[RESOLVED] How leave the desktop image behind the DMD monitor?

[Pmax65]

Hi there,

I downloaded my PinballX and in the last 5 months I get my pinball cabinet working really great, for that I would thank all the people in this community who made this possible.

I've a little question about an issue not that much important but which could be "the cherry on the pie" .

My cabinet has 3 monitors and for many tables I had the DMD on the third monitor which is a 16:9 shaped 10" type.

To get the right proportion I resize the DMD window to occupy the center of the vertical size of that monitor.

I already placed on the desktop an image which fills the upper and the lower areas of the monitor that are unused by the DMD.

This works great when I launch the tables directly from the OS, or when I run them from the PinballX Game List Manager or also when I run the very nice gtxJoe's PBX Recorder, but when I launch them from PinballX the desktop background image is completely removed leaving the two areas black.

Is there any solution to this behavior?

Thank you in advance for your time reading this  message.

Massimo

 

[scutters]

You'll probably need to post your pinballx.ini and log.txt files, but my guess is you need to go to settings.exe -> Display Settings, and then adjust DMD Height and Width to match your 'visible' dmd area.

 

[Pmax65]

2 hours ago, scutters said:

You'll probably need to post your pinballx.ini and log.txt files, but my guess is you need to go to settings.exe -> Display Settings, and then adjust DMD Height and Width to match your 'visible' dmd area.

 

First of all, thank you for taking care of my issue.

I know what you suggest, but is not what I need.
There are some tables which occupy the whole 3rd monitor with the DMD, others that occupy the "standardized" DMD size in the center of the vertical size of the monitor and others again that don't have the DMD at all. 

An example of the the first case, that is a FS DMD, it is typically when the pinball has a full screen video mode such as Mr. Game's Motor Show https://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=3631&picno=14305

The second case is the standard DMD and could be set right following your suggestion, but it precludes the first case which is currently working right.

While the third case is when the pinball has no DMD and it should be currently fixed by not hiding the DMD monitor during the game (I just suppose it, I still didn't check it).

What I can't understand is why PinballX should clear the whole 3rd monitor while I can easily move the DMD everywhere also on the 2nd monitor, that it should means that the DMD placement coordinates are absolute not relative to a supposed PinballX DMD restricted area. In fact, when I sized and placed the UltraDMD in the VBscript code, I always used the absolute coordinates which the X ones started after the sum of the widths of the 1st and 2nd monitors.

Note that when the tables are launched by the PinballX Game List Manager everything is already running perfectly.

i suspect that PinballX substitutes the desktop background with some default underlay image which is empty and It could exist some image file to put somewhere to get it as a background.

I just suspect, of course. If it exists I would know how to enable it, instead in case it doesn't exist that's not a tragedy and I'll keep it as it is. 

Thank you again for your interest in this issue.

Have a great day.

Massimo

 

[scutters]

The default behaviour in pinballx is to show a black screen for DMD & backglass when a table is selected, and then the table backglass & dmd load over the top.

I have my DMD's all the same size for games that use them (i'd never seen Mr Game's Motor Show before so not sure how i'll handle that one if i add it) so don't have your issue but i think what you could try is uncheck Hide DMD in Game Manager so that the black dmd screen is not shown in pinballx and the actual DMD loads over the top of the DMD video/image instead. So long as pinballx has a DMD video / DMD image in use in the front end that is full screen and includes the 'border' to edge of screen that should work. 

In this workaround the background (front end) video would continue to play (behind the actual dmd) though so may add some load to the system though.

... but i may be misunderstanding the issue!... if so add a couple of pictures to help, thanks.

[Pmax65]

3 hours ago, scutters said:

The default behaviour in pinballx is to show a black screen for DMD & backglass when a table is selected, and then the table backglass & dmd load over the top.

In this workaround the background (front end) video would continue to play (behind the actual dmd) though so may add some load to the system though.

... but i may be misunderstanding the issue!... if so add a couple of pictures to help, thanks.

Hi scutters,

again thank you  very much for your messages.

I just realized that I believed to attach my PinballX.ini file but I didn't indeed! 

So, I attached it to this message with the two photos.

One shows the videos recorded by gtxjoe's PBX Recorder while PinballX is selecting the tables, the other instead show what I see once the table is launched.
As you can see the DMD doesn't show the twos yellow areas.

Yesterday night I already tried to disable the Hide DMD tag and I checked the CPU performance which loose about 5%.

Not that bad indeed (the CPU rises to max 31% of busy), but I prefer to don't load that way it, so I'll keep it as it is.

Anyways, I don't really know the reason that Pinball X darken the monitors background before start the table, this clearly conflicts with gtxjoe's PBX Recorder which is much friendly not doing that.

In my opinion, in future the PinballX programmer should consider to add a tag to disable the monitors background darkening.

Thank you again for your time and suggestions.

