How To Make MAME Look Good on an Arcade Monitor. ULTIMARC HELP ME!!! :)

[Griff08]

I'm using a J-Pac and an Ultimarc ArcadeVGA video card to run my PC (Phenom II Quad, Windows 7 64, 8 gigs Ram) into my JAMMA Arcade cabinet. The cabinet holds a 25'' Wells Gardner Arcade Monitor.

According to ultimarc.com I need to change three settings in mame to make the picture look authentic and snazzy.

"HARDWARESTRETCH MUST BE OFF
YOU MUST USE DIRECT-DRAW NOT DIRECT 3D
SWITCH RESOLUTIONS MUST BE ENABLED"

I can change these settings easily enough in the MAME.ini. Unfortunately, mame does not seem to want to run using Direct Draw under Windows 7 .

So I have two out of three settings set to ultimarc's specification; hardware stretch off and switch resolution on... and the picture actually seems much worse off for it.

What should I do to get my best looking picture on my arcade monitor?  I hope your answer is not change operating systems 

I have a real copy of Marvel Vs. Capcom on hand; I hope to project an emulation of the game that looks exactly like the real thing; this is my litmus test.

Thanks for your help!

[drventure]

Did you see this?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/191660

No idea whether that's the prob or not, but it might be worth checking out.

[Griff08]

I am fairly certain I have DX setup right.  I have gone into dxdiag... although in dxdiag there does not seem to be a place to enable/disable d3d or ddraw.

Come on!  I can't be the only person in the world running a Windows 7 computer into an arcade monitor!

This community is so small!  Is there no help out there! 

[dgame]

What MAME version?

What DX Version?

What game/rom?

What does >MAME -verbose yourromname output?

[mytymaus007]

I think you need the new version of Ultimarc ArcadeVGA video card to use with Windows 7. Do have that or the old version.

[Griff08]

Newest MAME

DirectX 11

All Games/roms

will get back to you about the output for a given game

[Griff08]

I have an Arcade VGA 2!  The newest one 

[atomikbohm]

You mean the latest AVGA until the last one came out?  Sorry dude but model has been updated.  check our Ultimarc's website. http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html

[tyson171]

You need to run in an non interlaced mode to be able to run ddraw in windows 7, just like it says on the ultimarc website! Try setting your windows desktop to 640x288, and ddraw will work fine! Not sure if you read the hyperspin forum or not, but running at that resolution with hyperspin messes up how it looks, so i just use d3d instead, everything looks good to me this way.  I'm 24, I didn't grow up in arcades during the "golden age", i just like playing arcade games, and at times I prefer 2d over 3d, and with d3d I get "smoother" graphics, but they still have the "arcade" feel on my wells gardner 25k7191, but just a little bit cleaner and not as many jaggies/blocks as what ddraw gives me.  Now i realize this isn't the "true" arcade feel, but it looks good to me and all of my friends/wife versus a true ddraw picture, plus i play street fighter/shooters/neo geo/cps stuff more than golden age anyways, so i just stick to d3d!

[Creeper]

I'm running Windows 7 with the ArcadeVGA and DirectDraw enabled. At first it wouldn't work with 640x480, so I switched to the suggested 640x288 and it worked. After wards, I'm not sure exactly what I did, but I switched back to 640x480 and it has been working fine. Go figure.

[tyson171]

I thought the same thing creeper, I changed my resolution and it worked fine,  but later on I checked my mame.ini and it automatically changed it back to d3d? Everything looks/works fine so I never really worried about it!

[AndyWarne]

Those 3 settings must be set otherwise you will not get native resolutions.
But there is an issue with Windows 7 which is mentioned on the ArcadeVGA install page. Win7 has a problem switching from interlaced to non-interlaced resolutions. So you need to set the desktop or front end to 640 x 288 which is a non-interlaced res, otherwise when the game starts, the resolution will not switch.
This does not apply if you are using a multi-frequency monitor.
In fact this appears to be a bug in DirectDraw on Win7. The cure for this would of course be to run Direct 3D because MS dont support DDraw any more, but unfortunately Mame will not run unstretched in D3D. I have been pressing the mame devs to implement native resolution on D3D for years.
I also have some utility programs which will switch the res to 640 X 288 and back to 640 X 480 which can be used as another workaround, having the front end run the 640 x 288 switcher before every game for example.

[Creeper]

Hey Tyson,

I checked my mame.ini and its still set to ddraw. That being said, I am using a multi frequency monitor as Andy mentioned.

[Kokapetl]

I recommend using CabMame, it allows you to turn off some graphical features that scale etc. (ruin) the true output of games.
This combined with a tool to automate the resolution config files (arcadevgarestool or something like that).

I managed to get mine working like this, although I'm still having a problem with vertical games (they appear super thin when I try to rotate them to suit my horizontally orientated monitor).