General Emulation Discussion

Retr0gamer

The N64 one was admittedly only once on the second last boss of the game. But it kind of demonstrates that the emulation just isn't quite there yet.



Using retroarch parallel.

It's performed pretty well other than this.

It's not my shaders either. It's filtering it so the white bleeds into the black area of the text. It's very easy to read when I watched a speedrun. Kind of annoying when you are looking out for 'Dire' to get the stage secret.

PS2 emulation.... I'm sorry but it really is a mess. It reminds me of EPSXE, early EPSXE. . It took me ages of looking it up but I managed to fix the in menu text but there's still issues:





Dragon Quarter isn't exactly niche either. I had to mess around with a lot of settings and then apply a fix for a separate game, the wild arms series.

My PC is very modern other than the GPU but it's a 1070 so no slouch. Looking for a 3080 but.... not going so well.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The N64 one was admittedly only once on the second last boss of the game. But it kind of demonstrates that the emulation just isn't quite there yet.

Using retroarch parallel.

It's performed pretty well other than this.

It's not my shaders either. It's filtering it so the white bleeds into the black area of the text. It's very easy to read when I watched a speedrun. Kind of annoying when you are looking out for 'Dire' to get the stage secret.

There's few things you need to mention here with regard Parallel. With the game running, F1 into the the RA menu, then go to the Options section for the running core:

What is GFX Accuracy set as?
What GFX Plugin are you running?
What RSP Plugin are you running?
What resolution are you running?

PS2 emulation.... I'm sorry but it really is a mess. It reminds me of EPSXE, early EPSXE. . It took me ages of looking it up but I managed to fix the in menu text but there's still issues:

Dragon Quarter isn't exactly niche either. I had to mess around with a lot of settings and then apply a fix for a separate game, the wild arms series.

PS2 emulation isn't exactly a one size fits all solution, as you know. Very few people expect PCSX2 to work the way say Bsnes, or other highly accurate emulators work. Because of the nature of the PS2 hardware itself (it's mostly all custom hardware, and as a result, there's a serious lack of documentation out there for it), combined with the plugin system that you mention, has definitely led to a fractured system. However,

TLDR:

What to expect for PCSX2 1.8:

• No Plugins
• 64-bit support (mostly done)
• Reduced Input lag
• A new shiny IPC protocol

...and much more (read our progress reports)

What might be ready for 2.0:

• A New QT based GUI along with support for pluggable & community GUIs
• Rework of our Infrastructure/Website
• Work on a pluggable JIT backend
• A full cleanup of the codebase

And hopefully other nice surprises

In terms of the game itself, looking on the PCSX2 Compatability Wiki, there's an entry that says: "Working great, a bit CPU hog, Text artifacts from upscaling, use wild arms offset hack state 2"

^^ are you upscaling the game to higher than stock resolutions perhaps? Regardless, once you apply the wild arms fix, the issue resolves itself. I agree that such measures are not ideal, but we're just going to have to be more patient when it comes to the PS2. It works amazingly well imo, but to reiterate, isn't a one size fits all emulator yet.

My PC is very modern other than the GPU but it's a 1070 so no slouch. Looking for a 3080 but.... not going so well.

A 1070 is more than good enough, same gpu as my own (also watching out for a bargain msrp 3080 :rolleyes:).

In PCSX2, go to config, video, and plugin settings. What renderer are you using? What texture filtering setting? Then in emulation settings, what is the global speedhack slider set as?

Inviere

Some experimental widescreen work happening for the RetroArch Megadrive core "Genesis Plus GX". Similar to the Snes offerings, it's very much not a universal solution, but very interesting all the same. There's still visible issues here and there, but if they can be ironed out:

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/genesis-plus-gx-wide-now-available-for-libretroretroarch/

Inviere

Introducing the RetroArch Open Hardware Project:

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/introducing-the-retroarch-open-hardware-project/

RetroArch Open Hardware is our attempt to shake up this sector of the retro games market, and our effort to revitalize the DIY market and shift it away from proprietary solutions. Our first Proof of Concept hardware device is an N64 cartridge adapter that you connect to any device with a USB Type-C cable. It will be relatively cheap to assemble and much faster than any existing competing device out there that does the same task.

