amBX is cheap as chips and looks great with Eyefinity!

dopee123 said:
Is it simple to set up two sets?
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If you've already got your first kit set up, all you have to do is plug in the second kit, reboot, then tell the amBX software the position of each light.

Took about 5 minutes to get everything configured :D
 
The hardest thing about having 2 sets instead of one is deciding where to put the lights (especially if you have a small desk) :p
 
Damn, knew I should have jumped on two of these when K-Mart/Sears had them in stock, now it's $55 + 8.99 for S/H at Amazon.
Thanks for the link Unknown-One but hopefully Sears gets them back.
 
I'm not sure they will as Philips have stopped making them and they don't offer support for them anymore.

MadCatz are supposed to be making hardware for amBX but no-one seems to know what level of interaction will be available. From sources I've seen it looks like it may just be light.
 
Yeah, amBX broke away from Philips and became its own company. As such, Philips isn't making the hardware anymore (which is how we got these so cheap).

amBX will be providing support for the old hardware (drivers and software), and has commissioned MadCatz to make new amBX kits.
 
Hmm...I'm really interested in this. Did Sears have these in-store? I think I'm going to stop by today and take a look.
 
The starter edition only includes the lights, yes? Does it only work with certain games or with everything thats on screen? I didn't get that really, I sometimes read about profiles.

And why is it that it often gives purple light in youtube videos? There is nothing really purple in the video, more white or not much at all, and it gives purple? Is it wrongly set up?
 
Annihilator said:
The starter edition only includes the lights, yes? Does it only work with certain games or with everything thats on screen? I didn't get that really, I sometimes read about profiles.

And why is it that it often gives purple light in youtube videos? There is nothing really purple in the video, more white or not much at all, and it gives purple? Is it wrongly set up?
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Starter Kit is just lights. It works with DX9 and 'some' DX10 games. No DX11 games. The YouTube videos with purple lights are not set up properly.

Do be aware that the framerate overhead is massive at Eyefinity resolutions. It's a framerate crippler at very high rez. I didn't realise this until recently. If you get bad framerates in games the first thing to try is disabling amBX to see how much of an impact it has.
 
Since there is no support from them, there is no way to run it with DX 11 games, or the dx 10s that arent working? How do people watch DVD's with this then, when it needs driver support?

And what did they do to set it up in a wrong way? In almost every video it is purple half of the time. Even the pictures in the OP are often purple even though there is no purple on the screen.

And what did you mean with "Ideally I should have gone for 3 wall washer units and not plugged in any satellites."? What is meant with Wallwasher in that case? The satellites are those pillars you are supposed to put next to your monitor, right?
 
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Annihilator said:
Since there is no support from them, there is no way to run it with DX 11 games, or the dx 10s that arent working? How do people watch DVD's with this then, when it needs driver support?
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There are drivers, control panels and some other bits and pieces of utilities to set up mood lighting profiles. The software works with iTunes and some other media players. I use iTunes so haven't had to look into support for anything else.

There is no ongoing support for the hardware. Phillips don't make or support them any more. That's why they are 25 quid and not 120 quid.

And what did they do to set it up in a wrong way? In almost every video it is purple half of the time. Even the pictures in the OP are often purple even though there is no purple on the screen.
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No idea. Maybe a camera/exposure issue, or the way the lights pick up outdoor natural light. I've not found myself thinking it was odd or didn't look correct.

And what did you mean with "Ideally I should have gone for 3 wall washer units and not plugged in any satellites."? What is meant with Wallwasher in that case? The satellites are those pillars you are supposed to put next to your monitor, right?
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The satellites are ugly and I use them behind the screens, like wallwashers. The leads that connect them to the wallwashers are as thick as your arm. I could do without the excess cables to be honest. The wallwashers are very neat and three of those would have been a more elegant solution.

Don't be hypercritical of these things like they are full price. There are many reasons why you can practically pick them up for free. (The RRP is 5x what you can buy them for) I wanted mood lighting and ended up with dirt cheap mood lighting solution that also works with some games and films/music videos so I'm very happy. The equivalent non-gaming mood lighting from Phillips is 90 quid for a single light and a remote device to switch the colours. The amBX kits are much cheaper and more versatile, if you have a PC that's always on.
 
