Pinball Arcade DMD Issue / Question

[jhouff]

Hello! I'll start by saying I'm sorry if this question is already on the forum; I've spent days scouring over the different posts and cannot find an answer. Overall I've got my pinball cabinet completely setup and working with PinballX except one issue. For Pinball Arcade; running the Camera Mod (which is working fantastically) I can't seem to turn off the playfield DMD without turning off my third monitors DMD as well. I've seen videos online where people have three screens (backglass, playfield and DMD) and the DMD is working perfectly and it's turned off from the playfield. For my setup it seems that whenever I turn off the DMD on the playfield (so I get the entire table) the magnified version also turns off.

How are others doing this? Again I've scoured the forum and search on Google / other Pinball Arcade forums and connate for the life of me get this configured. With that being said the Camera Mod does work fantastically!

Any help and guidance would be VERY much appreciated.

[Pike13]

I used dmdext to mirror the DMD onto my third monitor.  It still shows even when I turn of the PBA DMD.  Perhaps you are using it already but I thought I would mention it if you aren't.

They way I launch PBA from PBX is via a script that also launches dmdext.

[jhouff]

3 minutes ago, Pike13 said:

I used dmdext to mirror the DMD onto my third monitor.  It still shows even when I turn of the PBA DMD.  Perhaps you are using it already but I thought I would mention it if you aren't.

They way I launch PBA from PBX is via a script that also launches dmdext.

That must be what I'm missing! Is that script something that is tricky to get ahold of or create? I'm ordering a PINDMD 3 this week and I think DMDext is needed for that; so regardless I'll need to figure that all out. I didn't realize you can turn off the DMD on the playfield and then DMDext would still display!

Maybe there is a way to put that script on the FTP?

Thanks for the quick reply!

[Pike13]

I would point to this post where I put them out there. 

However, this was done prior to PBX adding support for the automatic table selection capability put into FCM that allowed FCM to launch the correct table without PBX trying to simulate mouse clicks and scrolling in order to select the right table.  What a mess those days were.  So the script was written at a time where PBX had to be shutdown and relaunched after TPA was done running (FCM was responsible for launching TPA).  At least that is the only way that I and others could get it to work.  I also wanted to support launching PBA from a shortcut instead of PBX using the same script so that is why I structured things the way I did.

I never did go back and try to use the new FCM support in PBX.  I'm sure it is much easier and it sounds like you have it working already (minus the DMD of course).  I'm not sure how to do this but I guess I would try to go down the route of launching dmdext in the Launch Before section of TPA/PBX.  You could perhaps use the example in that StartPBASupport script in the referenced post for the command line.  Not sure if you would reference dmdext directly in PBX with the right launch options or if a script would have to be created.  Also not sure how things would work doing this in conjunction with a PINDMD 3 device that dmdext is also outputting (mine is just a regular ol' monitor).  I'm guessing it will handle it, I just don't know the particulars.

Sorry, I wish I could tell you exactly what to do.  I sort of soured on PBA and haven't played for awhile due to all of the hassle around making sure everything was kept up to date (I'm not using the 'offline' FCM version for various reasons) and with most of the tables I like to play also available in pretty good (often better) VPX versions, I haven't really put much of a priority on it.