Screen Tips

[Reg]

Morning All,

So this thread is asking other cabinet designers for screen tips and what they do to get the best results from the layouts that use.

I know that every system is different in terms of screens etc - but the question here - is how can we bring the best out of our cabinets and more important share the info.

The front end I use is mGalaxy for this - this is simply because I migrated it from the old cabinet.

Today began the rebuilding of all the layouts I had done before and adding some new - no specific order to why I have done what, but a long process.

Two things I am doing is loading the new iPac config and setting hoppers etc as this is different from the first cabinet.  The second thing I am doing is cropping the layouts by dragging the borders in edit mode to give maximum screen - take for example the demo of it working compared to the new update side by side - this gives me a much larger footprint of what I can see and touch.

Excuse the poor quality as the left picture was a screen grab from a video.

You can see a much larger footprint with the odd bonus effects of some really nice reflections on the bezel at the bottom of the lit buttons from the screen.  From the Hi button and the Cancel button.

I also play the screen at full screen stretch - there is a toggle on the buttons of Normal / Maximized but I choose to load up to the maximum resolution.

I have always felt that the digital experience of some conversions in cabinets in pubs of traditional physical machines looks a little different and happy to go with the stretching myself and due to what I feel from the digital conversions in the wild, it does not seem too off.  That being said I can switch back if needed.

Here is a selection of the seven machines so far in the cabinet cropped to the new format.  Some work better then others where there is a black cabinet or the layout has been done purely in portrait mode - but zero complaints for me.

Lots more rebuild of layouts for the cabinet - but all in all, delighted with where we are - just want to learn from others if there is other tricks that I could do to make the experience even better.

Sorry to bore you all with this - but this new machine has been two years in the making as the old one was pretty bust and broken ( well it absolutely is now as it was a donar for a chuck of internal parts ) and is now at the local tip.  So that cabinet is dead.  Before people get too upset - it had a major problem that I could never resolve.

I had plexiglass sitting ontop of the screen and bezel to stop touch the screen and also mount buttons around the edge.  It was a dust collector and you had to dismantle the entire front of the screen from inside the cabinet to then go around the front and remove the bezel due to some internal side panel plates that came in the Vogue cabinet.  This cabinet came customised for an MPU4 game and unlike say Indiana Jones where you had a top glass and bottom glass, this was one straight piece of glass.  Ideal for building the cabinet but not ideal for fixing and maintance due to custom side rails for the single glass that were connected inside the cabinet.  It also had bad hopper manager losing coins internally.

This machine has great routing and the only internal change was the hopper from the original and parts from the original cab ( ipacs / pacdrives / plus a few misc bits ) made a great rebuild.

Anyway - I have gone on enough - here are the modified screens.

As I have said - if any other cabinet owners have tips or tricks, then please post away for a better viewing experience of what thay personally do.  Looking to learn from others here.

 

 

[Amusements]

Interesting question!

For me, the screen set up is what makes the player experience more authentic.

My current set up is a 43" 4K screen in portrait mode, attached to this stand, with my physical butons just above the bottom of the screen. (In the future I plan on using my bigger 4K screen, which should equal a more realistic cabinet width + my other screen does a proper job of upscaling)

Setting up each layout, requires chopping off any side art work & making the backgrounds black.
I then add blank space to the top of each layout to force it to the bottom of my screen.
 

For layouts that exceed 2880 in height, I have to set the layout to an editable size, set the width I want, then drag the top of the layout down towards the buttons - only then, can you exceed the 2880 height restriction - by draging the top up past 2880 to the top of the layout and add blank space.

EG:

I forgot to add, I have 3 small buttons on the back of my button box for ESC, F3, F6, and a 2.4g mouse pen. Also...Being able to drag the layout past 2880, we can have some 8K layouts in the future:)

 

Edited September 25, 2021 by Amusements

[No1Stoney]

I think you are doing all you can to get the most out of the screen space. As @Amusementshas already mentioned, if you feel the machine looks too stretched, all a space to the top of the layout which will force it further down the screen.