VPinball 8beta-2

[Pop Bumper Pete]

This new exe contains (hopefully) a fix for display reels on ATI cards.
It also raises the texture limit to 4096x4096.

- Randy

 

[shiva]

Great, finally can add better quality images, and see what my graphics actually look like. :)

Oops, only have a monitor up to 1280 x 1024

 

[Pop Bumper Pete]

That was my first thought too
Who has a PC monitor THAT big????

 

[shiva]

Could always write a letter to Sony and ask them to make one. Sure it wouldn't be too expensive...

 

[Shockman]

http://www.123securityproducts.com/solm14inlcdf.html
About a dollar for each pixel wide.

 

[destruk]

It's called Futureproofing.
In the HDTV world, 1080p is currently king. The recently completed CEDIA Expo featured boatloads of 1080p projectors, plasmas and LCDs. But at CEATEC is Japan, Sharp showed off a 64-inch LCD monitor, sporting a 4096 x 2160 resolution, featuring 8.84 million pixels. 1080who?

The screen, still in the development phase, will be targeted at film and television producers as well as medical researchers, a Sharp representative said. The exhibit is one of the more popular at the weeklong trade show taking place outside Tokyo. But eventually, these technologies trickle down to the consumer market.

And TV personalities thought current HDTV resolutions made them look bad.

 

[PacDude]

Sadly, 1080p projectors are still pretty darn expensive. 720P projectors, OTOH are getting pretty reasonable (a good Optoma DLP one can be had for $800; I got my Panasonic LCD one for $1700 plus the cost of a 93" screen and 50' component cable for around $2000 total. That doesn't include the 6.1 channel surround system, cabinets and speakers stands, but considering my last 57" CRT HDTV cost $4200 a few years ago and this LCD picture on a 93" screen looks BETTER, I'd say there's a lot more bang for your buck these days if you know where to look. Flat-panel tvs still cost too much, IMO. I'd be lucky to get a 42" one for the price of the projector and screen and that projector handle up to over 200" screens if you have the room for such a screen. In 4:3 mode, I still get a nice 70" picture. It can handle 1024x768, so as soon as I can get a PC downstairs to try it out on it, I'm sure VP would look pretty darn nice on it at that size (although obviously a 1080P projector could go to at least 1280x960 and look better yet).

 

[destruk]

There are a lot of reasons for 4096x4096 resolution ability. Well, ok, not a lot in number, just a few extremely important ones. With emReels fixed for ATI/improved for NVIDIA, think of what could be done - emreels are one of the most realistic options vp has for getting a variety of devices working, fading lamps, scoreboards, etc - it naturally quadruples the available area to hold all those frames of animation. One of the few things I can actually thank Black for, as he deserves more credit than he knows for that little feature. If you have multiple displays, the increased source image resolution makes a difference too.... :)

 

[shiva]

Would be nice, IF Randy actually gets the increased resolution to work that is, which doesn't on my computer. My new graphics are 2048 in height, but it came out with 50% of it totally black, which sort of defeated the entire purpose, and about 5 weeks of my time making it.

I wonder why he even bothered, as increased resolution is already in the UC version, it's sort of like reinventing the wheel here. Just take that version, and add his stuff (which is pretty buggy as well). Personally, I would rather see some key things fixed rather than new stuff anyway, like the horrible bugs that crash the table like the auto save and the decals that could end up corrupting the entire table.

Resolution for walls that match the resolution and the amount of color depth of the decals would be nice as well, and a transparent color we can set for the top.

The reels, bah. I have no problems with them, though I find it a bit odd that VP has this problem, while with other game programs, I can use a sprite sheet with 100's of images on it and have no problem. * shrugs *

 

[Shockman]

I don't have any problems using the higher res. Up to 4096X4096 and it does make a difference with lower res monitors. I hope he gets it fixed for everyone without breaking it for me. I do have problems with the flippers visuals which he has fixed, and the reels, but I don't understand why he would be working on those things at all until he implements UC's rewrite, to see if more work is needed on those things. I think on the other hand, he should work on a ball through the flipper fix and stability, so older tables will have a backwards compatible version of VP that will work with them, as they surly won't work on the new version with UC's rewrite. In other words, I think it would be great if he would work on a VP7 final, if he is going to work on anything until he gets that rewrite put in.