arcadevga vs utracade uvc

[peterson65]

has anyone here own the ultracade universal video converter- now sold by happ? i just upgraded my mame pc to a newer dual core that uses pci express from a p4 that had a arcadevga agp, so i need to decise to buy a new arcadevga pci e or go with the uvc, what i cant find out is if the uvc will work with light guns or not. with the uvc i would not be stuck with a slower video card and it would be less of a problem to configure it with my arcade monitor. is the newest arcadevga chipset fast enough ?

http://www.gameroommag.com/retroblast-articles/hardware-reviews/369-ultracade-uvc-universal

[Brian Hoffman]

has anyone here own the ultracade universal video converter- now sold by happ? i just upgraded my mame pc to a newer dual core that uses pci express from a p4 that had a arcadevga agp, so i need to decise to buy a new arcadevga pci e or go with the uvc, what i cant find out is if the uvc will work with light guns or not. with the uvc i would not be stuck with a slower video card and it would be less of a problem to configure it with my arcade monitor. is the newest arcadevga chipset fast enough ?

http://www.gameroommag.com/retroblast-articles/hardware-reviews/369-ultracade-uvc-universal

Id get it! I heard if AVGA will not play SFIV becuase it does not support pixelshader3, go with the new card.

[Stu1983]

The newest ArcadeVGA DOES support PixelShader 3 BUT it isn't poweful enough to get any higher than 25fps with the background turned on in SF4, which is just unplayable, using the latest ati drivers and the arcadevga I've hit 45fps but then you lose the arcade resolutions

I've chatted to Andy about this and asked if he could modify the latest ati driver but from what he said it isn't going to happen anytime soon.

So it was a complete waste of money upgrading my old ArcadeVGA to the newer model.

There is also another issue that I haven't got to the bottom off yet, I think it's a vista x64 driver problem, SSF just opens and disappears a few seconds later, I see the File menu and then as it's about to display the black video window it just closes without error. If I put my old ArcadeVGA back in it runs perfect. Project64 will also fire the odd error when trying to go full screen, from memory it was something along the lines of 'failed to set direct3d display', I feel there is a definite problem with the latest card trying to kick in direct3d, I had been chatting to Andy about it and he's asked if I can test it on XP but I don't have an XP system at the moment.

I've just noticed that the latest Nvidia drivers have an option to add custom resolutions and timings so I'm wondering if we can use an Nvidia card and add all the arcade resolutions, haven't had time to test his though, anyone else tried this? I've just upgraded from SLI 880GTS to 1 GTX295, I'd love to be able to use one of my old 880GTS in my arcade.

Stu

[peterson65]

this is why i am torn on what to do now, if that uvc works with light guns and thats why i upgraded the computer in my cabinet so carnevil plays good and it plays without a hickup or any stutter and thats with the motherboards built in nvidia graphics, i i get a new pcie avga card it might start to stutter and everything was a waste of money that would be great if you could hack the newest nvidia drivers to do the correct resolution so as to not fry my arcade monitor

[Brian Hoffman]

this is why i am torn on what to do now, if that uvc works with light guns and thats why i upgraded the computer in my cabinet so carnevil plays good and it plays without a hickup or any stutter and thats with the motherboards built in nvidia graphics, i i get a new pcie avga card it might start to stutter and everything was a waste of money that would be great if you could hack the newest nvidia drivers to do the correct resolution so as to not fry my arcade monitor

Well, Im not a lightgun expert, I thought lightguns worked off a white point. Meaning when you pulled the trigger there would be an instant white flash on the targets you could hit. If the gun sees the white point then it figures you hit your mark.

This could very easly be seen in the classic game duck hunt for NES, it didnt matter where you shot but you would notice the area around the duck changed, the gun sees that area and the duck falls.

Now I know games like HOTD and Carnevil dont display these as obvious but I think they still work the same. Therefore it shouldnt matter what device you use to output to your CRT as long as the gun sees what it is expecting.

Obvoiuly LCD display project diffrently and this could be why they do not work with light guns.

Like I said I am no expert, nor do I have a lightgun on my cab. But Im not sure why it wouldnt work.

You can always call the manufacture of the UVC.

[Stu1983]

this is why i am torn on what to do now, if that uvc works with light guns and thats why i upgraded the computer in my cabinet so carnevil plays good and it plays without a hickup or any stutter and thats with the motherboards built in nvidia graphics, i i get a new pcie avga card it might start to stutter and everything was a waste of money that would be great if you could hack the newest nvidia drivers to do the correct resolution so as to not fry my arcade monitor

I don't think you need to be worrying about Carnevil as mame doesn't use your graphics card, how powerful your processor is, is what counts in mame, so the new ArcadeVGA will work just fine for it.

