We were having a discussion in another thread about the Game of Thrones clips on the DMD, and someone was wondering it they were "low rez" to save memory space. It occurred to me that people might not have a great frame of reference for what a DMD's resolution is really like. It's all low rez!

So a standard DMD, plasma or LED, is 128x32 dots, or "pixels". In the old plasma games they were 4 shades of brightness, now on the newer LED ones the get 16. Either way it's monochrome, you have "black" (off) and full brightness (red or orange typically).

Basic stuff so far, sure everyone knows this.

But the issue isn't that anything is being put in at low rez to save memory. The issue is that the screen is just low rez to begin with. For people who don't think about pixels all the time like I do it might help to have a frame of reference.

So obviously this applies to any DMD game, but since the discussion was about GOT I'll use an image of the cast as an example.

So here's a nice decently high rez image of the cast. Nothing you'd print a poster from, but more than good enough to see on your computer or smart phone screen:

This image is 1600x400 pixels

It's going to be shrunk in the Pinside embed, but if you click to enlarge it you'll see the full size. Clear, easy to see all the facial expressions, etc.

Now let's take that same image, keeping it full color, and shrink and crop it so that it's DMD rez, 128x32:

That is exactly the size of the file your DMD is showing you. If you're a hardcore fan you might guess that it's a GOT image if you didn't know already, but good luck reading a facial expression! This is what the animators are working with. Not easy.

Now let's take that same image, and transform it so that it's on a color scale from black to bright red, to simulate what and LED screen is going to give you. I'm also adjusting it to only have 16 shades of color, because that's all an LED DMD can do:

128x32 image, 16 shades from black to red

Taking away the color really isn't helping anyone figure out WTF is going on in this image.

If your job is to animate GOT, or any other Stern or B/W game, Data East, whatever, this is what you're given as far as tools. It's tough! You've really got to think about every single pixel. One pixel is about 3% of your entire vertical height.

When you look at a game with killer dots, like Metallica say, someone really crafted all those pixels to work at this incredibly small resolution. It's a real artform. Total respect for it! My Metallica has a ColorDMD, but even when it was all in red it really looked great. Very clear and crisp.

But you can see why a game like Iron Man, or Spider-Man, or Game of Thrones — that are relying on clips that were originally full color, HD, and a taller aspect ratio — struggle to show anything clearly on the screen. It's why I'm not a fan of ripped video on DMDs. Tron isn't so bad, because they blew up the contrast so that the backgrounds are mostly black, and the video is a little bit closer to line art, but anything playing a normal video clip is going to be a smeary mess.

And as you can see, it's not about file size. You could use the highest compression quality available, and it's not going to make those pixels appreciatively clearer.

I'm sure this is totally old hat to some of you, but if not hope this helped you understand.

A couple more visuals to help you understand since this seems helpful.

So first, let's take our red image from above, and blow it up so that each pixel is larger. Same visual information, just bigger, more like the size of a real DMD:

Now I'll apply a dot mask, to simulate the rounded LEDs in a matrix, which softens the hard edges of the pixels a little bit and spaces them out:

Same 128x32 pixels, but now with round dots like a DMD shows

Little easier to see with it bigger and with "dots", it's what we're used to. But as it should be clear it's still that same dinky image from above, no extra information, just larger pixels.

Click them to enlarge if you want to see them full size. Helps to do that, and then step back from your screen and view them at "pinball distance" to see what it's like in real life.

Now that you're grounded in the basics, watch this video of Metallica with the ColorDMD treatment:

No smeary giant messes, because everything was designed to be clear and crisp at the low resolution. And remember, this is in full color, the artists had to make sure it worked in "greyscale" where instead of white you have red, and then darker red, with 16 shades including "black" which is the LED fully off.

Good dots still look great to me, especially in color. It's a little retro, sure, but it's a good look. Video clips just don't work though. You need a high rez LCD like JJP or Heighway is using to do that as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, 64 pixels in height means you're effectively doubling the resolution. It's just a super hard spec to work with!

Here's a good image for looking at how people tackle simple pixel art with some familiar characters:

image.png

This is more realistic DMD scale. I agree though, those ones above cropped in half would be cool.

Actually I went to mess with it and you're really cheating!! That's 128 pixels tall. But it looks like with double sized pixels, so technically you're right. Here, I adjusted it to use single pixels, and then cropped it to 128x32 and added a dot mask.

128x32 with dot mask

It's certainly not impossible. But it's hard, because the requirements for good low rez are are just so very different from the requirement for good high rez art.