We have some high-level goals we aim to achieve with this project. We want seamless integration with RetroArch. When you attach this to RetroArch, it should be hopefully as simple to play the game as it is on a real game console when you plugged in the cartridge. That’s the level of integration we are aiming to achieve with this project, and none of the existing solutions out there really fit the bill.

o1s1n

I've had a Retrode for years and the only thing they're really useful for is dumping proto snes and Megadrive carts. Never once in all the time I've had it have I decided to fire up a game cart on an emulator when I can just play a game from my rom library.

This'll be handy for dumping N64 protos (which are few and far between compared to the Snes/MD) but can't think of any other uses for it, especially for the masses. Maybe if they have some mechanism to back up your save files too, but that's nothing revolutionary either really.

I find the notion that anyone 'dumps their own legitimately bought cartridges' to play in an emulator to be fairly absurd.

Inviere

Very much agree, I can't see the appeal. If you have an extensive library of physical game carts, are you really saying you won't have the consoles to play them on? I think people using real carts to play through emulators are kind of kidding themselves....why on earth would you be getting up to unplug and plug in different carts, when you could be playing 1:1 cart dumps instead?

I see the appeal for archival and preservation in terms of the dumping projects out there, but for everyday use? Nah.

Retr0gamer

I'll have to get back to you later about emulation. Haven't touched the auld PC since Mischief Makers pissed me off last night.

Doge

Inviere wrote: »

Some experimental widescreen work happening for the RetroArch Megadrive core "Genesis Plus GX". Similar to the Snes offerings, it's very much not a universal solution, but very interesting all the same. There's still visible issues here and there, but if they can be ironed out:

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/genesis-plus-gx-wide-now-available-for-libretroretroarch/

This will be the cause of fights at the retro beers!
"Will you ever f*****g switch that damn 16:9 aspect ratio to 4:3 you noob!"
"But the game is in 16:9 tho!"

Doge

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'll have to get back to you later about emulation. Haven't touched the auld PC since Mischief Makers pissed me off last night.

Retr0gamer

Doge wrote: »

Nothing to do with emulation errors.

I was four hours at a level trying to A Rank it. Just seemed impossible to get my time under a minute which I presumed was the A rank limit.

So kept optimising advanced movement and shaving milliseconds off my time and got to under 1 minute.

That wasn't the A rank limit.

So I looked online and found a video and the developer intended A rank strategy is to jump over the entire start of the stage and flying over it off screen.

That's too much bull**** for me on a saturday night.

Inviere wrote: »

There's few things you need to mention here with regard Parallel. With the game running, F1 into the the RA menu, then go to the Options section for the running core

What is GFX Accuracy set as
What GFX Plugin are you running
What RSP Plugin are you running
What resolution are you running

GFX set to veryhigh
GFX plugin Auto
RSP plugin Auto
Resolution native (320x240)

What would you recommend for the plugins?

Inviere wrote: »

In terms of the game itself, looking on the PCSX2 Compatability Wiki, there's an entry that says Working great, a bit CPU hog, Text artifacts from upscaling, use wild arms offset hack state 2

^^ are you upscaling the game to higher than stock resolutions perhaps Regardless, once you apply the wild arms fix, the issue resolves itself. I agree that such measures are not ideal, but we're just going to have to be more patient when it comes to the PS2. It works amazingly well imo, but to reiterate, isn't a one size fits all emulator yet.

I'm upscaling to 1440p. Native resolution does disguise these issues but.... call me a hypocrite but I'm not pushed about native resolution for Dreamcast and upwards so want it to look good and 640x480 does not look good. However the sprite corruption on the title screen is still there.

