Pinball Ghosting

[root88]

I started out with a cheap 40" Sceptre monitor in my cabinet. It has an 8ms response time, so I expected some ghosting, and I sure got it in both VP and FP. To me it is almost unplayable, but I love pinball, so I put up with it. When I show my friends, they say it bothers their eyes too much and they don't like to play it. Anyway, the wife told me she wanted to toss our old CRT TV and mount an LCD TV on the wall. So I decided to upgrade the screen in my cabinet and put the Sceptre back together for our bedroom, as it is awesome for watching TV. I just got a Philips 40PFL5505D/F7 40-Inch 1080p 240 Hz LCD HDTV for $350, which I was very excited about because it has a 1ms response time! I plugged it in to test it out, and I see the exact same ghosting! The Panasonic FAQ on my TV's page says

What causes lag for games & PCs while using DNM or 120Hz?

All 120Hz TVs always work at 120Hz, there are different methods of achieving 120Hz.

1. Frame Repeat (DNM or 120Hz = Off):
e.g. Input signal is 30fps ... The TV will repeat (120/30) i.e. 4 frames ... there is no lag in this case as the TV does not need to interpolate.

[Frame 1 ... Repeat Frame 1 ... Repeat Frame 1 ... Repeat Frame 1 ... Frame 2 ... ]

2. Frame Interpolation (DNM or 120Hz = On):
e.g. Input Signal is 30fps ... The TV uses consecutive frames to construct pseudo frames in between those frames using interpolation. Depending on the level of DNM, lag is more.

There is no setting on my TV to turn off DNM, but I can put the picture into "Game" mode, which just makes things brighter. I'm not sure what to change. In my monitor settings in XP, I can't increase the refresh rate either, it is locked at 60. Since my TV refreshes at 240Hz, I would think I could update the refresh rate to at least 80, maybe even 120. In VP, I get 150-250FPS. In FP, the frame rate just locks in at the refresh rate, since there is no point in making frames that aren't going to be drawn. I'm think I could get 120FPS in FP if I turned some settings down, but still, I can't increase the refresh rate in XP.

Does anyone have any ideas how I should tackle this? The ball is practically invisible when it moves very quickly, but looks perfect when it moves slowly. Also, the ghosting is strange to me as it isn't really a blur, it is more like this:

[boogies2]

These are my "thoughts", and I will probably be corrected by someone, but here goes......

1) You must put connect your TV through the VGA to get 1:1 pixel mapping
2) The TV will then use the VGA settings - ie. the TV will change resolutions, and drop to 60hz and be able to sync properly.
3) The refresh rate needs to be at 60 and 240 would basically display the "same image repeatedly" 4 times causing a "ghosting effect"

Have you tried the Ghostbusting LEDs from cointaker? LOL - Sorry, just had to.

Seriously, How do you have your PC connected to your TV?

[root88]

These are my "thoughts", and I will probably be corrected by someone, but here goes......

1) You must put connect your TV through the VGA to get 1:1 pixel mapping
2) The TV will then use the VGA settings - ie. the TV will change resolutions, and drop to 60hz and be able to sync properly.
3) The refresh rate needs to be at 60 and 240 would basically display the "same image repeatedly" 4 times causing a "ghosting effect"

Have you tried the Ghostbusting LEDs from cointaker? LOL - Sorry, just had to.

Seriously, How do you have your PC connected to your TV?

I am using the VGA cable. I did try the HDMI cable after I posted the first message, but that screws up a lot of things. For one, Windows will never let it be display number one. The picture also stinks. However, it did seem a little less ghosty. In HDMI, it does let me turn off the DNM, but that function is not available when I plug in the VGA cable, so I guess it is automatically off. Also, what is the deal with my ball in VP? It looks like the bottom half is transparent and there are some black v's on it. It can't be an attempt at a reflection, it looks really bad, especially when the ball is moving.

[chriz99]

enable "game-mode" and turn off all other picture enhancer in your tv-options-menu.

[boogies2]

Another couple question for ya....
What kind of PC and video cards and PSU are you using?
Pick a table, and display your frame rate by pressing F11, and tell us what numbers you are getting.

If you don't have enough video power, you would probably see some bad frame rates.
Also, if you don't have enough 12v power on your PSU for your GPUs, (or you didn't connect the PSU PCIE adaptors) you will also see frame rate loss.

Also, not to be a hater, but I thought I had a super fast Sharp Aquos Quatron responce time @ 4 ms.
I never heard of a computer monitor with 1ms, let along a TV.
It kinda has me second guessing the 1ms responce time that they posted.
I do hope to see that it does improve, cuz we all know what it's like to have something preventing a good game

[root88]

Another couple question for ya....
What kind of PC and video cards and PSU are you using?
Pick a table, and display your frame rate by pressing F11, and tell us what numbers you are getting.

