Hardware Rotation Faq (please sticky)

[Howard_Casto]

*Updated 12/29*


I'm not sure if this should be in displays or not, but here goes.

[jcrouse]

Howard,
      What video card do you plan on using and at what resolution do you plan on running it? Also what monitor are you using? I have a 19" U3100 in my cocktail. I run 640x480 resolution. I tried both a GeForce 3 TI500 and a GeForce 2 MX400 (I think) along with an ATI 7000 series chipset and had more than my share of issues with the drivers. Most of them were based around the monitor not handling the the resolutions/color depths/refresh rates well and syncing problems. When I would leave a game (mame) and return to my front end (MameWAH) the monitor would just scroll. I have worked with WG on the issues. It was left standing that I may need to go onto the board on the monitor and unsolder two IC's to allow it to work correctly. Hence, as you saw in my other post, I resorted to Pivot Pro software. For me it fixed all my issues and has never missed a beat. The one annoyance is that I can't set the FE as my shell. If I do when I return to the shell from a game it just scrolls. So I just put a shortcut in the startup folder and then turn the monitor on automatically after the system has booted with the timer I spoke of before. I figure this is something to do with the Pivot Pro software needing to start to Windows to do a few things. Maybe something to do with drivers/services/dependencies, not sure. I never looked into it too deep. Anyways, I just thought I'd share my experiences in a positive constructive post.

John

[Howard_Casto]

That sounds like a driver interface issue to me.  While writing this I found a nifty little tool called irotate.  What it does is interface with the drivers of all the popular video cards and handles rotation itself.  I had similar glitches before I started using it, but now everything seems to be working fine. 

One of the cool things is it supports command line switching, so I'm currently re-writing part of my fe to work well with it.  (Tell the fe not to rotate certain emulators while rotating others.... auto resizing of the skin when it's rotated, ect...) 

I'll be using a wg hybrid monitor that is capable of svga resolutions (which I don't care for, but the price was right)  so that stuff isn't as much of an issue for me.  I'll also be usign a radeon 7000. 

The pain about pivot pro is that it only rotates gdi applications, which means emulators and direct-x based front ends aren't effected.  Works for mamewah though, luckily for you. 

I'll probably run it at 1024x768, mainly because I plan on running some pc shooters which support vertical orientation and high resolutions. 


I hope that helps some people. 

Seriously, try out irotate, it rocks!

[Howard_Casto]

Update:

I've been experimenting with visual pinball.  As I suspected the width and height are stored in the registry.  Something nice is the fact that the window isn't locked to a 4:3 aspect ratio, which means the render can be stretched to fill the whole screen when it's vertical. 

A more sensible option would be to make the window a square (like 768x768) and use the extra screen space on top to place the dmd display.


This stuff should be wrappable, so I'll work on the necessary additions to my wrapper next year.

[rerstad]

One problem with iRotate that I haven't been able to work around yet (I reverted back to PivotPro in the meantime) is the keyboard shortcuts.  Ctl-Alt arrow rotates the screen, so when my nephew was playing he constantly hit P1s buttons 1 and 2 with the joystick and that would rotate the screen, meaning I had to fix it.  A bit annoying.  Maybe there's a way to change that to a far less likely combination, but I haven't been able to get anything like that to work.

[tmasman]

...so when my nephew was playing he constantly hit P1s buttons 1 and 2 with the joystick and that would rotate the screen...

You seriously need to NOT use MAME's default set-up if you're using a control panel...
It works "ok" if you're stuck with a keyboard, but it's always gonna mess you up if you use it with arcade controls.

Anyhow, good luck!

[Howard_Casto]

agreed.... mame was started in the dos days (i.e. all games ran in ms-dos mode fomr win95)  so like doom and other games, it improperly uses windows function keys.  The first thing you need to do on a mame install is map either the ctrl or alt mappings (or both) to something else. 

[fitzmorrism]

Use Linux with AdvanceCD!!
Linux is the savior of the world, delivering us from MicroCrap!!

[Katana Man]

Why is this post a sticky?

[lokki]

Is there a list of video cards (or manufactures) that support Hardware rotation?
Are there any chipsets (MOBO with onboard video) that support hardware rotation?

Thanks

[Howard_Casto]

No... but that would be a great thing to add to this thread.

I can tell you now that any radeon class video card supports rotation via true hardware, or "psuedo-hardware", either of which work great.

[lokki]

Hi,
I've been doing a little reasearch, and the Nvidia Nvrotate is not supported on
TNT, TNT2 or  Vanta. Older Video Cards (not sure if they had AGP)

I guess this means that Force (nForce, geForce,NForce) and Quadro series do support nvrotate.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_nvrotate.html

Not sure on ATI, but it seem that as far back as the RADEON 7000 supported some sort of of HW rotation.

[Howard_Casto]

This is not suprising. 

Ati radeon cards (7000 to present) all use the catalyst dirver set, which supports rotation, therefore, any and all cards that use the catalyst drivers support rotation. 

Same goes with nvidia... all geforce cards (except for maybe generation 1) support rotation because they all use the same driver package. 

I do find the fact that you mentioned tnt cards laughable though.  Those things are ancient, they predate the rotatable lcd flat panel.  (i.e. there would be no practical use for rotation)

It's like confirming that a ati rage card doesn't support rotation. 


To sum up any modern video card that's ati or nvidia supports rotation.  This of course includes the arcadevga, which is radeon based.  Matrox and other high end cards need to be verified by someone that's more familiar with them, preferably someone who actually has one. 

[lokki]

I do find the fact that you mentioned tnt cards laughable though.

[blueznl]

Was there ever a proper tool or doc created to show how to add 'rotated screen' support? (to virtual pinball, future pinball, and vpinmame)

[loadman]

I have a cocktail cab with a vertical monitor

I can only comment of mame as I don't run anything else on my cab

When I first finished my cab I experimented with a lot of rotation software and the stuff that come with nvidia cards..

at the end of the day I found that a few mame game ran slower and some did not want to rotate properly at all.

To be fair.... 90% were fine

So after a couple of months I gave up and left Windows alone

I had much more joy using a FE that natively rotates and letting Mame rotate itself when required

My cab still looks cool as I masked windows pretty well

see here: http://www.members.optushome.com.au/backwash/software.htm

[blueznl]

I should have put my question down just that bit better... I got all rotating stuff working, except for the pinball emulators.

[Howard_Casto]

Well future pinball will work in windowed mode probably, but definately not in fullscreen.  What I did for visual pinball was to modify the registry entry for the resolution for vp (for some stupid reason the authors decided to save settings to the windows registry.) and inverted it, so that it wouldn't crash.  It didn't look all that good though.