Have a nice weekend,

Massimo

 

PinballX.ini

[scutters]

I guess it's personal choice at the end of the day. You have a few options;

1. Size all DMD's with the same 4:1 ratio and keep the yellow border. But Fullscreen DMD's will look stretched, but they are the minority.
2. Size all DMD's to fully fit your DMD area, but  normal DMD's would look squeezed.
3. The option you've ruled out - Don't hide the DMD video in the background which will show the border still. A DMD image would use less resource, but then you won't have a DMD video in the front end.
4. Don't use DMD at all in PinballX - just have a static DMD wallpaper image in windows.
5. Stay as you are and live with the black border on the DMD!!

Sadly no 'proper' solution that i know of, but you could add to the feature request thread a request to make the default black dmd (when Hide DMD is selected) to be a customisable image.

(I imagine the reason for the black screen being used in PinballX is performance - so you don't have an image or video playing in the background like option 3 above)

 

[Pmax65]

Hi scutters,

yes, at this point it's a personal choice of course.

4 hours ago, scutters said:

 

...(I imagine the reason for the black screen being used in PinballX is performance - so you don't have an image or video playing in the background like option 3 above)

 

I don't believe the black screen would be better than leaving the desktop image, surely it is not better  by a CPU/GPU performance perspective.

It could be just a very little better under a video driver power consumption, since a black screen signal is less dynamic than a complex digital high contrast static image.

This is the reason I wrote that I don't understand why PinballX darken the monitors.

Thank you for suggesting to add a request to the feature request tread, I didn't noticed of it before, I'll do it surely.

Again, have a nice weekend.

Massimo

 

[Pmax65]

Hi scutters,

I finally found a solution.

I wrote a small software to launch before and after the table that I called ShowDMDbackground.Exe. 

Before launch the table it must be called using the command line /L FileName 

and after the table exit it must be called  using the command line /U

In few words the software place a copy desktop image above the black windows that PinballX draws before launch the table and at the table exit the software is unloaded to allow PinballX to show the DMD recorded video correctly.

I attached to this message the software with my own desktop image file (note that FileName in the launch before command line must be the complete file name including the extension and without any quotation marks. For example, in my case the command line would be /L WallPaper.jpg). It supports JPG and BMP files only.

Thank you again for support me in this issue.

Have  great days.

Massimo

 

ShowDMDbackground.zip

[scutters]

Nice one! 

And thanks for sharing your solution for others. It might be worth adding some tags to the the topic to make it easier for them to find.

[Pmax65]

Hi scutters.

59 minutes ago, scutters said:

... It might be worth adding some tags to the the topic to make it easier for them to find.

I'm sorry, you should help me about this, you  must know that despite I'm a senior electronic engineer with more than 30 years of electronic design on my shoulder (I'm 54, sigh), I'm a very bad Internet user indeed 

So, I know that there is the tag button just below the title to add the so called hashtags, but I've  no idea about what is better to use for this argument.

What tag I should add in your opinion to make easier to find this?

By the way, since I suppose that you own a pinball cabinet too, maybe you are interested about this other very tiny program that I developed few days ago.

The program is named ExitShutdownSel.exe and it has been thought for the pinball cabinet to avoid any unwanted exit to the operative system from PinballX when the keyboard is not installed or not "on hand".
As you surely know, PinballX has a programmable exit screen with the capability of select whether exit to the operative system or shutdown the system. Usually a virtual pinball cabinet has not the keyboard installed or it has the keyboard hidden inside the cabinet (the one I made, for example, it has a drawer below the cabinet that once opened can be raised and locked on the left side the cabinet to exposing the keyboard/trackball/USB port to the user).

In any case, when the keyboard in not "on hand", erroneously selecting the Exit item from the exit screen could be boring. That because once you did it, the only way to exit and shutdown the system is to install the keyboard or get the keyboard out from the inner of the pinball cabinet.
The small program that I attached to this message is a workaround to avoid that boring event.

Once ExitShutdownSel.exe is installed, when PinballX is exited by the Exit item using the pinball cabinet start button, the system always shutdowns.
But, when PinballX is exited by the Exit item using the Enter key on the keyboard and holding down the Enter key for at least one second, the operative system returns available for maintenance purposes.
Inside the Zip file there is also a little pdf document that is intended to explain how to install the program (my English is not that good, I apologize for that but here in Italy when i was at school English language was not taught so much).

I hope you enjoy it, have fun with your cabinet.

Have a great Sunday.

Massimo

 

ExitShutDownSel.zip

[scutters]

I use a mini wireless keyboard, so it's always close to hand somewhere near the cab - but i can see how that utility could be useful. I'd suggest moving that into it's own thread in the User Projects section. The description is fine, your English is maybe better than you think!

For the tags on this thread i'd probably add;

Wallpaper

Black DMD

DMD Border

[Pmax65]

Hi Scutters,

thank you for your suggestions, I'll do that soon.