Visual Pinball X - Backglass not showing when using true fullscreen mode

[Ginsonic]

Hi Tom,

I think you've read about the troubles with the backglass not showing when using brand new VPX true fullscreen mode.

Well, I now have this problem too, and I think it could be related to a newer version of PinballX (unfortunately I have no older version to test).

When starting some (a few) tables having a B2S with large file size (e.g. Medieval Madness), PinballX starts the table and the DMD, but the backglass does not show (the B2S server exe does not load), whereas starting the table without PinballX (within VPX) works flawlessly.

I tried many combinations of older and newer versions of VPM and VPX without any success. Then I created a custom system for VP (defined as custom system type, not VP) and the backglass issue was gone !

Do you have an idea, what could be wrong starting VPX full screen as system type "Visual Pinball" ?

Thanks in advance !

 

[Draco1962]

Hi @Ginsonic, can you provide copies of your pinballx.ini and log.txt files for review? Thanks ! 

[Ginsonic]

On 21.11.2016 at 6:25 PM, Draco1962 said:

Hi @Ginsonic, can you provide copies of your pinballx.ini and log.txt files for review? Thanks ! 

Yes of course, sorry, I did not post them, because I thought, that config/log could have no connection to this issue...

 

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When I create a custom system, backglass appears, when I set the system type to "custom". And it disappears again, when I set back to "Visual Pinball" ! The log attached is from my default config without a custom system, but it looks the same. During all tests there were no errors in the log.

BTW: In VpForums it is suggested to start Windows TaskManager in the back, this action has no effect for me...

One additional maybe useful information: I tried to start VPX within an AHK script instead of starting VPinballX.exe directly. When the backglass did not appear, the AHK run command did show this error:

Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed

No error when starting with system type "custom"...

 

[Carny_Priest]

I'm not Tom, but I assume that you are using VPX and VPM betas. My POV at this point is you have a working solution for now. VPdev and PinMAMEdev are currently working on issues related to timing. Let the beta process play out before rushing fixes into PinballX that may not wind up being permanent or useful. I'm thinking that there will be a stable release in a few weeks.

That said, I'm not putting you off. I have to run Visual Pinball as a custom system type myself. I have some really serious focus issues running the integrated Visual Pinball support with true full screen. I'm OK with running as custom as it works well for me. There's not much impact because I use something similar to the alternateexe tag. I just move all my media to another folder. I have my own capture scripts rather than PBX_Recorder. I don't think PBX_Recorder supports true full screen anyway.

[Ginsonic]

Thanks Carny, Yes, you are pretty right ! 

I know, that the current software situation is far from stable, and I can live well with a custom VP system for now. I will write an AHK script to handle the different VP versions, since terminating a table with the assigned key currently seems not to work in fullscreen mode for me.

PBXRecorder does not support fullscreen, but it can be handled easily with automatically changing the registry value before and after.

[Carny_Priest]

I was using snippets of Atarian's code to handle focus issues on true FS. Those issues have been fixed in the more recent VPX betas. I fixed my table termination issues by removing Atarian's code entirely from my launch script.

Yes, I change the FS registry values in my screen capture script. It's very easy and works everytime.