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Suzo- Happ PC Arcade Spinner? Plug and Play?
Derrick Renaud:
Some final thoughts/rant. The goal of all this is to get your arcade control to behave as close as possible to the original control. If you believe that lo-res is close enough, then I have a VHS player in the basement you can have as trade for your DVD player. ;D
Seriously, if you play and like Arkanoid (and other games), you can not use a low res spinner. There is no way you can master hitting the ball on the paddle exactly where you want. A lo-res spinner just will not move in single pixel increments across the screen unless you are turning it further then the original control. Thereby not getting the original experience of the game. Which really is the goal of this forum.
There is no way you can play Clowns and similar potentiometer based games with a low-res control for the same reason. Even Tempest is noticeably better with a hi-res spinner.
CD audio is sampled at 2x your hearing range for a reason. Your control should be either 100% the same resolution or at least 2x more then the original. 96 lo-res is not 2x the Tempest 72. Just like the emulated poll rate should be 2x the fastest game game poll rate. Which is why I recommend 500Hz.
Knob diameter also has an effect on the game experience, but you should not adjust the full turn count/MAME analog sensitivity to compensate. You really need a knob close to the diameter as the original game if it bothers you. I allways find myself grasping the knob to turn on slow parts of a game or games like Clowns/Arkanoid. Then I find myself rolling my thumb against the edge of the knob during faster gameplay. The only way you can have both is with the original full turn count and a similar sizes knob, or get used to play with the new knob.
Just a disclaimer... I have no interest in selling hi-res spinners. I am just stating my opinion based on my emulation experience.
Derrick Renaud:
--- Quote from: RandyT on February 28, 2009, 02:39:45 pm ---And one thing MAME lacks severely, is tweakability at the low end of the sensitivity scale. How about adding some tenths to the sensitivity settings? Not very useful at the +100 levels, but very useful below.
--- End quote ---
Thought about it but it would be a hard sell to the rest of the team. It would involve increasing the values from the current single byte. Then you would also need to modify the UI to add direct entry of the value. It would take forever to just use arrows. But really both should be added. The only way to sell the change to the team would be to also add the direct numeric entry.
I also think an XML based help system should be added to the UI. And an XML based control name override. But now we are really getting off topic.
These are all things some bored programmer could add to MAME. Anyone out there who does not really know anything about emulating a game, but knows how to program, up to the challenge?
Well, I'm off to look at the MAME input code. I imagine it's changed quite a bit since I last looked at it.
RandyT:
--- Quote from: Derrick Renaud on February 28, 2009, 03:02:14 pm ---Thought about it but it would be a hard sell to the rest of the team. It would involve increasing the values from the current single byte. Then you would also need to modify the UI to add direct entry of the value. It would take forever to just use arrows. But really both should be added. The only way to sell the change to the team would be to also add the direct numeric entry.
--- End quote ---
Ok, I actually typed this earlier and then erased it :).
How about an "Decrease" / "Increase" toggle, that when clicked, used the full 255 (8-bit) values for each? This would give a granularity of about .4% which is better than twice the current 1%.
No direct entry required, and it wouldn't take any longer to scroll through ;D
RandyT
AndyWarne:
--- Quote from: Derrick Renaud on February 28, 2009, 10:39:01 am ---
Andy, have you tried the mouserate program available here: http://mas0ne.servegame.com/mousepolling_rate_vista?
Can you test your interfaces on Vista64 SP1 with it and confirm you get faster then 125Hz?
I understand what you are saying that your devices are not locked, but that does not mean that you can use them at a faster rate then Microsoft has decided to allow you to.
I would not doubt that MS deliberately does this, so other vender's can sell their mice with drivers that magically allow higher poll rates when they pay for driver signing.
--- End quote ---
Derrick, there is no need to use this program with the full-speed devices because Windows does follow the poll rate set in the device descriptor.
I can observe this on a USB bus analyzer. Its clear to see that the device is being polled at 2ms intervals as the descriptor requests.
Low speed devices always get polled at 7ms intervals no matter what the descriptor says.
Focusing on the device within Windows (as opposed to Mame where, as you mention there are other issues), I can say that during product development I have found that its very easy to max-out the 127 increment on a low speed interface with a 1200 pulse spinner. I dont disagree with your calculations but in practice it easily happens with a fairly modest spin, the kind of spin which you might do when moving from one side of the screen to the other. I think the RPM attainable is probably higher than you might think.
Using an older low-res Slikstik spinner connected to a low-speed interface its impossible to reach the maximum but with a Spintrak its easy, hence the need for increasing the poll rate, packet length (ie with a full-speed interface) or at least preventing "roll over" to a negative value.
Derrick Renaud:
--- Quote from: AndyWarne on February 28, 2009, 05:58:05 pm ---Derrick, there is no need to use this program with the full-speed devices because Windows does follow the poll rate set in the device descriptor.
--- End quote ---
The program is just an easy test program. It does not change anything. It would just confirm that windows is not doing anything between the USB port and when DirectX/RAWmouse gets the data. IMO just because the analyzer says so, does not mean windows does not screw with the data and dole it out as it sees fit.
If you could just please run it and confirm that Vista64 really is outputting the 500Hz rate you have specified in the descriptor. Thanks. Other OSes may work fine, but Vista64 does what Vista64 wants to.
--- Quote from: AndyWarne on February 28, 2009, 05:58:05 pm ---Low speed devices always get polled at 7ms intervals no matter what the descriptor says.
--- End quote ---
So then the Opti-Pac is a low speed device which is then locked to 125Hz in Vista64?
If so, do you have plans on making a version that allows a 500Hz poll rate in Vista64?
Thanks,
D.
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