MAME arcade cabinet - few questions

[siemien]

Hello. I was thinking about building my own shmups cabinet dedicated to these type of games, but still I have some questions. Mainly about display and orientation of the screen. I own a 21,5" LCD with full hd resolution. Is it good to rotate it clockwise and all the games even the old ones like Xavious? But if I play R-Type the screen has to be horizontal not vertical. What is the golden center, the optimal situation?

[Ed Oscuro]

Monitors can have any of a variety of panel types. TN type panels are very common, cheap, but have traditionally had poor viewing angles - colors shift when you view them off-axis. Other LCD types exhibit similar effects, so you'll have to test this out.

The issue with rotating a monitor is why many people just buy a joystick, because it's much easier to use a rotating stand and a joystick than it is to try and rotate a monitor inside a cabinet. There are other choices of course - you could get a different monitor, or you could just run the games un-rotated, letting MAME choose the resolution, but of course this is going to make vertical games take up a very small part of the screen.

Personally I would say to hell with the cabinet, I'd just set up a table - one that's standing height if you like - and put a monitor on top, and a good quality joystick on top of the table as well. With a rotating monitor (or a rotating stand) you can easily choose what's appropriate for each game.

Really, with as cheap as real cabinets can be, I'd not bother with building one specially for a game. It's not too hard to get MAME running in a real and unaltered game cabinet, either.

[Xyga]

Don't bother building a cab with an lcd monitor, especially this small size, it's not worth it.

Just buy a rotation-capable monitor desk stand and you're set.

If your display has got VESA mounting holes on its back (4 screw holes) then it's relatively easy to find one.
For instance: http://www.amazon.co.uk/MMS01-Single-Mo ... B005ZBAF7C
Tilt, swivel, height adjustable are all musts of course.

[siemien]

But if I get a bigger like 27" lcd/led to put into my cab, than how can I eliminate the problem of rotation. Right now I'm playing Espgaluda with my screen having big black borders around the screen with game pushed to the center. But If I had this pivot stand I would clockwise it to have it full screen and get a lot bigger view. Am I right?

[Xyga]

Well with a 27" in a cab you would need a fully articulated arm attached inside, and make the cab's bezel (if you put one) attached to the display rather than the cab's frame.

EDIT: thinking about it even just a stand can be attached inside the cab, you just need to make up something for it to stand on.

And yes of course displaying vertical games as intended in 'tate' (portrait orientation) you'll play with a significantly larger picture.

[Ed Oscuro]

In MAME there's a hotkey to rotate the image, so you can do that and then rotate the screen.

You can find pretty affordable gaming monitors around 27" and $250 USD, albeit that's just for a 60Hz screen, no extras like adaptive sync (useful in MAME) or high refresh rate (generally useless on MAME).

And again - a cabinet is going to just complicate things, fully enclosing the monitor and system doesn't add any value here. No reason you can't build half a cabinet but you are going to have to have some way to rotate the monitor.

Of course this was a problem even with real arcade cabinets. Some have semi-easy rotation but you still have to fiddle with unlocking the rotation, and then you have to hope that your game and screen rotate in the *right* direction - MAME makes this all trivial.

[lettuce]

Ive been toying with the idea of building a CAB and putting a something like a 4K 48" LCD TV in it and having it vertically orientated, so 4:3 landscape games will still have the display size of a 27" screen, whilst still enjoying vertical games.

I was also thinking that i could use the top of the screen as a marquee, so it changes to what ever game im playing. The reason for using a 4K screen, is so i can get the full benefits of using shaders to replicate a CRT screen, but if your not interested in shaders then a 1080p screen will be fine

[Xyga]

But your vertical games will look gigantic !

I'd rather get this: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1889869
fast 4K IPS, can easily rotate and sports g-sync.
I don't think it costs so much more than a decent (though still quite inferior) 48" TV.

32" is a good size for a cab if it can fit, since the 4:3 area it produces is barely any smaller than a 29" crt's actual 27" picture area.

[gray117]

It came up in another thread;
http://www.eizoglobal.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/

Though it's like £700 was mildly pondering if something like this would ultimately be the handiest means to replace dead crts in a cab. Eitherway, setup mame right and never rotate anything ever again... just a shame it's not a little bigger.

... but back in practical land, yeah a 32inch vewlix type thing is probably the most practical cab these days ...

[lettuce]

But your vertical games will look gigantic !

