[RESOLVED] Black Screen During Transition from PinballX to Visual Pinball

[Mike_da_Spike]

I've been encountering an issue with the transition from PinballX to Visual Pinball, where the screen briefly turns black during launch. While this doesn't happen every single time, it occurs most of the time, making the transition look rough and inconsistent.

After investigating, I noticed that VPinMAME does not appear to be fully loaded when PinballX switches to Visual Pinball. This may be causing the black screen delay before the table actually loads.

Normally, when using Scutter’s Loading Image Changer plugin, the transition looked much smoother. The playfield loading video was displayed during loading, and once Visual Pinball was fully ready, the system switched over seamlessly.

To illustrate this issue, I’ve attached three videos that show how the DMD is not displaying anything when PinballX transitions to Visual Pinball which properly causes the black screen

It's not the small black screen when launching the table, but the part after the loading video is gone and showed Visual Pinball

I don't know when this occurred for the first time and with what PinballX version this started.
I'm using the final version of Visual Pinball 64 bit. and use the DX version (only GL for VR)
tested with Full screen exclusive, and window mode and doesn't make difference

 

log.txt PinballX.ini

[Draco1962]

Not thst I will be much help on this, but it is only happening with Visual Pinball, not any others such as FX, Pinball Wicked, etc. correct?

Also, is it noticeable if you disable the plugin?

[Mike_da_Spike]

51 minutes ago, Draco1962 said:

Not thst I will be much help on this, but it is only happening with Visual Pinball, not any others such as FX, Pinball Wicked, etc. correct?

Each of those systems initiates a launcher program; however, VP is the only emulator I'm using that using loading videos before transitioning to the emulator itself.

55 minutes ago, Draco1962 said:

Also, is it noticeable if you disable the plugin?

I've disabled all plugins, but doesn't make a difference.

It appears that vpinmame previously displayed DMD frames before transitioning to VPX. Perhaps vpx 10.8 is slower, causing a delay in frame display on the DMD. But don't know how pinvallx de idea when to switch to vpx. 

 

[Tom Speirs]

My best guess - has issue playing the video. 

i am guessing you got new videos too.

[Mike_da_Spike]

The loading videos are not new.
I just checked it and it appears that, for instance, the Terminator video is from last year and the file size is only 400 KB. 

 

 

Terminator 3 (Stern 2003)_Bigus(MOD)1.0.MP4.zip

[Tom Speirs]

My best guess is it is still video related. NetVideoPlayer.dll does the playback during loading.

[Mike_da_Spike]

21 minutes ago, Tom Speirs said:

My best guess is it is still video related. NetVideoPlayer.dll does the playback during loading.

And when or how does PBX 'decide' to switch from the video player to the visual pinball player?

Is there a timer or process that is monitored?

[Tom Speirs]

It doesnt stop playing the video, it just lets the emulator/system take over.

[Tom Speirs]

note i do see this in the log: Set Visual Pinball Player Foreground

Which is a newer change where it sets focus.

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Looks like my visual player isn't finished loading the table completely.

Is that something I can extend for a couple of seconds ? So it switch seamless again ?.

[Tom Speirs]

i will have a look for you buddy. Sorry though, please try and be patient, I am a bit behind.

[Mike_da_Spike]

3 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

i will have a look for you buddy. Sorry though, please try and be patient, I am a bit behind.

No problem Tom. It's not super important, as all is working,.

[Mike_da_Spike]

Just put this issue on hold.

I noticed that my complete cab is slow, compared with my pc.

Not sure what's going on, but a direct table launch from command line on my pc takes around 3-5 seconds and my cab around 19-21 seconds. Maybe that's causing why the  transition from loading videos to table has some black screen time. 

[Draco1962]

Compare your Windows startup apps and processes between your PC and cab as well as resource usage. 

[Mike_da_Spike]

I will do a deep dive on this. Both PCs have different purposes, but the hardware should be the same. Only my development PC has an OEM build on it. Something I will check in the coming weeks.

[Mike_da_Spike]

I did a lot of testing the last couple of days.

I first started to check the operating system, which had 2753 issues (according to the CBS log). When those were fixed, I still had the same issue, so I tried to check everything that was updated.

I came to the conclusion that a table without a B2S file started quickly, with correct transitions, and closes PinballX in just a few seconds.

Using B2S server without plugins works fine as well. It looks like VP 10.8 changes things a bit when having Visual Pinball start. When my DOF starts through B2S, PinballX is already switching from loading video to Visual Pinball.

The long closure time looks like PinballX still sees the process for Visual Pinball, which takes a bit longer, waits until timeout, and then kills it. This is why it takes much longer to close for me.

For now, I disabled my complete DOF (which I used mostly for lights and LEDs), and all looks stable now.

So, definitely not a PinballX issue, but I am not sure where to address this. Is it b2s, PinMAME, VPX, or DOF?

I am pretty sure it worked with a beta (or even nightly) version of VPX 10.8. But as I have been testing for almost two years, only working on VR stuff, I hardly focused on my cabinet.

So, I want to focus more on my cabinet now, and not for testing, but just for playing.