Also I applied the wild arms fix with fixes menu graphics a bit but it looked weird. I actually ended up turning it off and fixing it myself with some tweaking to get that perfect. The sprite corruption on the title screen again is still bad and I'm afraid this is going to appear again during the game. Wild Arms fix doesn't fix the sprite corruption on the title screen.

There's some polygon issues as well in game but I can live with them.

Inviere wrote: »

In PCSX2, go to config, video, and plugin settings. What renderer are you using What texture filtering setting Then in emulation settings, what is the global speedhack slider set as

Speedhack is set to 2 (Safe)

Doge

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Nothing to do with emulation errors.

I was four hours at a level trying to A Rank it. Just seemed impossible to get my time under a minute which I presumed was the A rank limit.

So kept optimising advanced movement and shaving milliseconds off my time and got to under 1 minute.

That wasn't the A rank limit.

So I looked online and found a video and the developer intended A rank strategy is to jump over the entire start of the stage and flying over it off screen.

That's too much bull**** for me on a saturday night.

It was more of a general response to all your posts in this thread than that specific one!

I personally think you over analyze the negatives in games instead of just trying to enjoy the positives!

I think it's a blessing in disguise that I don't have as high a technical understanding in how games are developed, it leaves me more free to enjoy them as a casual gamer.

Inviere

Retr0, I'm on the touch site here so so can't properly advise yet. Have a look here though, and read through it - https://www.libretro.com/index.php/category/parallel-n64/

There's recommended settings in the link for proper low level emulation of the n64's output. Coupled with that, they've been able to implement up scaling too. It's explained very well in the link.

You'll need to change your plugins from auto, to what's described above.

Re PS2, your settings look good, I'll compare them with my own later, but I suspect this is just down to a combination of upscaling games to resolutions never intended for them, and the PS2 just being harder to emulate from a developer pov. I completely agree with you when you say you don't care much for stock resolutions of these systems, certainly not on modern displays anyway, but upscaling has the odd chance of introducing some minor visual issues at times.

Retr0gamer

Doge wrote: »

It was more of a general response to all your posts in this thread than that specific one!

I personally think you over analyze the negatives in games instead of just trying to enjoy the positives!

I think it's a blessing in disguise that I don't have as high a technical understanding in how games are developed, it leaves me more free to enjoy them as a casual gamer.

I'm not totally negative. PS1 emulation with Beetle I find now is finally at a good state and other than this one blip with mischief makers which is more an observation than anything it's come a long way and I'm happy where it's at right now.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'm not totally negative. PS1 emulation with Beetle I find now is finally at a good state and other than this one blip with mischief makers which is more an observation than anything it's come a long way and I'm happy where it's at right now.

I think that mischief makers blip is fixable through settings, give the settings in the link a go and see how you get on.

There's a lot of people talking about duckstation these days, in terms of it overtaking beetle for accuracy in several areas. I don't think it's a clear winner just yet, but it seems to be heading there slowly.

Retr0gamer

Yeah I'll give those N64 settings a go when I get a chance.

I think emulators need to move away from plugins. Every plug in based emulator is a mess and it's good to see PS2 emulation moving away from it. With how good shader tech is it should go a long way to getting accurate but also unified solutions to rendering. I can see why its done, you are basically crowdsourcing your emulation and gets things moving a lot quicker but in the end everything moves away from it.

Inviere

Let me know how you get on, be interested to hear if the low level emulation of the rdp fixes the issue

Retr0gamer

Inviere wrote: »

Let me know how you get on, be interested to hear if the low level emulation of the rdp fixes the issue

I'll try it tonight but let me iterate again that this is speedy gonzalez in snes9x levels of nitpicking :pac:

Retr0gamer

Inviere wrote: »

Let me know how you get on, be interested to hear if the low level emulation of the rdp fixes the issue

So I tried those fixes.

I'm a little annoyed right now.

I changed the GFX renderer to angrylion which uses shaders to render as accurately as possible.

I changed RSP emulation to parallel.

Well I got a black screen.