I'd rather get this: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1889869
fast 4K IPS, can easily rotate and sports g-sync.
I don't think it costs so much more than a decent (though still quite inferior) 48" TV.

32" is a good size for a cab if it can fit, since the 4:3 area it produces is barely any smaller than a 29" crt's actual 27" picture area.

Shouldnt do, as the vertical height (portrait) will only be the same size as the horizontal width when the monitor was in landscape mode, just like a normal 4:3 CRT when positioned vertical, plus you can always 'integra' scale it down. I think at 27" widescreen display when in portrait mode would give you a 15" screen size for horizontal games

Plus over the last week there has been some really good deal of 4K sets from Samsung for like £380

[Xyga]

I guarantee if you don't rescale down, your vertical games will not remain the same size, they'll really be huge !
Unless you're talking about RA that, IIRC, doesn't resize to fit the H resolution and just blindly rotates ?

If not, again you'll have to rescale down (using integer values yes of course, it's better) to bring those to more realistic sizes, but personally I'd rather waste much less display real estate with a smaller screen, and integer-scale up even at the cost of losing a few lines out of screen limits sometimes.

Frankly I think your idea isn't good, plus at 48" even if it's 4K at an arcade-sitting distance you'll lose in perception of finesse and response (with a display that's already underperfoming, those Samsung use PWM by the way, you sure you want to be this close to that?).
You'd have to be allergic to the idea of physically rotating a display to do what you're thinking about.
That ACER is damn expensive but I'd even go for a smaller 27" in 1440 lines instead of a 48" TV, really, or even a 27" 1080 as you mentioned, if advanced shaders didn't matter.

Now we have completely hijacked siemien's thread but it's still on-topic, somehow.

[lettuce]

I guarantee if you don't rescale down, your vertical games will not remain the same size, they'll really be huge !
Unless you're talking about RA that, IIRC, doesn't resize to fit the H resolution and just blindly rotates ?

If not, again you'll have to rescale down (using integer values yes of course, it's better) to bring those to more realistic sizes, but personally I'd rather waste much less display real estate with a smaller screen, and integer-scale up even at the cost of losing a few lines out of screen limits sometimes.

Frankly I think your idea isn't good, plus at 48" even if it's 4K at an arcade-sitting distance you'll lose in perception of finesse and response (with a display that's already underperfoming, those Samsung use PWM by the way, you sure you want to be this close to that?).
You'd have to be allergic to the idea of physically rotating a display to do what you're thinking about.
That ACER is damn expensive but I'd even go for a smaller 27" in 1440 lines instead of a 48" TV, really, or even a 27" 1080 as you mentioned, if advanced shaders didn't matter.

Now we have completely hijacked siemien's thread but it's still on-topic, somehow.

Yeah im not sure how MAME treats portrait mode, it does seems to stretch the image to fill the screen, which is wrong and in this case yes the vertical games would look massive, but if scale correctly so the aspect ratio is correct vertical games should only take about 75% of the screen length, then id use the other 25% for displaying the marquee.

[Xyga]

Alternatively you could use GroovyMAME's 'cleanstretch' feature, it forces integer only if the resulting borders aren't more than 10% or 15% of it (Calamity has plans to make that configurable by the way).
But of course GM doesn't have RA's great shaders system...

[Xyga]

Since we've talked about it I thought relevant to post this French forums link showing a guy who's doing the 27" + arm + rotation + bezel thing on an Atomiswave SD: http://www.neo-arcadia.com/forum/viewto ... 8&start=25
(scroll down for more recent develompent pics)

[lettuce]

Since we've talked about it I thought relevant to post this French forums link showing a guy who's doing the 27" + arm + rotation + bezel thing on an Atomiswave SD: http://www.neo-arcadia.com/forum/viewto ... 8&start=25
(scroll down for more recent develompent pics)

Im guessing 27" was the largest size he could fit in the Atomiswave cab?, did he list in that thread what he had to change the horizontal and vertical sizes to to get the correct aspect ratio?.

The whole thing of having to rotate the screen (or though is massively easier than it would be with a CRT) and then placing in the 'bezel' either side would really piss me off, thats why im think of just permanently having the screen vertical all the time, if done correctly you should still get more or less the same screen sizes for vertical and horizontal games without the need to ever rotate....just would need a larger size than 27" to get a 27" 4:3 display size

[Xyga]

I think some cabinets like his can fit a 30" 16:10 but I haven't seen it done, otherwise yes 27" is the maximum 16:9 size for most japanese candy cabs.