So you wouldn't recommend to buy it for gaming only? I'm not really interested in the mood light factor as much as I'm interested in the gaming thing. And what you said in the first post sounded quite good.
But also there I saw that they show purple instead of red for example in the fire screenshot of L4D2. Maybe it will be great as a moodlight too, never used something like that. But the main reason I'd get this is to enhance the immersion when gaming
 
Annihilator said:
So you wouldn't recommend to buy it for gaming only? I'm not really interested in the mood light factor as much as I'm interested in the gaming thing. And what you said in the first post sounded quite good.
But also there I saw that they show purple instead of red for example in the fire screenshot of L4D2. Maybe it will be great as a moodlight too, never used something like that. But the main reason I'd get this is to enhance the immersion when gaming
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Not if 20 quid is a lot of money for you, no. The supported games will get much worse as DX11 becomes commonplace. Mad Catz are doing the next lot of amBX hardware this year so the software support will likely be good for that but it will be premium price. The reason to go for a Phillips kit is the cheap price and to see if you like the effect. Then at least you'll know if you want to spend more money later when newer stuff comes out.
 
The satellites are good if you position them right... yes the size of them for the light isn't great and they can look unsightly but it really depends on how you set them up. The wires are thick but again they can be hidden or disguised.

If you have a small area I'd get the premium kit as those combine speakers and lights in 1 unit and to me they look more vibrant as the light has a smaller box but as with most things it's down to personal preference.

As for it running on media players if you download Aurora Synesthesia it will work on everything (apart from web based Divx Players at full screen - not sure if there's other things but that's the only issue I've had).
 
They are not 20 bucks here but rather 45, and that is much to me, if it is spent on stuff I won't use.

I googled around and found out that you can build these systems yourself, with LED strips attached to the back of your monitor. While they look great, that solution is out of my price range since it is around 130 Euro to get started.

I'm really quite interested in what mad catz gets out of the door, but I'm sure it will have a heavy price tag again.

I mean imagine this: The starter kit cost like 200 Euro (!) when it was introduced, now its obtainable for 20 dollar and they still earn money from it.

But maybe mad catz makes something outstanding, too bad I don't know now. Because when they get their product out, the ambx stuff will be sold out completely I bet.
 
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I did some digging and what MadCatz seems to be offering are basically a backlit keyboard and lights...

The lights sound like they will be similar to the Philips Satellite ones as it says "Consisting of two Light Pods which sit on either side of the player’s monitor and plug into any USB port"

"The amBX enabled Cyborg keyboard is an interactive backlit keyboard, capable of producing real time lighting effects through the integration of amBX technology. Featuring laser-etched keys, the Cyborg keyboard features full RGB back lighting capable of displaying up to 16 million colors which react dynamically to on screen game play."
 
Well the keyboard sounds rather gimmicky, and the idea of the mad katz thing sounds exactly like what we have now with Ambx. Also, did anyone try it with Audiosurf? Didn't see that on youtube yet.

The only thing putting me off right now is that purple thing. If you look at the pictures in the opening post it displays purple when there is none even there.
 
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OK I scored a starter kit on ebay and have them hooked up great and workign well with Win 7 64bit. The one issue I have is a major one.. It freezes on a black screen ANYTIME I attempt to play a game through steam, which is 99% of my games! Can anyone help with this issue?
 
Zepharus said:
OK I scored a starter kit on ebay and have them hooked up great and workign well with Win 7 64bit. The one issue I have is a major one.. It freezes on a black screen ANYTIME I attempt to play a game through steam, which is 99% of my games! Can anyone help with this issue?
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DX10 games freeze up when you start them and DX11 games are not even detected. Some people seem to have some DX10 things working. The tech support is on the amBX forums but there isn't much support going on. Just other users helping each other out.

EDIT: Actually, if they work for you outside of Steam then maybe it's a steam overlay DX10 problem, rather than all games using DX10.
 
I have win 7 64 bit and it works for the DX9 steam games I have tried (L4D2, TF2). Dragon age worked but crashed on exit (not sure if this was anything to do with amBX or not).
 
try HERE

I think there's a general issue with steam though as far as I've read (don't use steam myself)
 
It might be the Steam overlay, though it hasn't caused any issues with my amBX setup.

You can disable the overlay from Steam's options, see if it helps.
 
My amBX kit is turned off in my crossfinity set up. It was causing even more problems on top of the normal Crossfire + Eyefinity issues. Namely my Framerates would die w/ it on during Crossfire.

