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Mirror Cabinet FAQs

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Necro:
Purpose
The purpose of this thread and FAQ is to provide a central location for 'mirror cab' setup related information to assist in archiving the information and providing a reference point for anyone trying to MAME one of these types of cabinets in the future.  This is a living FAQ, so new answers and information will be incorporated as things evolve.

Definitions/Terminology
Because of the various uses of certain mirroring/rotation related terms, the following definitions are how each of these terms are used within this FAQ.  This FAQ is focused on software and other hardware solutions, with most info only being pertinent for those situations where you can't use a hardware fix to mirror your video out for some reason (e.g., you're using a LED monitor).

* Rotate: Rotate a display without any mirroring.
* Flip: Vertically or horizontally 'flip' a display, resulting in a mirrored display.  This is NOT the same as rotate, which can be visualized as pivoting a screen around a central point.  This is the equivalent to what you would see if you flipped a screen along an axis across the middle (vertically or horizontally) and were able to see the screen from the back of the monitor.
* Mirror: The same as flip. 
Monitors and Hardware

* CRT Monitors: Disregard the rest of this FAQ and yoke flip your monitor.  Basic information at the link, and detailed info available via Google.  Link
* LED Monitors: Unless you have a monitor with the built in capability to flip it's display, you're generally out of luck.  Only a very small number of LCD monitors have the wiring to allow for a 'yoke flip' style trick to be used to flip their video display. (Link) To determine if you can, check your manual.  If not mentioned there, determine the LCD screen you have in the monitor and attempt to locate a pinout for the screen.  Depending on the pinout, you may be able to do the same type of action done for CRT monitors and cross Up/Down or Left/Right wiring, resulting in a flipped image.  Note that altering horizontal and vertical sync will NOT accomplish this.  This is generally not an option for LCD monitors, however, hence this FAQ.
* Scalers and Converters: Note that there are video scalers and converters (Link) that can accomplish this flipping on LCDs and CRTs, however they are over >$300 in general for ones that do higher resolutions.  Look for things marked for teleprompters and the like if you want to go that route.  Note that older ones may be available for ~$50-60, but you should confirm output resolutions/specs match what you need as many are for teleprompters and don't require high resolutions or higher refresh rates.
Emulators
Few emulators support output flipping and some can be 'hacked' in some way to force it.  At this time, I am not aware of any other emulators that support a mirroring video output aside from those below.

* MAME: Natively supports flipped/mirrored output.  Use the -flipx or -flipy command line commands or set the settings as appropriate in MAME.ini.
* MESS: Natively supports flipped/mirrored output.
* VPinMAME: Natively supports flipped/mirroed output, however this only outputs the dot matrix display so it doesn't mean you can actually play any pinball machines on a mirrored cabinet as of yet - but it will let you mirror your DMD on a video pinball machine
* DAPHNE: Des not support fliped/mirrored output, however it is possible to play 'pure video' games (e.g., Dragon's Lair, Space Ace) by mirroring the video via a reencode, and then altering your control mapping to account for it.  You can't have an on-screen scoreboard, but the games play acceptably without them.
Front-Ends
The following front ends support mirroring their video output.  Note that using a front end that flips it's video output does NOT make the emulator flip its output.  A combination of a flip capable front end and flip capable emulator is required.

* Maximus Arcade: Natively supports horizontal and vertical flipped output.  Note that this only flips the front ends graphics - videos, screenshots, etc., will need to be flipped outside the front end before displaying correctly.  Flipping works on WinXP and Win7
* GameEx: Natively supports vertical flipping.  To accomplish horizontal flipping, rotate the screen 180 degrees and turn on vertical flipping.  Flipping works on WinXP and Win7.
* AtomeFE: Natively supports vertical and horizontal flipping.  Flipping only works on WinXP at this time.
* MALA: At this time, MALA does NOT support flipping - only rotating.
Other Software
A number of other software is commonly proposed as 'solutions' to the mirroring issue.  They are listed below, along with what each is/is not capable of.

* NVKeyStone: Nvidia Keystone, designed to correct projector outputs, will mirror output.  However, this comes at a huge performance hit, requires WinXP, requires an NVIDIA video card, and does not support GeForce 8 (or above) cards. Link
* Ultramon: Newest versions will mirror output.  Not certain if it requires two monitors however - also, the highest refresh rate appears to be 30hz (30 updates per second) which was very visible when I tested it on my main computer.  Haven't checked on my cab yet.
* iRotate: Rotates only, doesn't flip/mirror output. 
* Various 3D Display Software (e.g., Nvidia, etc.): Requires a second monitor to display anything mirrored. (Link) Potential for a 'fake' second monitor is there, but not sure how to accomplish this.  Also, need to confirm it's not possible to setup with two monitors then simply remove one.
Hardware

* AimTrak Lightguns: AimTrak lightguns should work with a mirrored setup with the IR sensors set appropriately on the actual monitor and given the IR reflects correctly off the mirror.  Note that the distance to the monitor will be equivalent to the total distance to the actual monitor - so you gain a foot or two with this setup. - Verified, see post below.

Necro:
...RESERVED...

Necro:
..RESERVED...

Necro:
To be added:
Final Burn Alpha v0.2.97.8Monitor Mirrored Vertical Alignment Setting in Config - "If enabled will mirror the aspect ratio settings for vertical games."
Final Burn Alpha Shuffle v2.0.0b: Monitor Mirrored Vertical Alignment Setting in Config - "If enabled will mirror the aspect ratio settings for vertical games."
Calice 0.54: Has a ini setting of videoflip.  Need roms to test this however as mame roms (0.142) don't seem to work and it's unclear if this is even needed, speedwise, as the last release is from 2002.

Donkbaca:
 I think the aimtraks would work fine mounted above the mirror too.  No need to attach it to the monitor.

Also wouldn't the wiki be a better place for this?

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