Maybe a 32" 16:9 would fit vertically with some heavy modifications inside...not worth the pain I believe, with a 32" it's better to do it the 'HD cab' style although maybe with a height and tilt adjustment feature.
Actually if you keep the HD cab style in mind following your idea the exact ideal would be a 44" 16:9.
43" is more common but there aren't any really good models in that size anyway.

Frankly I don't think it's a problem to rotate the screen physically unless you switch games every 30 minutes or something.

PS: he didn't say anything about what he used for scaling here, it looks like a simple MAME with integer forced by whatever means (cleanstretch, or custom H & V stretch via the sliders menu) plus a .png overlay.

[lettuce]

I think some cabinets like his can fit a 30" 16:10 but I haven't seen it done, otherwise yes 27" is the maximum 16:9 size for most japanese candy cabs.

Maybe a 32" 16:9 would fit vertically with some heavy modifications inside...not worth the pain I believe, with a 32" it's better to do it the 'HD cab' style although maybe with a height and tilt adjustment feature.
Actually if you keep the HD cab style in mind following your idea the exact ideal would be a 44" 16:9.
43" is more common but there aren't any really good models in that size anyway.

Frankly I don't think it's a problem to rotate the screen physically unless you switch games every 30 minutes or something.

PS: he didn't say anything about what he used for scaling here, it looks like a simple MAME with integer forced by whatever means (cleanstretch, or custom H & V stretch via the sliders menu) plus a .png overlay.

Retroarch seem to do a better job at getting the correct aspect ratio for vertical games, only issue is when you rotate the screen the shader your using doesnt rotate with the screen, so you have horizontal scanlines on a vertical game!

[Xyga]

Yes it's very easy to integer-stretch with RA but rotation is unfortunately a real pain (one of the main reasons I've stopped using it)

I think I've mentioned that already but GroovyMAME will most probably have improved and more friendly integer-scaling options in the future, when Calamity has time to work on it I guess.
In the end it will be much more convenient since GM is heavily configurable and stores settings for each individual game.

That plus the arrival of MEWUI as the default UI, and ASIO, will greatly improve GM's useability with LCD's and such.
Also BGFX when it's implemented could be the definitive blow against RA (well at least for arcade games since it's MAME's focus)
Plus unlike RA, GM works fine with G-Sync for those who own compatible hardware.

Okay I should stop there.

[lettuce]

Yes it's very easy to integer-stretch with RA but rotation is unfortunately a real pain (one of the main reasons I've stopped using it)

I think I've mentioned that already but GroovyMAME will most probably have improved and more friendly integer-scaling options in the future, when Calamity has time to work on it I guess.
In the end it will be much more convenient since GM is heavily configurable and stores settings for each individual game.

That plus the arrival of MEWUI as the default UI, and ASIO, will greatly improve GM's useability with LCD's and such.
Also BGFX when it's implemented could be the definitive blow against RA (well at least for arcade games since it's MAME's focus)
Plus unlike RA, GM works fine with G-Sync for those who own compatible hardware.

Okay I should stop there.

Yeah RA is easy enough to rotate the screen just that shaders dont rotate with it which is a massive blow, as i really like CRT-EasyMode-Halation's shader, just cant get MAME (using HLSL) to look anywhere near as pleasing anymore.

BTW, RA does appear to work with G-Sync monitors, i have the ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q monitor and have tested Mortal Kombat's title screen and the avatars scroll smoothly

[Xyga]

Ah it works in the end ? Good, there's a number of desperate comments here and there of people struggling with RA+Gsync. ^^

Regarding shaders I'm not a huge fan of EasyMode, much prefer Royale but as I've stated in another thread the more detailed those shaders, the better the monitor needs to perform. Since I don't have something as fancy as a PG279Q yet, I've fallen back to creating my own .png overlays.
For use with 'normal' LCDs that smear and blur a bit too much for that job it's still the best choice IMHO.
While minding my TV's performance and resolution I integer-stretch manually in GM and slap my custom-made scanlines+mask mashups over.
Best compromise for me until I get the 'ideal' (lol) flat panel display.
Only have to do it once per source-resolution but it's a chore really, maybe I'll post all the correct H & V values I find once I'm mostly done (only for a 1080 display though, doing it for more popular screen resoltutions would take ages).