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Suzo- Happ PC Arcade Spinner? Plug and Play?
Bender:
--- Quote from: Derrick Renaud on February 27, 2009, 09:16:09 pm ---One easy comparison of the whole high vs. low poll/resolution rate is this:
Take a low res picture and blow it up to a larger size. It just gets blocky an looks horrible. Same thing happens in MAME to the player movement. It does not move smooth.
Take a high resolution picture and shrink it down to a smaller size. It still looks good. Just like when you scale a Hi-Res spinner down with a lower MAME analog sensitivity. The player movement is smooth.
If you have a low amount of data, you can not magically make more out of it, but you can reduce a lot of data down.
Also don't confuse poll rate and hi-res spinners. They are 2 different issues. You do not need a high poll rate to use a Hi-res spinner. Just adjust MAME's analog sensitivity. It will work fine in arcade games that do not have a poll rate higher then your current spinner poll rate.
The poll rate comes into play because some arcade games poll at a higher rate then windows locked at 125Hz supplies data. So windows is not able to supply the data when the emulated game needs it. Then supplies the accumulated missed amount when the game and windows sync up.
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They are two different things but integrally related when the spinner is such a hi resolution it polls at a rate higher than MOST Mame games it effectively makes it the same issue
Arkinoid is only 224 pixles wide it doesn't take much resolution to move across that screen smoothly
you've got a billboard's resolution for a snapshot space, overkill
RandyT:
--- Quote from: Bender on February 27, 2009, 10:57:28 pm ---Arkinoid is only 224 pixles wide it doesn't take much resolution to move across that screen smoothly
you've got a billboard's resolution for a snapshot space, overkill
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I'm just going to be blunt here, because it's obvious that you aren't getting it. It is not in any way overkill. You simply don't understand how things work and are jumping to conclusions about things for which data is available (in the wiki and in these forums), but have apparently not bothered to research. I will try to help you understand regardless of this, however, in the hopes that this incorrect notion does not once again take root in the minds of uninitiated onlookers.
Arkanoid is indeed only 224 pixels wide, which ends up giving you roughly 200 possible positions on the screen (there are a few less, but this number is easy to deal with). So when divided by 4 (the number of positions the firmware can decode from each spoke on a wheel) it gives you a requirement of 50 "spokes" on the encoder wheel. Follow so far?
So if you only need 50 spokes, the other 250 on the TT2 encoder wheel are just overkill that does nothing for gameplay, right? WRONG! ;D
For you to be able to position the paddle at each of those 200 possible positions, you would need to turn the knob on your old spinner an entire revolution. Now if we look at how far one turned the knob in the original game, you can see that turning the knob 120 degrees gets from position 0 to position 200. But with your old spinner, you need to turn it 360 degrees. So you have only one choice with the old spinner and that is to increase the sensitivity (multiplier) in MAME by 300%. But there's two problems with that. The first is that doing so would require you to skip two possible positions for every one you can use, thus giving you choppy movement and poor control. The second is that MAME only goes to 255%, so you can't even get where you want to be, even if poor control and choppy movement didn't bother you (and it definitely does bother anyone who plays the game with any hopes to do well.)
So what is the answer? I'm sure you guessed it by now......more resolution! To get an even close approximation, you need about 3x the number of "spokes" present on your old spinner. So why is there more than double that on the TT2 / High-Low? Because Arkanoid isn't the most demanding title in this regard. Revenge of DOH takes the requirements of Arkanoid and doubles them.
Now lets consider the effect a larger than original knob has on the "feel" of the game. Some folks like those big ol' spinner knobs that look good, but affect gameplay negatively. The larger the diameter of the knob, the more surface that must pass through your fingers when turning it. Simple geometry. So in order to get that level of control present in the original game, you need to boost the sensitivity in MAME. And you NEVER want to go higher than 100%, because you start to skip positions. So the answer is to have more resolution available than required even by the original.