Apparently it's an angrylion bug right now. So I changed the resolution to 640x480 and it rendered it in 320x240??? I don't know but it works.

And I tried that level that gave me issues.

Not only are there no texture issues now it got a tonne of graphical effects including a gorgeous motion blur effect that was missing when I played it. Bit miffed I beat the whole game with poor emulation.

At least I know the settings to use for other N64 games. Thanks!

Really impressed with how it renders those effects, they would be very uncommon in a N64 game or not emulated well.

Inviere

Angrylion is something I've been telling you about for a while, it's LLE of the RDP....its the most authentic emulation of the n64s display out there. However, because its LLE, it doesn't support resolutions higher than stock, which is why its rendering so low for you.

The link I posted advises that if you're looking to upscale, you should od set both the GFX Plugin AND the RSP Plugin to "Parallel". It's still LLE, but some math and coding voodoo allow it to upscale. The results speak for themselves.

Give that a go and see if the graphics hitch you posted about is still there...

Retr0gamer

I actually like the N64 in stock native resolution so I'm happy out with it.

I'll try upscaling to see what it's like. I'll have to adjust my shaders though as resolution messes with my lovely shaders

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I actually like the N64 in stock native resolution so I'm happy out with it.

I'll try upscaling to see what it's like. I'll have to adjust my shaders though as resolution messes with my lovely shaders

Turn your shaders off altogether until you get it running the way you want, then turn the window dressings on

Retr0gamer

So an hour into Dragon Quarter and the emulation is a bit of a train wreck. Some horrendous visual bugs. Textures rendering with white margins around them. Blue margins appearing around some. It's really far from perfect.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

So an hour into Dragon Quarter and the emulation is a bit of a train wreck. Some horrendous visual bugs. Textures rendering with white margins around them. Blue margins appearing around some. It's really far from perfect.

You're upscaling it correct? Have you tried it at stock resolutions? (PS2 emulation being far from perfect isn't really breaking news, it's widely acknowledged not to be)

Retr0gamer

Nothing to do with stock resolution. I went to native but this isn't an issue with the 2D art it's the textures. It's displaying textures and lighting wrong is lots of areas.

Was just hoping it would be better but this is clearly a case of applying a modern api to a very different renderer.

Inviere

Seems its an active bug

"When upscaling, lines appear around the text. This can be resolved by using Align Sprite=Full/Half (which will cause text to look blurry) or, as a better option, using the TC / Texture offset hack set to 0500-0500. Portrait and a lot of text is unreadable unless you set Texture Filtering to Nearest or Bilinear (ps2). In previous versions it was also apparently possible to set the wild arms offset to half to fix this, but the option seems to have been removed.
Workaround: TC / Texture offset hack (0500-0500), or use native resolution."

Retr0gamer

Inviere wrote: »

Seems its an active bug

"When upscaling, lines appear around the text. This can be resolved by using Align Sprite=Full/Half (which will cause text to look blurry) or, as a better option, using the TC / Texture offset hack set to 0500-0500. Portrait and a lot of text is unreadable unless you set Texture Filtering to Nearest or Bilinear (ps2). In previous versions it was also apparently possible to set the wild arms offset to half to fix this, but the option seems to have been removed.
Workaround: TC / Texture offset hack (0500-0500), or use native resolution."

That's the menu text issue which I've fixed. I might give the software renderer a go. Apparently its way more accurate as it's not just slapping a API on to the graphics but very slow. I've a 5800x now which is a pretty great CPU. I'm enjoying the game despite the issues. So far not enough to stop me playing but its getting close.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

That's the menu text issue which I've fixed. I might give the software renderer a go. Apparently its way more accurate as it's not just slapping a API on to the graphics but very slow. I've a 5800x now which is a pretty great CPU. I'm enjoying the game despite the issues. So far not enough to stop me playing but its getting close.

