Yes I did, but I didn't get a chance to get to close to it or to play it at expo. The few times that I was around when it was up and running there were people playing/checking it out. One thing about incorrect black level is that it will show up in pictures/videos. I will take some time to checkout what you have online and post my opinions. Glad to hear that you plan on solving this issue one way or another.
Also, the reason you listed below that you like the larger monitor shows that even your original monitor had an incorrect black level. If the monitor is properly adjusted you won't see the edge of the screen. The monitor is not there to produce a 4:3 complete image. Its there to show the individual graphic items and nothing else. The only reason you should ever notice the edge of the screen is if graphics are being drawn all the way to the edge of the screen (almost all of star wars for instance).
One of the reasons you most likely didn't get any complaints (and the reason some seem so quick to jump to LCD) is that most people don't know how to adjust colors on a monitor to begin with. They just crank up the brightness/contrast to be as bright as possible (just like most tvs are misadjusted in the stores to show an incorrect over bright image). You will get a blank stare from most when you talk about Gamma, oversaturation, black level, etc..... As far as not getting any complaints and people are happy with the lcd, you really didn't have a setup to compare what people were actually looking at. If you know what you are looking for (or have a side to side comparison). You really start to see the differences. Also correct black level helps with the pinball part of the game, not the 'holo' part. (explanation below)
It doesn't help that many pin2000's (including the RFM at expo) have bad monitors or monitors that need rebuilt/adjusted. If you really want to do some comparisons, try using one of the video amplifiers listed in clay's 2000 repair guide(it was me that submitted the info to begin with). The difference is stunning to say the least.
I hope you don't need to go the converter route. Problem is with that is you are adding parts/cost to the process that really don't need to be there. You need to output the correct signal as opposed to outputing the incorrect signal and then fixing it with an 'oops' pcb. Finding the right video card for this project is the key.
Now to babble on a bit here is the reason for why I think 'black level' is an issue:
Normally setting black level on a tv set or monitor is purely personal taste. Some people will sacrifice good black level for a better brightness and saturation, while others want the absolute most brightness range (true black-pure white) possible and will fiddle with controls forever to achieve it.
Now with pinball 2000 (or any video game that uses a reflected mirror such as omega race and space invaders to name a few) black level becomes extra important. The reason is you are not trying to reflect the entire image that is being created by the tube or screen. You only want to reflect the particular graphics being rendered. The reason for this is you are looking through the image to see the rest of the playfield. When the black level is wrong, instead of seeing just the 'individual holograms' you instead seeing a 'transparent sheet of paper of holograms'. You don't see 'holograms' anymore, you see a reflected TV screen. Now it is also important to have nice bright graphics to begin with, it takes both to achieve the trick. You need a picture with very high contrast (black background with vivid foreground). This is also most likely why you didn't get any complaints when you have shown your current lcd rig. The fact you are outputing a non-interlaced signal at a higher resolution, you are helping the other side of the coin (brighter, more detailed graphics). This makes things easier to see and punches up the explosions and animations. This definitely makes the foreground better. The problem is you are trying to achieve more than this. You are trying to create a hologram by showing some of the screen (achieved by the playfield glass) and the back of the pinball machine (to create the real 3d stage that the 'hologram actors' perform on). Here are two other examples of this:
1) 1979 Midway Space Invaders. It uses a half silvered mirror to reflect the game on a 'lunar moon' background. They also use a white black light bulb to help achieve the effect.
2) Atari Battlezone. It uses a half silvered mirror to reflect the vector graphics (vector monitors have perfect black level because of the design as opposed to normal raster monitors) onto a 'control panel' background. Not only does it combine the images, but ends up making the cabinet look extra deep.
Ok back to the explanation:
Another issue with pinball 2000 is that output levels of the standard pin2000 computer are actually low compared to what the monitor needs to drive it. This causes a 'low contrast' condition. This can be fixed by a $15 video amplifier and is described a little more in Clays pinball repair guide. Also many pinball 2000 machines have working, but dim monitors due to dried out capacitors and poor quality picture tubes in some of the games. How does the average person fix the above problem, they just crank up the brightness and contrast controls to the max and figure if they can see the image it must be right. Most don't realize what they missing because they don't know what they are looking at. The reason that I do is that I have been repairing and adjusting monitors/tvs for about 20 years now. I can walk by a row of classic games at this point and notice right away purity, convergence, geometry, mis-adjusted color guns/bias. Also being a classic game collector has allowed me to goof with a decent number of games that use half silvered mirrors and use the same 'trick' as pinball 2000.
George Gomez and Pat Lawlor specifically designed their game to use this type of 'trick'. George and Pat wanted a game with 'holographic' characters. Star Wars was designed with something else in mind. Its designers went with a complete image with backgrounds. With this game, black level is not nearly as important. If you watch the movie tilt, it even explains how George was disappointed with how the star wars images are displayed (It may be in the extras, I don't remember at this point).
Well I think that is more than enough about black levels!
Later,
Mickey
Chuck wrote:A lot of good questions/comments and a few misconceptions.
Mickster:
LCD black level - Did you see my machine running with the LCD? I just have to ask because no one complained about black level. There is a minimal "glow" from the backlighting of the LCD and *if* it bothered you it would be easy to reduce through a few methods. As the hologram effects goes everyone said the lcd produces a better effect.
Computer Monitor:
If you used a flatscreen or trinitron monitor this would be somewhat of an issue. Most non-flatscreen monitors would work great. The trinitron might work I've just never tried one.
Scan converter:
We tried this route and weren't happy because of the image quality issue. Ours would be a specific purpose converter and as such we wouldn't suffer from most of the issues that the other do.
I disagree that not solving this problem in the computer will "kill sales." Not solving the problem would cause us to lose sales but we are solving the issue.
As far as integrated vga cards go, there is a way to drive a cga monitor through software. Steve said I couldn't do it and I took the challenge and made it work (mostly.)
The problem is using *any* vga card to drive a cga arcade monitor is a hack. The hack is somewhat easy to do on ATI cards. It's a complete PITA on Nvidia cards. It also doesn't work well with all pb2k monitors. We all spent about two months trying to make this work and decided it was not a good solution.
Please be blunt
I appreciate people getting right to the point.
Subarubrat:
We have also tried the ultimarc card. As a matter of fact two Alpha testers are using them right now. I also have one. The problem is that the card only supports 16bit color. Xwindows grabs certain colors for effects and it screws up some of the color in the game. We can run Nucore from a terminal without xwindows but there are other issues that come up. We *may* be able to solve these issues (we have to a certain extent.) Right now I'm not comfortable suggesting the card.
LCD Wide Screen Format:
I was bummed that I couldn't get 4:3 lcd's anymore. I ended up buying a dell 22" widescreen thinking there might be an issue. I was pleasantly suprised at the effect a widescreen had. Since the widescreen is wide you don't really see the edges of the monitor on the glass like you do with the original monitor. This is really very cool IMO. The character positioning is not perfect. I compensated for this by adjusting the pixel clock on the monitor. Again, this is something you have to see and decide for yourself. My experience is that everyone was blown away with my 22" lcd
Jazzman:
Modifying the cabinet:
This is a misconception that just about everyone has. When I installed my LCD I didn't want to modify the cabinet at all and I didn't. One of our alpha testers even machined special mounting brackets for this purpose. All you have to do is screw it on. One could argue that adding 4-8 screws is modifying the cabinet. If you removed the lcd you could re-install the original monitor with no problems.