struggle they endured getting it to the point they got it to.
They opted to treat each display segment as a separately addressable graphical element that they needed to turn off and on to make the animation. That was incredibly GPU intensive.

Hope that provides some nerdy background about why the Alpha numerics may be running rough on some platforms.

For me, I'm running FX3 on a i7 RTX2060 16GB RAM Laptop at 1080p vertical. I have no issues to report regarding performance.

 

[ODB123]

(Alpha Numeric) Display emulation is my one travail

This is a feat I will not fail

Space Station calls Shuttle Launch to the stars

Only to run out of fuel, crashing back to earth to stave off an attak wave from marz

But I'm a really cool dude, ghost ball trails and all

My fun house is DPFans, discussing alphanumeric display emulation fails, et al

 

[ODB123]

[MENTION=8007]ODB123[/MENTION] Alpha-numeric displays are quite tricky to emulate, depending on how you draw them on-screen.

For me, I'm running FX3 on a i7 RTX2060 16GB RAM Laptop at 1080p vertical. I have no issues to report regarding performance.

Yet Space Station has been running smoothly since day 1. DD and FH are still a disaster however, so display emulation isn't the issue.

My phone has a 1440p display so maybe that's part of the issue.

 

[shogun00]

Yet Space Station has been running smoothly since day 1. DD and FH are still a disaster however, so display emulation isn't the issue.

Space Station only has two 7 digit alphanumeric displays (14 characters), while the other two are just numeric displays. Numeric displays are much easier to emulate than alphanumeric.

Funhouse and Dr. Dude on the other hand, use two 16 digit alphanumeric displays (32 characters). That's a whole lot more to emulate.

 

[trash80]

Yet Space Station has been running smoothly since day 1. DD and FH are still a disaster however, so display emulation isn't the issue.
My phone has a 1440p display so maybe that's part of the issue.

As previously stated, the Android phone version is a completely different build and game engine from the PC version. You shouldn't compare your performance and bugs to anything other than the Android build you are currently using. Emulating Alphanumeric on the DMD display was a problem with increasing the development cycle, and then after release it was an initial lag/delay problem with the PC version in CABINET mode. There was also a problem with the PC version concerning the rendering size of the Alphanumeric display. None of this addresses anything regarding the Android version, and more than likely, your results are due to your hardware and your concurrently running apps and processes, etc.

Submit a bug/performance report here: https://www.pinballfx.com/?page_id=5094

 

[ODB123]

There are no "concurrently running apps" as you put it when I run the williams pinball app. Other android users with similar GPU performance claim there are no problems but maybe my phone's 1440p display is a factor.

With ball trails, score popups and all of the other mumbo jumbo going on, it's likely most users won't notice any ghosting with ball movement anyway.

 

[trash80]

There are no "concurrently running apps" as you put it when I run the williams pinball app. Other android users with similar GPU performance claim there are no problems but maybe my phone's 1440p display is a factor.

With ball trails, score popups and all of the other mumbo jumbo going on, it's likely most users won't notice any ghosting with ball movement anyway.

You'd be surprised how many other things are running on your phone that you are unaware of. For whatever it is worth, I run the Williams app with all the mumbo jumbo turned off (I'm a purist) and on the following devices with zero performance issues: Samsung Galaxy S7 (2560x1440), Pixel 3a (2220 x 1080), and a Samsung S20FE (2400 x 1080 @ 120hz).

 

[ODB123]

You'd be surprised how many other things are running on your phone that you are unaware of. For whatever it is worth, I run the Williams app with all the mumbo jumbo turned off (I'm a purist) and on the following devices with zero performance issues: Samsung Galaxy S7 (2560x1440), Pixel 3a (2220 x 1080), and a Samsung S20FE (2400 x 1080 @ 120hz).

None of it's processor intensive though. Aside from google stealing all of your data, of course. I just checked S7 benchmarks and the SD821 is supposedly better at gaming performance than the exynos.

The major issue I'm seeing on FH and DD is ball ghosting, which is an fps issue. Apparently a lot of people don't care however.

As far as contacting zen, they've likely received thousands of bug reports already and after 5 months, there are no updates for android.