Clicky
 
I've got a 5850 on the way, I'll do some tests with amBX once I get it all set up. Maybe there's some tweaking that needs to be done.
 
Ressurecting an older thread, these were on offer today from ebuyer, £25 for the starter lights with a deal for the expansion pack (rumble pad, and fans) for a fiver, can't really say no to that...so I've orderd and will be here tomorrow, I will take some pics with my 30" setup when its running with some FarCry2 pics and probably some L4D2 pics.
 
some people just can't get enough bloom in their games!

Ours is a strange hobby indeed. Some pay hundreds of dollars setting up dampening panels in their living rooms to leave it as dark as possible while others pay to fill the place up with strobe lights.

Would be nice if someone posted some benchmarks showing how games run with ambx. Might help some pl get a better idea of how it would work on their setups.
 
ambx should have almost zero effect on performance. I never noticed any slowdown when I was running Vista and still had my lights setup.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Ressurecting an older thread, these were on offer today from ebuyer, £25 for the starter lights with a deal for the expansion pack (rumble pad, and fans) for a fiver, can't really say no to that...so I've orderd and will be here tomorrow, I will take some pics with my 30" setup when its running with some FarCry2 pics and probably some L4D2 pics.
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Unfortunately they've been unavailable in the U.S. for a long time now. The basic Start Kit routinely goes for $100+ on eBay.

Supposedly Mad Katz is now in charge of the AMbx for PC stuff and AMbx kits will be re-released under their Cyborg brand.
 
I really like theses lights, for 30 i would be all over them if they didn't seem to be game breaking for multi gpus lol. Is it possible to manually set the colors on them and not install the software?
 
Kardonxt said:
I really like theses lights, for 30 i would be all over them if they didn't seem to be game breaking for multi gpus lol. Is it possible to manually set the colors on them and not install the software?
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You need the software for them to do anything I think but you don't need to have it affect your games if you don't want to. Just switch those settings off. They don't work on DX11 games anyway so I mostly just use them for L4D2 and mood lighting when I play newer games.
 
They've just arrived at work :)

Gotta lump them home tonight in about an hour, set them all up and break out my digicam :cool:

phide said:
Unfortunately they've been unavailable in the U.S. for a long time now. The basic Start Kit routinely goes for $100+ on eBay.

Supposedly Mad Katz is now in charge of the AMbx for PC stuff and AMbx kits will be re-released under their Cyborg brand.
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Yeah they've been discontinued under the Philips brand and the tech has been scooped up by Mad Katz, probably a good thing in the long run, I think they intend to keep backwards compatability.

Kardonxt said:
I really like theses lights, for 30 i would be all over them if they didn't seem to be game breaking for multi gpus lol. Is it possible to manually set the colors on them and not install the software?
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That's a little worrying, I have a 5970 dual GPU card, is there problem with these and dual GPU?

Finkus said:
You need the software for them to do anything I think but you don't need to have it affect your games if you don't want to. Just switch those settings off. They don't work on DX11 games anyway so I mostly just use them for L4D2 and mood lighting when I play newer games.
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I believe this is being fixed ASAP, from what I read on their forums DX11 is a pain but things like the extra driver hooks that AMD put in the recent cats (specifically for making 3rd party modifications like 3D effects easier) will make that a lot simpler.

Currently I play BFBC2 in DX9 anyway, I dont think I have any other DX11 games so I can personally afford to wait a bit. Also with VLC media player in OpenGL or DX output mode you can get it working with movies...horror films should be great like this.
 
Kardonxt said:
I really like theses lights, for 30 i would be all over them if they didn't seem to be game breaking for multi gpus lol. Is it possible to manually set the colors on them and not install the software?
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I don't think I had any issues with my SLI setup, then again I'm not sure how much I used the lights after I got my second video card.
 
I'm debating buying an amBX premium kit to go with my eyefinity configuration. My big concern is that the force-feedback effects (rumble wrist-rest) doesn't seem to use a popular API; rather, it uses the amBX proprietary API. I can't figure why they didn't go with XInput. If they had, then the majority of games (all that include support for the 360 gamepads) would have a degree of force-feedback without any mods or additional coding for amBX developers.

