[RESOLVED] Some tables have no focus at start

[JPS]

After more than a year of just playing Pinball FX3 on my cabinet every now and then, I decided to update my PinballX installation and some tables. However, it has come to my attention that when some tables are loaded, they don't have the focus at the start, meaning I have to alt-tab to the table to get everything to work. Updating or reinstalling a table does not seem to matter. Any solution to this? Whoa Nelly is one of those tables, if this helps. Batman (just ' Batman' ) is another.

It also stands out to me that those tables seem to take longer to load? Or to just come to the front?

EDIT: Focus seems to stay on the backglass if that helps.

[Mike_da_Spike]

Do you have visual pinball running as admin ?

Check if that exe file run as admin.

Try also to run pinballx as admin.

Please attach your pinballx.ini and a log.txt file after the issue occur (as attachment)

Edit: assuming that the tables you added are visual pinball tables, as batman and whoa nelly are not fx3 tables. 

[JPS]

Yes, I run Pinball FX and Pinball Arcade directly off of steam, outside of PinballX. Everything is running as admin.

 

Attached are the log(s) and ini. I can clearly see the 'Visual Pinball Foreground Timout: 32' happening, but I have no idea as to why. Batman I seem to have ' fixed' by just installing another version of the table.

 

PinballX.iniFetching info... log.txtFetching info... log2.txtFetching info...

[Mike_da_Spike]

What is " C:\Visual Pinball\customVP.exe" ? Is this a modified version of vp ?

[JPS]

I guess it is, although I don't know why. I bought the cabinet pre-installed and just left all that as it was, and it has worked fine like that up till now. I did updates though over the years, to VPX and Vpinmame.

Should I change that to the vpx executable ? If so, what will happen when I run a .vpt table that needs VP9 ?

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Don't say it is the magic bullet,  but you can give it a try to put it to the original vp exe.

To make a distinguish between vpt and vpx, you can create 2 different systems.

1 for vpt with the correct exe and 1 for vpx.

You can also use 1 system and use alternate exe for the tables that needs another exe to launch.

(Databasemanager has the alternate exe option in the gui)

[JPS]

I tried and I also renamed the table to make sure no residual settings were being picked up from somewhere. Didn't change a thing.

 

log.txtFetching info...

[scutters]

You could try changing the 'extra wait for show desktop' setting under Visual Pinball settings.

Note, i might be wrong as i've never had to use that setting- i just remember it being added.

[JPS]

 

But I think the whole wait (and then the timeout) is the reason for the problem. The timeout comes after the wait, no matter how long you wait. The question is, what is it waiting for ? If I load the table under VPX directly there is no wait, it just loads.

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Did you check if visual pinvall is running as admin ? 

Can you try to set pinballx to run as admin and retry ? 

[JPS]

Everything is running as admin.  No result.

 

[joyrider3774]

I had similar issues, what i used is a small tool well actually autohotkey script which i let run in a launch before action without waiting on it. All the ahk script does is click with the mouse on a specific coordinate (where playfield would be) 3 times each time after some specific delay. Never had a problem since then anymore

[JPS]

Frankly, if I have to settle for something like that as a 'solution', I'll first take my chances on trying a complete clean reinstall. Although I've never installed it from scratch and I'm not sure what I'll run into. The thing is that it's clear to me that with those specific tables there is substantially more delay before the table appears (because it waits for the timeout). With the ahk that delay will still be there. 

With the alt-tab I can see and just know that the back screen is the last thing loaded and active, wich makes me think that's where the problem is. I just don't know enough about PinballX to know how and in what order it loads things (and thus if my suspicion has any meritt).

I'm hoping for a solution still, if not I guess I'll have to take the plunge

[scutters]

I'd still give the 'extra wait for show desktop' setting a try. If it doesn't work then it's easy enough just to set back - got to be worth a shot before thinking about a rebuild

 Out of interest how quickly do the problem tables load outside PinballX?

[Mike_da_Spike]

Just curious.
Is VP running in full screen exclusive mode ?


As your setting in PinballX is to :


Maybe play around with those 2 settings  bit.

And also checks @scuttersquestions : 

  On 9/27/2021 at 8:41 PM, scutters said:

I'd still give the 'extra wait for show desktop' setting a try. If it doesn't work then it's easy enough just to set back - got to be worth a shot before thinking about a rebuild

 Out of interest how quickly do the problem tables load outside PinballX?

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[JPS]

  On 9/28/2021 at 4:40 AM, Mike_da_Spike said:

Just curious.
Is VP running in full screen exclusive mode ?


 

 

Expand  

This did it. It was off. I have no idea why it worked for years, but yes everything works fine again now. Thank you!

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

  On 9/28/2021 at 6:24 AM, JPS said:

I have no idea why it worked for years

Expand  

Maybe because the old version of pinballx you had, just work for you. And this new feature you need to set correctly.

Glad it is working for you. Another happy user