I don't know that I've seen those yet. I played and watched some GOT at Expo, but that's it. Anyone have a video clip by any chance? Are they hand drawn or more ripped videos?

I don't know what Spike is really capable of. But considering that WWE LE had an LCD screen running clips I think we can assume it's already set for video on LCDs on some level. Maybe it hasn't been finished for a main screen yet, or they're just being conservative about the switch.

Stern hasn't made a secret out of planning to go to LCD, it's just a matter of when really. I love my ColorDMDs, dots in color rule. But if you're gonna rip movie clips I think you need high rez.

I have no clue what the rumored Spider-Man VE would utilize. My guess is dots, but who knows.

Oh yeah, the 3D model stuff. No, I think that looks bad, sorry.

I feel the same way about the animations on BOP 2.0 too. All that 3D rendered stuff is fine in and of itself, but when you knock it down to a 128x32 resolution space with all the blends and curves and antialiasing it just smears into a mess.

It was probably smart of Stern to hire those guys to be in house, but for future LCD content and virtual pinball stuff. Anything 3D rendered and shaded and then jammed onto a low rez DMD comes out poor, IMHO.

My guess is when Stern goes LCD (question of when, not if) that they'll use the same laptop panels that ColorDMD and everyone else is using. But I doubt they're going to hide the screen behind the speaker panel, they'll show the whole thing. 16:10 or maybe 16:9.

That would mean nothing they do for it is compatible with old DMD aspect ratios. Just a guess.

I don't mean JJP style, just a bigger DMD area, like a Sega game. There's no cost effective way to get a DMD sized LCD screen. ColorDMD uses a full size screen, that's hidden behind the speaker panel. I just don't see them getting a high rez screen then burying most of it behind a panel just in the name of continuing some old aesthetic.

So personally I'm calling it now, taller speaker panel, with full sized laptop screen, and a slightly shorter translite over it.

DP is having glass custom cut last I heard. That's pricey. Can't see Stern taking the option that costs more.

Yeah well, multiple people inside Stern have repeatedly admitted they're going LCD, it's just a matter of when. So basically when it comes to Gary saying shit I don't believe a word of it.

Who knows for sure, I know I don't. If Stern is going to stick with old school DMDs they're going to look pretty dated when literally every single other company competing with them will be using color LCD screens.

There you go! Gary doesn't exactly have a stellar track record on this shit.

And he's a salesman, you think he's going to go on a podcast promoting one of their games and say "Hey guys, don't buy this stuff we're making now, because we're going to have cooler screens later, save your money".

It's coming, you can bet on it.

Heh, fair enough! Though I'm really pleased with my Sterns that have ColorDMDs.

But I can think of at least 3 machines that will be selling next year with LCD screens, and none of them are Sterns, so it's going to ratchet up that comparison.

WOZ gets put in the corner with some people because of the theme, fair or not, but these are games with more testosterone. More cross shopping against the kinds of themes Stern does.

The reality is, as I hope I've demonstrated clearly, that DMDs are super limited, and very hard to work with. Real credit goes to those animators who've done great things with such a limited toolset. If you want to do dots for a retro feel or something then the ColorDMD route seems like the move.

I am, yes, sorry if I wasn't clear. And no, definitely not a common aspect ratio.

Yes, they did. I asked Dutch Pinball in person how they did it at Expo 2014. And Randy from ColorDMD got their source and asked for a quote, for obvious reasons he was interested, and the cost was too prohibitive to be realistic.

Now it wasn't OMG expensive to the point where no one could ever do it, but it was pricey, and I doubt Stern is going to buy expensive custom shaped panels just to keep some old DMD aspect ratio that's not really relevant to anything. I want to say that the panels were going to be like $200, instead of the usual $65 or whatever. I might have those numbers off a bit, I'm going from old memory, but it was something along those lines.

Makes way more sense to get closer to 16:9, which is going to be native to a lot of video clip sizes anyways.

Yes, understood, but I'm telling you that I went directly to the source, asked them point blank, and they were custom made sizes, made for that game, and Randy talked to their supplier about prices for ordering custom cut panels. For a price they'll do any size you want.

What they're doing now I could not tell you, but the prototypes are custom LCDs, not off the rack from Alibaba or whoever. Maybe they're rethinking that cost, and it's one reason they're changing panel sizes.

Anyways, bottom line is I'm guessing Stern will go with the cheap and easy option, which is laptop panels.