I like how the lighting can use an automated pixel-color averaging algorithm to determine a good color to use, but I wonder if running that with a 6+ megapixel eyefinity resolution is a good idea. Personally, I would have had the algorithm just check, say, 200 pixels along each border and pass the average color to the respective LED array (left 200px to left LED array, right 200px to right LED array, top 200 to the wall-washer).
 
Gigas-VII said:
I'm debating buying an amBX premium kit to go with my eyefinity configuration. My big concern is that the force-feedback effects (rumble wrist-rest) doesn't seem to use a popular API; rather, it uses the amBX proprietary API. I can't figure why they didn't go with XInput. If they had, then the majority of games (all that include support for the 360 gamepads) would have a degree of force-feedback without any mods or additional coding for amBX developers.

I like how the lighting can use an automated pixel-color averaging algorithm to determine a good color to use, but I wonder if running that with a 6+ megapixel eyefinity resolution is a good idea. Personally, I would have had the algorithm just check, say, 200 pixels along each border and pass the average color to the respective LED array (left 200px to left LED array, right 200px to right LED array, top 200 to the wall-washer).
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You're right. The overhead with Eyefinity is not negligible. I haven't run benchmarks but I remember being very surprised at the FRAPS reading, thinking my graphics drivers were not installed correctly and troubleshooting things before realising that amBX is actually eating up my framerate for lunch.
 
Finkus said:
You're right. The overhead with Eyefinity is not negligible. I haven't run benchmarks but I remember being very surprised at the FRAPS reading, thinking my graphics drivers were not installed correctly and troubleshooting things before realising that amBX is actually eating up my framerate for lunch.
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averaging the value of a matrix of over 6 million integers is not trivial. actually, it's probably 3 integers per pixel (RGB) so it might be as many as 18 million variables per frame, multiplied by your framerate...
 
Well I've installed it.

It wasn't straight forward for windows 7 x64, but their website aknowledges that and has manual installation instructions in a very easy to use guide, which worked a treat. So props to them for supporting the product on newer systems.

Once the software is all updated it recognised the 2 games I tested which are Warhammer Online and L4D2 and worked for them both without issue. I also tried VLC player with a bluray of Avatar and set the output to OpenGL and it picked up the colours very well again.

I have to say, I'm impressed, not only is it impressive and novel technology but it also technically works very well, most games aren't "officially" supported, in that they have no written specific output from the game engine straight to the hardware, but it's screen sampling code works with basically anything.

L4D2 was a real treat, there's some great moments in there, dark areas the lights go off totally, light areas have a hue behind your monitor and some ambiant light from the flanking lights, and L4D2 has some really nice overall tones which translate well into the light colours, especially so with the infected in vs mode who have views which are tinted specific colours. The lights are also responsive enough to pick up on fast flashes of brighter light, for example the muzzle flash of a weapon, even when you're spamming with dual pistols the lights are flickering at the same speed, it's very subtle so it's not offputting but it's not so subtle that it's unnoticeable.

Warhammer online was also very good but for a different reason, each zone tends to have its own "theme" like the snowy covered mountains, the lush green swamp lands, the purple haze of the magical forests, and these tones come across strongly in the lighting, they mostly tend to stay the same so it gives you a much less distracting background feel to the experience which matches the more passive nature of the game.

I didn't notice performance drops in either game, however I have a fast rig, and these games are running at high frame rates to start with. I don't think performance is going to be an issue anyway, most people will be using these at no more than HD resolutions which is 2x less pixels than my screen, I just don't see that being significant.

I know you probably want pics/vids, and I did take some, but they need to be sorted/resized etc, and its late so I will work on that tomorrow.

My initial experience overall is very good, the actual idea is good, its exectued well, the untit is plastic but very smart with a reasonably stylish design. More to the point this whole setup cost only £30, if you add in low price you get immensly good value for money especially considering it came bundled with Toca3 and Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising.

The lack of proper support for games is not really unexpected, it's down to game developers to make use of this technology and not many do, there is an impressive list of mods hosted on the ambx site to help increase support for things like the rumble stip and fans but the list is small, I'm OK with that, had it not been for a deal I probably would not have bought the fans/rumble strip but it came in at £5 more so i can't complain.

There is only one serious negative to the whole experience, you need a dark room, and even with curtains my room is still quite light during the day, so I have to wait until dark to get a truly great experience...obviously no fault of the kit, but irritating non the less.
 
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