Video Out When Closed?

[chad78]

First of all, mods and admins - I'm not sure if this forum (General talk Pandora) or the Pandora Dev forum is the best place for this thread. Please move it if needed. Thank you!

There was a very lively - albeit brutally murdered and cremated - discussion a few weeks ago about the possibility of a Pandora-Powered [TM] Arcade cabinet. And there have been several discussions that involved the idea of a docking station of some kind or another. This leads me to a couple of questions that would kind of need to be answered before either idea could be carried out.

1. Can the Pandora function closed? (Assuming the video out and usb controls of some kind are in place)
2. Is the video out mirroring only, or can the screen be expanded over a TV and the LCD?

I guess these questions can only really be answered by the people building the Pandora and those select few Devs who have a Mk0 - hence my uncertainty concerning the proper location for the question.

Thanks in advance for your answers!

 

[Tom`]

I'm not one of the developers, of course, so I may be wrong about this, but this is how I understood it to be.

Can the Pandora function closed? (Assuming the video out and usb controls of some kind are in place)

Yes - remember the "lid close" event can be mapped to any function you want - so it could simply be ignored.

Is the video out mirroring only, or can the screen be expanded over a TV and the LCD?

It's programmable, but of course you're limited by the performance of the CPU and GPU - so if you wanted to render two different things at once, you'd take a big speed hit (like on the DS, which is why effectively only one screen can do 3D at a time).

 

[trooper]

(like on the DS, which is why effectively only one screen can do 3D at a time).

As far as i understand it, The DS can render 3D to both screens, But not at full speed, So it has to half the frame rate on each screen to achieve it.

I`m sure that`s what i heard a dev say, But i`m NOT a dev, So i could be talking complete B*ll*cks, But i`m pretty sure i`m not. :rolleyes:

Sorry, Back on topic.

Trooper

 

[Tom`]

As far as i understand it, The DS can render 3D to both screens, But not at full speed, So it has to half the frame rate on each screen to achieve it.

I`m sure that`s what i heard a dev say, But i`m NOT a dev, So i could be talking complete B*ll*cks, But i`m pretty sure i`m not. :rolleyes:

Sorry, Back on topic.

Trooper

No, that's true - that's what I was saying. You lose half of your rendering capacity if you do it that way, so most games don't do it (but I don't own a DS, nor have I ever programmed for it, so I could be wrong...)

 

[nexferret]

The DS only achieves dual 3D by swapping the screens every frame, and displaying a capture of last frame's 3D on the other screen as a 2D background.

Net result:
Half framerate
49kb of RAM gone
One VRAM bank gone
One hell of a headache of coding
Potential for glitches (slowdown = flicker?)

 

[chad78]

Thanks for the answers. That's great news!

 

[sm1988]

Yeah chad the simpsons cabinet was brutally murdered and creamated but it is in a better place now where the laundramats and chuck e cheeses are made of gold

 

[AireTamStorm]

It's programmable, but of course you're limited by the performance of the CPU and GPU - so if you wanted to render two different things at once, you'd take a big speed hit (like on the DS, which is why effectively only one screen can do 3D at a time).

The DS only had one weak 3D GPU, the GPU in the Pandora is much more powerful. It should be able to do 3D on two displays at once relatively easily.

As you said the lid is merely an event in the eyes of the OS, so you could potentially map that to anything you'd like.

 

[Orkie]

The DS only had one weak 3D GPU

The DS is still a current machine you know .

 

[Karel Jansens]

The DS only had one weak 3D GPU

The DS is still a current machine you know .

Hah! Not for long now... B)

 

[chad78]

Not to derail the DS conversation - but I just want to see if I understand it in relation to the Pandora.

You're saying that since the DS is far less powerful than the Pandora - and it can do two screen - the Pandora should be able to as well - *however* the DS can *not* actually do 3D graphics on both screens simultaneously - it has to do tricks like switching back and forth between the two - cutting the true frame rate in half.

Right so far?

And this was in response to the mirroring versus expanded screen question I asked.