It's only when you start trying to play modern PC games that you'll run into problems, and if your on Vista x64 your may have a problem with SSF for saturn emulation and random problems with Project64 for N64 emulation.

Stu

[peterson65]

but a buddy of mine has a mame cabinet using the arcade vga pci-e he has a dual core e8400 4 gigs of ram and carnevil the audio and video stutters a bit, my old machine was a p4 3ghz 1 gig of ram and arcadevga agp and it was way worse then his was but my specs are a lot lower, so i upgraded to a evga board with nvidia graphics on board i have a e5200 cpu 2.5 ghz and less cache then his (the e8400 is 3ghz) and carnevil on my 5200 without using an arcadevga plays perfect! i was so happy when i tried it that it finaly worked perfect, but i have not got around to try his arcadevga in mine yet but that has to be the bottleneck of his system. doesnt carnevil run 648x480 and uses 3dfx hardware?

[Stu1983]

but a buddy of mine has a mame cabinet using the arcade vga pci-e he has a dual core e8400 4 gigs of ram and carnevil the audio and video stutters a bit, my old machine was a p4 3ghz 1 gig of ram and arcadevga agp and it was way worse then his was but my specs are a lot lower, so i upgraded to a evga board with nvidia graphics on board i have a e5200 cpu 2.5 ghz and less cache then his (the e8400 is 3ghz) and carnevil on my 5200 without using an arcadevga plays perfect! i was so happy when i tried it that it finaly worked perfect, but i have not got around to try his arcadevga in mine yet but that has to be the bottleneck of his system. doesnt carnevil run 648x480 and uses 3dfx hardware?

I'll try and remember to check carnevil on my system tonight after work and let you know, I'm running dualcore e8500 @ 3.16ghz, 4gigs of ram and the latest arcadevga

Stu

[peterson65]

I'll try and remember to check carnevil on my system tonight after work and let you know, I'm running dualcore e8500 @ 3.16ghz, 4gigs of ram and the latest arcadevga

Stu

did you get a chance to try it?

[emphatic]

I would go with the Ultracade UVC, because it'll keep it's value as long as there are CRT screens available anywhere (in the homes of us arcade folks). You can't for example hook up an XBox 360 to the ArcadeVGA, can you? If you however think that the UVC is too expensive, the Extron video converters (Emotia, Emotia II or Super Emotia) appear on eBay for 'round $100 from time to time. I recently got one myself, and am very pleased. But the UVC is a much better choice if you have a dual sync monitor, as the 24kHz output from the UVC apparently looks awesome on high res games. I only with I knew about the UVC before getting an Extron Emotia II.

Emph

[Stu1983]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you my carnevil chd was corrupt so I had to download it again

Anyway, I just gave it a quick blast & it's working perfect with the new arcade vga

Stu

[Stu1983]

peterson65 I'm wondering if you've ever stumbles across Soft-15k over at BYOAC

I just found it myself and it's looking pretty impressive, it alters the driver for all graphics cards to enable low resolutions for arcade monitors, I had a play about with it last night and on my old nvidia 8600 I can get all the low resolutions available with my ArcadeVGA down to 304x240 only problem is I can't get the six 2??x2?? resolutions

The big plus though is Street Fighter IV is now hitting 85fps compared to the messily 25fps that the latest ArcadeVGA can achieve

It worked on my 8800GT too but still can't get the 2??x2?? resolutions

Stu

[peterson65]

well, i gave up with the arcadevga cards and i had a buddy that purchased the uvc and that was horrible for looking at anything in windows for games it was ok so i went and purchased a wells gardner d9800 and what a nice picture compared to the 25" arcade monitor i had and i have carnevil running with no audio or video hiccups but i am having troubles with light gun setup, i have a slikstik classic with a spinner control that is a usb mouse and in windows everything works together, if i use the program from act labs the guns both register when shooting the target and my trackball and spinner work but in gameex and mame the spinner does not work anymore and gun 2 does not work! if i remove my mame.ini then the spinner works but no guns. i must have something messed in the mame.ini can anyone figure whats wrong

thanks for any help

p.s attached is my mame.ini

<UNADORNED0>

#

# CORE CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

#

readconfig 1

#

# CORE SEARCH PATH OPTIONS

#

rompath roms

samplepath samples

artpath artwork

ctrlrpath ctrlr

inipath .;ini

fontpath .

