Front End that scales well to 15khz?

[chris2922]

Hi everyone, I'm building the PC I'm going to use in my Jamma cabinet.  I'm using groovymame with the CRT-Emudriver package on Windows XP 64.

It's time to pick a Front End and I've been reading about the various options. I'd just like to ask if anyone has good experience of using a Front End on a 15khz monitor.

Obviously they're low res so a big widescreen display with lots of little icons won't translate well.

I'm looking at AttractMode at the moment and will give that a go first.  I'd really appreciate some of you adding your own experiences below. You will all know things I don't I'm sure!

[markc74]

Your frontend will *usually* run in interlace mode on 15hz ie 640x480. Then the text should still be readable.

Saying that - if your set on running in progressive/no flicker mode then mala or mamewah from my experience will run at either low resolution progressive mode (ie 320x240/640x288 or similar) if you have your graphics driver set up correctly.

Most front ends will usually run fine basically.

[twistedsymphony]

I'm using Hyperspin on my 15K cab and it looks fine, all the text on that FE is huge and the game list uses large title images instead of text so it works well with a low-resolution front end.

I'd say it works even better with the 15K monitor than it does with my Wide-screen LCD cab because it's designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio and not 16:9

[Jimbo]

I'm using Hyperspin on my 15K cab and it looks fine, all the text on that FE is huge and the game list uses large title images instead of text so it works well with a low-resolution front end.

I'd say it works even better with the 15K monitor than it does with my Wide-screen LCD cab because it's designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio and not 16:9

What resolution are you running it at?  640x480 interlaced?  Don't suppose you have a video of it do you, or some pics?  I'm curious to see if HS is for me too (hantarex polo).  Cheers.

[twistedsymphony]

What resolution are you running it at?  640x480 interlaced?  Don't suppose you have a video of it do you, or some pics?  I'm curious to see if HS is for me too (hantarex polo).  Cheers.

Yeah the front end is running at 640x480 interlaced

I don't really have any pics but I don't know how much use they'd be. I have it setup in a Fix it Felix cab with a Sanyo 20EZ... it's actually not the best quality picture right now as the monitor is in need of a cap-kit. I'm also no-longer running the default theme because it was squished on a vertical monitor so I build my own vertical theme for it that just uses the "wheel" images with the game video running in the background.

This is the only pic I have of the monitor running the original front end:


You can see how the theme looks squished and that's why I switched to my own custom theme... but even with the shot from so far away, and the monitor in-need of a rebuild the text is still clearly legible.

The setup that's in my LCD cab was running on a horizontal 25" WG K7000 for a while before I switched cabs but HS looked great on that machine before the move too.

[Jimbo]

Great - thanks very much for your reply - I'll look into it more then .   Nice cab btw 

[twistedsymphony]

Thanks. Once I get around to doing the cap kit I'll probably shoot a quick video of the UI.

I see a lot of people hate on HyperSpin and it can be overwhelming when you first start using it but I've found that if you disable a lot of the stupid flashy bits that clutter up the UI then you end up with something that looks really slick and professional looking as opposed to the utilitarian text list with a video window that you get with most other UIs.

[chris2922]

Is anyone running a front end on a 15khz monitor with a progressive image rather than interlaced? Say 320x240p as an example?

Interlaced images don't look great on my Hantarex Polo 20".  There is a fair amount of wobble and flicker.  The image is rock solid on the lower progressive resolutions so I'd prefer to use those.

Anybody running a progressive 15khz front end?

[twistedsymphony]

I'm pretty sure you could run HyperSpin at 320x240p (IIRC it's flash based so it scale and stretches or shrinks to whatever size you want) but I have no experience with that first hand.

I tried to run 240p briefly on my Fix it Felix setup before I had a front end but I had problems with Windows running at such a low resolution and windows games (like Ikaruga) refusing to run that low as well.