In my thinking, I wasn't so much worried about playing 2 3D games at once on the Pandora. (I'm not sure if I could play 2 games at once, really. I'm not that talented.) And I doubt that any games that are tailor made for the Pandora would ever require a second monitor or TV to be plugged in to the Pandora in order to play. In fact, DS games (and some Game & Watch games) are really the only games I can think of that would ever require 2 screens - and with the Pandora's resolution - both DS screens could be fit on the Pandora's one screen - if an emulator was ever made for it. (Although having the option to use a TV as the top screen of the DS might make things interesting.)

I was really not thinking of games at all when I asked - I was thinking of multitasking. Like having a text document opened on the Pandora screen - and a web browser opened on the TV, something like that. Things that really wouldn't require 3D effects at all. I just like having as much "real estate" as possible - and while 800 x 480 is huge for a handheld - it's not much for a laptop or desktop. Having 2 screens would be nice.

So I guess the follow up questions are these:

1. If the Pandora is plugged up to a TV - can I still use it as a controller?
2. If Question 1 is yes - can I still use it as a controller and have a second (3rd/4th) USB gamepad / BlueTooth WiiMote attached for multiplayers (think TMNT the Arcade Game)?
3. If either of the above is yes - could I turn the screen off (to save power, heat, and distraction while playing) on the Pandora?
4. Or have it display the Combo moves or something? (That would be done through multitasking, of course, having a JPG or PDF or Text file open on the Pandora while the emu / game is open on the screen. I wouldn't expect the software to figure out the combo display for me.)

Thanks!

 

[sindbad]

It's possible. I don't know any reason why something like Twinview wouldn't work, but it may not do it with default software.

I do think it would be very tiresome to switch back and forth between the pandora screen near your hands and the tv screen on the wall, however.

 

[chad78]

I do think it would be very tiresome to switch back and forth between the pandora screen near your hands and the tv screen on the wall, however.

Nah. You just got to line it up properly.

Clicken fur der biggen.

 

[Kyo]

Unless you only have one eye, this will still be extremely annoying in real life.

 

[nexferret]

Chad, is that a new render? I haven't seen one like it yet. All of the ones I have seemingly have incorrect normals.

 

[chad78]

Chad, is that a new render? I haven't seen one like it yet. All of the ones I have seemingly have incorrect normals.
That's the render from openpandora.ca - but I rotated it to line up with the Plasma.

Unless you only have one eye, this will still be extremely annoying in real life.
Yeah, I was just kidding with the pic - I know it wouldn't work real well IRL. But for games, (like New Super Mario Bros.) where one screen is pretty much a status screen - it might work.

But if you've only got one eye - not being annoyed by video games is probably very little compensation...

 

[AireTamStorm]

1. If the Pandora is plugged up to a TV - can I still use it as a controller?
2. If Question 1 is yes - can I still use it as a controller and have a second (3rd/4th) USB gamepad / BlueTooth WiiMote attached for multiplayers (think TMNT the Arcade Game)?
3. If either of the above is yes - could I turn the screen off (to save power, heat, and distraction while playing) on the Pandora?
4. Or have it display the Combo moves or something? (That would be done through multitasking, of course, having a JPG or PDF or Text file open on the Pandora while the emu / game is open on the screen. I wouldn't expect the software to figure out the combo display for me.)

Thanks!

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. None of these are hardware limitations- it all depends on the software. I for one plan on taking full advantage of the multitude of video modes available to me on this thing in my games and apps. Once I push through the next 500 pages of OpenGL ES programming, that is...

*still waiting on word of the Pandora SDK*

 

[sindbad]

Nah. You just got to line it up properly.
Different distances will kill that concept. Try doing it for a few hours.

 

[TJSomething]

Nah. You just got to line it up properly.
Different distances will kill that concept. Try doing it for a few hours.

So, it will work just fine if I get a properly made pair of bifocals and an eyepatch.
I'll be just like some sort of pirate Benjamin Franklin.

Edit: I just realized I'd only need one bifocal lens. Can a monocle be bifocal?