 

[trash80]

None of it's processor intensive though. Aside from google stealing all of your data, of course. I just checked S7 benchmarks and the SD821 is supposedly better at gaming performance than the exynos.

The major issue I'm seeing on FH and DD is ball ghosting, which is an fps issue. Apparently a lot of people don't care however.

As far as contacting zen, they've likely received thousands of bug reports already and after 5 months, there are no updates for android.

It probably doesn't make much sense for Zen to address isolated refresh rate issues on hardware that doesn't match up to a phone (S7) that was released more than 5 years ago.

 

[ODB123]

It probably doesn't make much sense for Zen to address isolated refresh rate issues on hardware that doesn't match up to a phone (S7) that was released more than 5 years ago.

LOL quite the admission after claiming vol. 6 was running "perfectly" on your S7.

But you're right, it doesn't make sense to fix anything unless it impacts their bottom line. You really are coming across as a zen apologist (sounds similar to someone else on the forum). It works perfectly on a 5 year old phone, why are you complaining? No, there are problems, but it's a 5 year old phone, why are you complaining? Classic orwellian doublespeak.

"Concurrently running apps," "so many other things," "zero performance issues" becomes "isolated refresh rate issues" on a "phone that was released more than 5 years ago." It seems like someone is suffering from a rather severe case of stockholm syndrome.

 

[trash80]

LOL quite the admission after claiming vol. 6 was running "perfectly" on your S7.

But you're right, it doesn't make sense to fix anything unless it impacts their bottom line. You really are coming across as a zen apologist (sounds similar to someone else on the forum). It works perfectly on a 5 year old phone, why are you complaining? No, there are problems, but it's a 5 year old phone, why are you complaining? Classic orwellian doublespeak.

"Concurrently running apps," "so many other things," "zero performance issues" becomes "isolated refresh rate issues" on a "phone that was released more than 5 years ago." It seems like someone is suffering from a rather severe case of stockholm syndrome.

HUH? You are quickly becoming my new favorite source of forum chuckles, and for that I guess I should thank you.

Anyway, I was referring to YOUR phone and the fact that you stated that YOUR processor, according to benchmarks, is not as good as the one in an S7, which is a 5 year old phone. Again, the Williams app and all tables run perfectly on my S7.

It seems like someone isn't capable of reading comprehension and likes to throw a hissy fit when the forum doesn't kowtow.

Go buy a new phone and quit embarrassing yourself.

 

[ODB123]

HUH? You are quickly becoming my new favorite source of forum chuckles, and for that I guess I should thank you.

Anyway, I was referring to YOUR phone and the fact that you stated that YOUR processor, according to benchmarks, is not as good as the one in an S7, which is a 5 year old phone. Again, the Williams app and all tables run perfectly on my S7.

It seems like someone isn't capable of reading comprehension and likes to throw a hissy fit when the forum doesn't kowtow.

Go buy a new phone and quit embarrassing yourself.

Learn how to read, son. I clearly stated that benchmarks for the exynos chip are WORSE than for the SD821. It seems you suffer from low IQ, poor vision or more likely both.

Space Station only has two 7 digit alphanumeric displays (14 characters), while the other two are just numeric displays. Numeric displays are much easier to emulate than alphanumeric.

Funhouse and Dr. Dude on the other hand, use two 16 digit alphanumeric displays (32 characters). That's a whole lot more to emulate.

The latter tables are clearly more CPU/GPU intensive, that much is clear.

Then again, several players with lower grade processors report performance that's above their own threshold for what they consider to be "good" or "very good."

I consider the ghosting to be problematic enough to be a distraction, but it's likely that others don't.

 

[trash80]

Learn how to read, son. I clearly stated that benchmarks for the exynos chip are WORSE than for the SD821. It seems you suffer from low IQ, poor vision or more likely both.

The Samsung S7 in the United States uses the Qualcomm CPU (it is actually the SD820).

 

[ODB123]

SD820 < SD821, some of us learned to count in kindergarten. There's no way you're getting 'perfect' performance from a nearly 6 year old android chipset. You're just a weird zen studios troll.

The Samsung S7 in the United States uses the Qualcomm CPU (it is actually the SD820).