If you don't have enough video power, you would probably see some bad frame rates.
Also, if you don't have enough 12v power on your PSU for your GPUs, (or you didn't connect the PSU PCIE adaptors) you will also see frame rate loss.

Also, not to be a hater, but I thought I had a super fast Sharp Aquos Quatron responce time @ 4 ms.
I never heard of a computer monitor with 1ms, let along a TV.
It kinda has me second guessing the 1ms responce time that they posted.
I do hope to see that it does improve, cuz we all know what it's like to have something preventing a good game

I still get from 150-250fps in Visual Pinball, which really translates to 60 because I cannot increase the refresh rate past that in XP. I think the problem is that the ball is moving a lot further than 60 pixels every second, which puts a little jump in the ball, so this is something that just can't be corrected. I just wonder how it doesn't bother anyone else. I am sure people with 15-20" monitors have the same problem, but the screen is so much smaller that the problem is much less noticeable. Also, if you Google "HDTV 1ms response time", you will find a whole slew of TV's at that speed.

[boogies2]

The FPS scores are not really frames per second, but most builds are shooting to get at least a score of 500 or higher to be good.
My guess is the problem is not your monitor, but your video card being under powered.
What CPU and Video Cards are you using?


PS. The benchmarking utility scores of a few members is here: http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=12846
Take a look at it, and you'll see most people (with higher end hardware) are averaging around 600.

[root88]

The FPS scores are not really frames per second, but most builds are shooting to get at least a score of 500 or higher to be good.
My guess is the problem is not your monitor, but your video card being under powered.
What CPU and Video Cards are you using?


PS. The benchmarking utility scores of a few members is here: http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=12846
Take a look at it, and you'll see most people (with higher end hardware) are averaging around 600.

I cant understand why you guys are obsessed with updating the location of the ball 10x more often than it is drawn. Any frame rates above your monitors refresh rate will all look the same. Most game frameworks, for example XNA for the Xbox 360 and windows, will not even refresh the location of objects more often than your screen redraws. There are typically two methods, one is named update, which is where you calculate the location of all your objects add scores, etc. , and one is called draw, which draws those results to the screen. If your monitor is stuck at 60 Htz, the game only bothers to determine the location of each object 60 times per second, as doing more than that is wasteful. That being said, maybe you know some secret that I don't. My frame rates were

MM: 301
AFM: 206
TOTAN: 155
SS: 202
BTTF: 252

The ball ghosting looks exactly the same, whether the game is getting 155 fps or 301 fps. I have an NVidia GTX 460, a celeron 2.6ghz dual core CPU, with 2 gigs of ram, running Win XP. I haven't thought to upgrade or optimize because the frame rates are already totally overkill.

The ghosting also looks the same to me in Future Pinball and Slamit pinball. I really don't think it is a frame rate issue.

[boogies2]

You are not getting 301 Frames Per Second on MM, you are getting a score of 301 of what VP calls FPS.

To quote (another member) "Settingson" from that previous thread (page 2):

Actually the term FPS for VP is a bit misleading as it isn't the Frames per second, but the approximate number of parts of the screen that VP redraws per second. It apparently only draws the parts of the screen that change. Therefore you will usually need several hundred to get stutter free play. Thats why forcing VSync for VP doesn't really make a difference, whereas in FP it does. What you say about the sound I also notice as well for a few tables - it is better once a sound has played once - as if it is cached. There are some talented programmers working with VP now like Cupid, so hopefully they maybe to come up with some solutions at some time in the future.

[root88]

I guess you are right. I get over 1000 "fps" on Revenge From Mars and it does look somewhat better, but not great. If I create a new blank VP table, I get an insane FPS and the ball is pretty smooth. It moves slowly and has a crazy trail on it, so I can't really tell, though. What FPS should we be aiming at? Is it better with Windows 64 bit or XP?

AMD FX-6200 Zambezi 3.8GHz (4.1GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor seems to be he best bang for the buck these days. I'm guessing the VP will benefit from that 4.1GHz speed more than anything else. It just stinks that I will need a new MB and RAM to use it. Oh well, I'm sure I can come up with a use for the old stuff. I also plan on getting a Vishay DMD, which I would think would speed things up as the computer won't need to render a virtual DMD. I'll hide the DMD on a few tables and see if there is any improvement.

I have been watching the VP activity on Source Forge and it does look like the are updating things as we speak. Maybe they can find a way to optimize rendering (useful vertical sync!!!) or offload some functions to other cores.