The 5800x is what I want to pair with a fabled 3080. Really frustrating what's happening with manufacturing shortages, miners, gouging... Some of the prices for used gpus are downright criminal

Retr0gamer

Inviere wrote: »

The 5800x is what I want to pair with a fabled 3080. Really frustrating what's happening with manufacturing shortages, miners, gouging... Some of the prices for used gpus are downright criminal

Stop.... Having my own issues and would really like to send a 'f you' to whoever decided to cancel the 3070 order I managed to place.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Stop.... Having my own issues and would really like to send a 'f you' to whoever decided to cancel the 3070 order I managed to place.

They could have done you a favour. I suspect a refresh is coming, particularly for the cards that haven't got gddr6x. Not that that'll help supply mind....

Retr0gamer

Well I realize it's the least of my worries. And I'm aiming for a 3080 do the 3070 would have been temporary.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well I realize it's the least of my worries. And I'm aiming for a 3080 do the 3070 would have been temporary.

Extreme first world problems eh

Retr0gamer

Software seems to fix the texture issues but then you are left with an unaliased native image with a nasty softening filter over it. It's also not very stable.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Software seems to fix the texture issues but then you are left with an unaliased native image with a nasty softening filter over it. It's also not very stable.

I'd say your out of luck on this game for the moment, neither hardware or software are giving you satisfactory results. Your choices are, stick with emulation and put up with the shortcomings, use a real PS2 and all that goes with it for modern displays, learn to code and fix the emulation issue

Retr0gamer

I'll stick with the game for now. Invested too much into it and also enjoying it an awful lot. However I think I'll be going back to my PS2 for PS2 games and getting my framemeister set up for PS2 as it currently looks awful.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'll stick with the game for now. Invested too much into it and also enjoying it an awful lot. However I think I'll be going back to my PS2 for PS2 games and getting my framemeister set up for PS2 as it currently looks awful.

Definitely, vanilla PS2 on a non crt is not pretty.

Retr0gamer

Inviere wrote: »

Definitely, vanilla PS2 on a non crt is not pretty.

I think the issue is the framemeister in this case. Apparently its made for 240p content and 480i/p content looks terrible unless you adjust the settings.

o1s1n

Inviere wrote: »

Definitely, vanilla PS2 on a non crt is not pretty.

I do find that one interesting as TV tech wise, it was the cusp of the great flat panel changeover, so quite a few people were probably playing their new ps2 on 'HD ready' LCD/plasma TV, thinking it looked great.

Some ps2 kiosks even had LCDs in them.

I think we were all too blinded by suddenly having huge displays to realise that the consoles of the time had actually looked better on our old TVs.

CiDeRmAn

It is certainly a reflection of my ignorance, but I bought a HDMI adaptor for my PS2 last year only so I could play Outrun Coast 2 Coast on the 42" plasma and I think it looks amazing!

Retr0gamer

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

It is certainly a reflection of my ignorance, but I bought a HDMI adaptor for my PS2 last year only so I could play Outrun Coast 2 Coast on the 42" plasma and I think it looks amazing!

Hmm, might consider that. The framemeister on standard settings really isn't handling it right.

Then again this is a recommendation from Cider 'AC composite is grand lads' man.:pac:

CiDeRmAn

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Hmm, might consider that. The framemeister on standard settings really isn't handling it right.

Then again this is a recommendation from Cider 'AC composite is grand lads' man.:pac:

Indeed... and it was... for a time...

Retr0gamer

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Indeed... and it was... for a time...

What's the adapter you got?

Inviere

o1s1n wrote: »

I think we were all too blinded by suddenly having huge displays to realise that the consoles of the time had actually looked better on our old TVs.

There's definitely an element of truth there. I remember paying a small fortune for a brand new Pioneer (HD ready 720p/1080i) plasma back when they were all the rage. Sd content looked objectively worse on it, than the sd plasma I was replacing it with. I only understood why years later, but it was such a let down at the time

Retr0gamer

At least it was a plasma. LCDs still look arse.

It's such a pity LCD tech is still the only real tech for PC monitors. OLED burn in means it's not suited for PC use.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

At least it was a plasma. LCDs still look arse.

