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Why the LCD TV hate?
Paul Olson:
--- Quote from: danny_galaga on November 19, 2011, 04:43:10 am ---
Having said all that, if I build another mame cab, it'll be an upright and I'll relent and get an LCD. All the mucking around with graphics cards and settings for an arcade monitor is just a tad too technical for me. I'll just make a bezel that hides the superfluous edges so and run the games in 4:3...
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You should be able to put those edges to good use. The lay files for the artwork should be able to edited to make better use of that space. I say should because I haven't had time to try it, but it should be fairly easy to do. I hope to start playing with it a bit before the end of the year, but I need to build a new cab first. Well, if it stays cold out, maybe I will work on the lay files instead.
nitz:
--- Quote from: VanillaGorilla on November 16, 2011, 01:09:48 pm ---All I gotta say is, the HLSL feature thats been added to MAME/MESS is blowing me away. I just sit there and look at Pac Man on my LCD now, and mutter to myself 'that looks so f'ing awesome', this is what I have been waiting for in MAME for 15 years. CRT's will become superfluous as this filter tech advances.
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+1 This pretty much sums things up for me. :) I got an LCD for my (still unfinished :-[) project almost 3 years ago. I went LCD because I wanted a light monitor for rotation and an easy plug and play solution. But it always bugged me a little that I didn't go with something more authentic. Until the HLSL feature was added to Mame. Now I simply see no reason to use a CRT - tweak HLSL just right and put it behind some smoked plexi, and I think it's gonna look damn near perfect. Nothing wrong with wanting to go absolutely authentic and get a real CRT, but honestly, it just doesn't seem necessary anymore unless you're someone who absolutely MUST have 100% authenticity. I'm willing to trade what is now a teensy bit of authenticity for a super easy solution.
--- Quote from: Jack Burton on November 19, 2011, 08:38:39 pm ---I suppose I should just outright answer the OP. Why I "hate" LCD's:
-They have input delay
-They are not available in 4:3 ratio.
-The graphics don't look right on them.
Of course, each of these points may be easily refuted to one degree or another. But in a nutshell, that's it.
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I do hear ya on the no 4:3 ratio though. :angry: This is the only thing that really bugs me about LCDs, especially for a cab. To get about the equivalent of a 25" 4:3 you've gotta go 32" 16:9 which means your cab is gonna be in the neighborhood of 28"-29" wide even if you decase. That sucks. That's why I'm going rotating monitor in my cab.
I will refute your other 2 points to some degree though! :lol ;)
I think it's only TVs that have lag, not computer monitors, though someone please correct me if I'm wrong, because I only fairly recently learned about the lag problem on TVs. And I believe you can get TVs where the lag isn't a problem, but you've gotta do your homework before you buy.
As far as the graphics not looking right, well, that's what HLSL fixes. ;D But this comes from someone who was too young to be there during the classics era, so if you grew up on the CRTs, I could understand why you would want to replicate that as much as humanly possible. I want to replicate that as much as possible too - only I'd like to use an LCD to do it.
--- Quote from: Paul Olson on November 19, 2011, 10:50:35 pm ---You should be able to put those edges to good use. The lay files for the artwork should be able to edited to make better use of that space.
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Actually, I think you need a special Mame compile, see here: http://mrdo.mameworld.info/mame_artwork_generic.html
Unfortunately, you need to use something older than 0.140, so no HLSL then.
jekbrown:
In not a single moment of my 32 years of gaming in arcades and at home, have I once gave a crap that a games graphics were blurry CRT crap OR the crisp display of a modern HDTV. It's ALL about the game play, that's all that matters. Blury color-bleed-laden low res wouldn't help HALO.....nor would ultra-crispness "hurt" black and white space invaders. Not for me anyway. I realize other people disagree, and that's just fine. My next cab will have an LCD, because it's lighter, more flexible with respect to cabinet design and simple-as-all-get-out to connect to a modern PC that will be the brain of the system. I might fiddle with filters at some point, but I doubt I'll ever put much time in it. The priority is reproducing the game play, after that everything else is just backround noise.
danny_galaga:
--- Quote from: nitz on November 20, 2011, 12:00:54 am ---
--- Quote from: Paul Olson on November 19, 2011, 10:50:35 pm ---You should be able to put those edges to good use. The lay files for the artwork should be able to edited to make better use of that space.
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Actually, I think you need a special Mame compile, see here: http://mrdo.mameworld.info/mame_artwork_generic.html
Unfortunately, you need to use something older than 0.140, so no HLSL then.
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Now see, that gets (to me) more complicated again. If I have to compile anything, or use something that doesn't just work 'out of the box' then I might as well get a TV and arcade chassis kit . If it's going to be a hassle, might as well make it a bit more genuine (",)
Paul Olson:
It doesn't require a compile, but it would definitely require a lot of work. Ideally, it would turn into a project to modify the lay files that are included in the artwork files. It just requires that a new view is added to the lay file, and of course new images if needed. It would be great if they could be added to the official artwork files, but I don't know how that team would feel about it. It is a lot of work since this is per game, but I imagine the popular games would be the ones that are most likely to get done.
The views we have now were all made for us by the artwork team. It would take a dedicated effort to make the views for widescreen, but those who want to do it could share their work with everyone else.
All it would add is one view in the list in the tab menu, so it is just an additional option for those with widescreens. Below is a really quick view I did just to show the concept. All I did was move the game screen and bezel over, and add in a cocktail instruction card that was used in another view. It is just adding a view (or views if you want to have different style options) to an XML file.
That generic artwork one was modifying a built in lay file, so it needed to be recompiled since those lay files are located in the source. The lay files in the artwork zips are outside of mame, so no compile is needed.