cheatpath cheat

crosshairpath crosshair

#

# CORE OUTPUT DIRECTORY OPTIONS

#

cfg_directory cfg

nvram_directory nvram

memcard_directory memcard

input_directory inp

state_directory sta

snapshot_directory snap

diff_directory diff

comment_directory comments

hiscore_directory hi

#

# CORE STATE/PLAYBACK OPTIONS

#

state

autosave 0

playback

record

mngwrite

aviwrite

wavwrite

snapname %g/%i

snapsize auto

snapview internal

burnin 0

#

# CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS

#

autoframeskip 0

frameskip 0

seconds_to_run 0

throttle 1

sleep 1

speed 1.0

refreshspeed 0

#

# CORE ROTATION OPTIONS

#

rotate 1

ror 0

rol 0

autoror 0

autorol 0

flipx 0

flipy 0

#

# CORE ARTWORK OPTIONS

#

artwork_crop 0

use_backdrops 1

use_overlays 1

use_bezels 1

#

# CORE SCREEN OPTIONS

#

brightness 1.0

contrast 1.0

gamma 1.0

pause_brightness 0.65

#

# CORE VECTOR OPTIONS

#

antialias 1

beam 1.0

flicker 0

#

# CORE SOUND OPTIONS

#

sound 1

samplerate 48000

samples 1

volume 0

#

# CORE INPUT OPTIONS

#

coin_lockout 1

ctrlr

mouse 0

joystick 0

lightgun 1

multikeyboard 0

multimouse 1

steadykey 0

offscreen_reload 1

joystick_map auto

joystick_deadzone 0.3

joystick_saturation 0.85

#

# CORE INPUT AUTOMATIC ENABLE OPTIONS

#

paddle_device keyboard

adstick_device keyboard

pedal_device keyboard

dial_device keyboard

trackball_device keyboard

lightgun_device lightgun

positional_device keyboard

mouse_device mouse

#

# CORE DEBUGGING OPTIONS

#

log 0

verbose 0

update_in_pause 0

debug 0

debugscript

#

# CORE MISC OPTIONS

#

bios

cheat 0

skip_gameinfo 0

#

# CORE MKChamp OPTIONS

#

disable_hiscore_patch 0

disable_nagscreen_patch 0

disable_loading_patch 0

#

# WINDOWS DEBUGGING OPTIONS

#

oslog 0

watchdog 0

debugger_font "Lucida Console"

debugger_font_size 9

#

# WINDOWS PERFORMANCE OPTIONS

#

priority 0

multithreading 0

#

# WINDOWS VIDEO OPTIONS

#

video d3d

numscreens 1

window 0

maximize 1

keepaspect 1

prescale 1

effect none

waitvsync 0

syncrefresh 0

#

# DIRECTDRAW-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

#

hwstretch 1

#

# DIRECT3D-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

#

d3dversion 9

filter 1

#

# PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS

#

screen auto

aspect auto

resolution auto

view auto

screen0 auto

aspect0 auto

resolution0 auto

view0 auto

screen1 auto

aspect1 auto

resolution1 auto

view1 auto

screen2 auto

aspect2 auto

resolution2 auto

view2 auto

screen3 auto

aspect3 auto

resolution3 auto

view3 auto

#

# FULL SCREEN OPTIONS

#

triplebuffer 0

switchres 0

full_screen_brightness 1.0

full_screen_contrast 1.0

full_screen_gamma 1.0

#

# WINDOWS SOUND OPTIONS

#

audio_latency 2

#

# INPUT DEVICE OPTIONS

#

dual_lightgun 0

[Stu1983]

What graphics card are you using if you aren't using the ArcadeVGA?

Though I see you have hardware stretch turned on which makes me think you're not running any low resolutions but I don't see what advantage is having a multisync arcade monitor and not bothering with the low resolutions.

I had trouble with my LCD Topguns when I was trying to play shooting games at low resolutions, I ended up forcing all gun games to run at 640x480, so if you are using low resolutions then maybethis would help.

Stu

[peterson65]

What graphics card are you using if you aren't using the ArcadeVGA?

Though I see you have hardware stretch turned on which makes me think you're not running any low resolutions but I don't see what advantage is having a multisync arcade monitor and not bothering with the low resolutions.

I had trouble with my LCD Topguns when I was trying to play shooting games at low resolutions, I ended up forcing all gun games to run at 640x480, so if you are using low resolutions then maybethis would help.

Stu

right now i am using the built in the motherboard nvidia graphics, i have been running mame at 640x480 i also am using the soft 15k program, at 800x600 60hz that was the lowest setting in windows with the nvidia drivers, i could not get the lightguns to work at all, but running soft 15k and setting multi-res to 640x480 then they worked in windows, now if i can just get everything working in mame i would be happy but once i enable the light guns to work in mame i loose the spinner?