After reading the last paragraph, and considering what effect a larger knob has on gameplay, think about the effect a 6 or 7 inch diameter wheel will have. This is why the wheels are actually useful on a TT2 / High Low as opposed to the old spinner types. Arcade optical wheel controls used geared spinners to get that high resolution, and without it, you would feel like you were turning in mud due to the slow reaction times, or you would have poor steering control because you aren't able to hit every possible direction (again, caused by cranking the sensitivity up to over 100%.)
So that's it. I've done my best and I hope it helps you appreciate the reason why it's there and lets you understand how to use it to your advantage. If not, well....I tried :)
RandyT
TPB:
--- Quote from: RandyT on February 27, 2009, 07:38:19 pm ---
Bender, You have been wrestling with your operating system, not the High-Low.
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Bender has been wrestling with the TT-HL's incompatibility with his 64 bit OS.
Due to its older USB 1.1 interface, the TT-HL suffers from back-spin when used with his 64 bit OS. Only a heap a fiddling around and applying an OS patch remedied the problem.
It appears the best spinner that's currently available for a 64 bit OS is the Ultimarc SpinTrak. It offers the same high resolution and compact size of the TT2 and TT-HL, but with the added benefit of faster USB 2.0 technology that works "out of the box" without any back-spin problems, and with no need to apply OS patches.
That's the impression I get from Bender's experience (and he must know his stuff - he once modded a U360 stick to be top-fire).
No doubt we'll see USB 2.0 versions of the TT2 and TT-HL in the future.
RandyT:
--- Quote from: TPB on February 28, 2009, 02:36:19 am ---Bender has been wrestling with the TT-HL's incompatibility with his 64 bit OS.
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It works fine, so apparently it's not incompatible. And the solution is not an "OS patch". It's just a piece of software that the crazy 64-bit MS OS makes you jump through a few more hoops in order to use. Lot of folks on the web have been using it and do so without crippling their systems. Stuff happens, but not all of the time, and not to everyone.
--- Quote ---No doubt we'll see USB 2.0 versions of the TT2 and TT-HL in the future.
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Unlikely. As I have already stated in a different thread, I won't sacrifice compatibility with the huge number of USB 1.1 systems out there in order to accommodate the relatively microscopic number of 64 bit users in this market, especially when a widely used software solution exists which can actually outperform the "out of the box 2.0 only" approach.
RandyT
AndyWarne:
--- Quote from: RandyT on February 28, 2009, 02:50:47 am ---
Unlikely. As I have already stated in a different thread, I won't sacrifice compatibility with the huge number of USB 1.1 systems out there in order to accommodate the relatively microscopic number of 64 bit users in this market, especially when a widely used software solution exists which can actually outperform the "out of the box 2.0 only" approach.
RandyT
--- End quote ---
You are getting confused betwen USB 1.1, USB 2.0 and low speed USB vs full speed USB.
A device does not need to be USB 2.0 to overcome the in-built Windows poll rate. It needs to be full-speed USB rather then low-speed USB.
Full speed USB devices work perfectly well with USB 1.1. There is no compatibility issue at all.
Using a low-speed USB device with an 8-bit packet gives only 128 maximum pulses every packet. This is simply not enough with a 1200 pulse spinner with the fixed poll rate of Windows, so increasing the poll rate and/or packet size is mandatory to get the full movement speed of the device.
The interface counts the pulses from the spinner and the counter is reset every time the host polls the device. If the host is polling too slow, the counter will reach its limit if the spinner is being turned fast. What happens then depends on the logic in the interface. If its properly designed it will stay at its maximum until cleared by a poll, and not go any further. If not properly designed, it might overflow and wrap around to a negative value, thus causing backspin.
This is never an issue with full-speed USB as we can have a 16 bit packet which will never max out, even with the standard poll rate. But the icing on the cake is we can increase the poll rate in the device as well without any Windows tweaks.
It is correct that the high resolution of the spinner brings benefits which is why we went with 1000 pulses on the original SpinTrak, the first high-res spinner on the market, then 1200 on the current model. The full benefit is reached with a full-speed USB interface, but actually even with the standard Windows poll rate and a low-speed interface there are still benefits but in this case its essential that the interface has logic to prevent backspin, because the max speed will often be reached.