It was ****e for resolution, absolutely ****e. Using it as a desktop was atrocious. Excellent black levels, but that's really all.

It's such a pity LCD tech is still the only real tech for PC monitors. OLED burn in means it's not suited for PC use.

Yep. Edge lit lcd's with these modern dimming zones are terrible, and we're not talking about budget or even mid range displays here, but high end. Halo's on bright objects with dark backgrounds, awful viewing angles, and so forth. Don't discount OLED for pc use though, many people use the C9 & CX 48's as a daily driver, and the burn in mitigations are really effective (with some cop on from the user too). The only issue is the minimum size of 48", it's still too big for desk use (fantastic couch gaming setup though, if combined with a nice lapboard).

Until we see micro led panels, it's going to be OLED or nothing for me. I'm never buying an LCD panel again for gaming/tv.

CiDeRmAn

My plasma, I still have it, was and is amazing.
One of my all time greatest regrets was selling my Nuon.
I have never had my eyes seared the way that Tempest 3000 looked on the plasma, it was incredible.
.
..
...
Now I have to go and test TxK on the plasma via PS Vita!

Retr0gamer

So I gave the beetle core for retroarch and saturn a go and it's..... really good???

I only tried a quick go of radiant silvergun but it's running super fast (my CPU however is really good) and no glitches so far.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

So I gave the beetle core for retroarch and saturn a go and it's..... really good???

I only tried a quick go of radiant silvergun but it's running super fast (my CPU however is really good) and no glitches so far.

Beetle is basically the libretro port of Mednafen (a notoriously awkward to set up/run multi system emulator). Mednafen is leading the curve in terms of PlayStation and Saturn. However, the libretro core is unfortunately lagging quite a bit behind Mednafen standalone at the mo, with many recent and notable updates not pushed upstream to the beetle core. I'm looking foreward to when it finally gets the recent updates.

Still though, as you say, it's actually surprisingly quite good even in its current outdated form. I'm sure you'll find issues somewhere, but we're talking about Saturn here, the fact it's emulated at all is a minor miracle

Retr0gamer

Decided to really give the Saturn emulation a test and threw Burning Rangers at it which is probably the most technically advanced saturn game. It handled it really well. There's some inaccuracy with the 3D rendering but I'm pretty sure this inaccuracy was in the original game as well as I remember the 3D engine being a bit ropey. Some clipping issues as well with shadows but again this was in the original release. It's handling the transparency effects really well as well.

Honestly I'm really impressed with saturn emulation, I'll have to try a few more games but at the moment I'd be of the opinion it's PS1 levels of good.

One issue is the better cores are very picky about file type. They seem to only run .CUE with .BIN and won't load ISO or weirder file types like MDS with MDF. Can be hard enough to find saturn games with the added annoyance of finding them in the right format. I must look into a format converter.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Decided to really give the Saturn emulation a test and threw Burning Rangers at it which is probably the most technically advanced saturn game. It handled it really well. There's some inaccuracy with the 3D rendering but I'm pretty sure this inaccuracy was in the original game as well as I remember the 3D engine being a bit ropey. Some clipping issues as well with shadows but again this was in the original release. It's handling the transparency effects really well as well.

Honestly I'm really impressed with saturn emulation, I'll have to try a few more games but at the moment I'd be of the opinion it's PS1 levels of good.

One issue is the better cores are very picky about file type. They seem to only run .CUE with .BIN and won't load ISO or weirder file types like MDS with MDF. Can be hard enough to find saturn games with the added annoyance of finding them in the right format. I must look into a format converter.

I converted all my bin and cues into CHD (there's a batch tool to automate it), saves a ton of space, is lossless, and the saturn core is very happy to run them.

Inviere

^^ file is here if anyone is interested, it's super simple to do - https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/72kh6q/stepbystep_guide_how_to_convert_sega_cd_or_pc/ (many of the cd based retroarch cores support CHD, so ignore the thread title)