General Emulation Discussion

Inviere

Hopefully it's ok with the mods to create this thread, but I figured, without a dedicated chat thread for emulation, the topic never stands much chance of standing out on its own here. Most everything emulation related gets lost in the ether of the normal chat thread, and it's very hard to find good info in it that comes up from time to time. So maybe this might work?

Anyway, to kick things off, some recent emulation related news:

Retroarch 1.7.2 has been released - this would seem an important release as it features some fancy new tech called Runahead Latency Reduction. This promises better latency than the real hardware! More info here - https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-7-2-released/

Yuzu, a Switch emulator, boots it's first Switch exclusive, 1-2-Switch:



The N64 iQue roms have finally been dumped, almost 15 years later! There are some exclusive bug fixes and features in these roms apparently - https://twitter.com/chinesenintendo/status/989011050430279680

CiDeRmAn

This thread is fine, once it's primary goal is the art of emulation, but I'd prefer it not to become a hub for current console piracy tbh.
To be clear, having a Switch emu running is interesting, linking or sharing Switch dumps is not allowed.

Otherwise it's all good ...

I wonder if it's time to consider a forum name change.....

CiDeRmAn

And, on another note, that iQue business is great news, seeing as it's impossible to obtain content for the format any more.
Might be worth picking one up, if it's possible to load them only original hardware.
Can only be a matter of time before N64 titles proper can be used...

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

This thread is fine, once it's primary goal is the art of emulation, but I'd prefer it not to become a hub for current console piracy tbh.
To be clear, having a Switch emu running is interesting, linking or sharing Switch dumps is not allowed.

Otherwise it's all good ...

Cheers Cidey, indeed, piracy & linking to copyright protected stuff is a no go, goes without saying I think it could be good for keeping up to date with things, helping with configs, & all other manner of helpful things. Emulation can be as simple or as complex as you like it to be, so it can definitely help to have a single place to seek such help.

I wonder if it's time to consider a forum name change.....

CiDeRmAn

I'd like to more of the PSP running on a Vita malarkey.
I'd be even more interested in the PSP in the Vita running PS games!
Plenty of storage to hold my favourite PS games, like Raiden Project and Gradius Gaiden.

Tom Mann Centuria

Why not have console modding given a bit of life by renaming that forum Emulation and Console Modding. It's pretty well screwed otherwise.

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I'd like to more of the PSP running on a Vita malarkey.
I'd be even more interested in the PSP in the Vita running PS games!
Plenty of storage to hold my favourite PS games, like Raiden Project and Gradius Gaiden.

I'm due to give my Vita TV the modding treatment over the summer (my Vita is already exploited, though I must update to the latest version too), it's pretty much exactly the same as a Vita. I could do a write up on it, & post here if there's any interest? Obviously it's be boards-friendly et al

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

Why not have console modding given a bit of life by renaming that forum Emulation and Console Modding. It's pretty well screwed otherwise.

The only console modding going on these days is the likes of the Switch exploit, the recent PS4 fw4.55 exploit, basically all modern/current gen stuff. A&R would seem to cover modding of any retro machine, so I say go the whole hog & rebrand the Console Modding forum as the Emulation forum! For anything at all to happen though, I suppose it'd be good to show evidence that emulation discussion can be active and boards-friendly. As it stands, it doesn't stand out as it all gets lost within other dedicated threads.

sugarman wrote: »

PSP still has to be the best handheld emulation device around in terms of both ability and price.

In terms of price, you're spot on, PSP all the way. For ability though, the Vita blows the PSP away for emulation & even for PSP stuff.

megaten

Inviere wrote: »

Retroarch 1.7.2 has been released - this would seem an important release as it features some fancy new tech called Runahead Latency Reduction. This promises better latency than the real hardware! More info here - https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-7-2-released/

This sounds like it will be great for android. I'm not sure if modern version of the OS still have the same problem but I remember latency being a big problem with emulators on earlier version of android.

CiDeRmAn

My Vita TV is little more than a TxK device, so anything to make it more useful would be great!

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

My Vita TV is little more than a TxK device, so anything to make it more useful would be great!

What firmware is it on?

CiDeRmAn

Inviere wrote: »

What firmware is it on?

I haven't a clue, why?

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I haven't a clue, why?

Higher than 3.60 and...



^^ at least for the moment anyway.

Tom Mann Centuria

My son gave me his vita, unfortunately it's on the latest firmware. All I've read says there is no prospect of it getting hacked, is this still what those itk think? Haven't really delved into emulation on my psp now that's modded, must correct that.

Incidentally I love planes, trains and automobiles, John Candy and Steve Martin did so many great films, especially in the 80s.

megaten

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

My son gave me his vita, unfortunately it's on the latest firmware. All I've read says there is no prospect of it getting hacked, is this still what those itk think? Haven't really delved into emulation on my psp now that's modded, must correct that.

Incidentally I love planes, trains and automobiles, John Candy and Steve Martin did so many great films, especially in the 80s.

There's an exploit for the firmware directly below the most recent but it hasn't been released. So I don't think there's absolutely no hope.

Inviere

megaten wrote: »

There's an exploit for the firmware directly below the most recent but it hasn't been released. So I don't think there's absolutely no hope.

I think though that for that to work, you will have to have upgraded to that firmware from an exploited 3.60. I think. In other words, it’s not a cold exploit, it requires you to have had modded firmware in the first place.

CiDeRmAn

Well, I checked my Vita and it's at least than 3.6, the PS TV is the second afaik.

Inviere

Nice video Retroarch's new Runahead Latency Reduction feature.

TL - DR is input lag seems to have been completely eliminated, and is adjustable per game. Will try it out & report back!

Inviere

Inviere wrote: »

Will try it out & report back!

Short answer - wow, incredible. I can play Super Mario World again, and not be rubbish at it!!! It really makes a huge difference to games where input lag bogs controls down.

Long answer - as above, but there are some errors in the tutorial video apparently.

Firstly, when you have the game paused & are figuring out how many frames you need to account for, you need to choose one less than your result. Ie, if you have the game paused, press jump, and press 'k' three times before you see the jump animation, then you need to set the runahead number to '2'. Secondly, I got some sound distortion when using the feature, so you need to turn on 'second instance' in the runahead settings to resolve that.

Chuffed with this, it's a huge, huge improvement.

Retr0gamer

I'm guessing it works like the lag compensation in Guitar Hero?

Hellrazer

Heres a question.

I have one of these I was thinking of making into just a pure emulation machine.
https://www.zotac.com/vg/product/mini_pcs/id11

Atom d510,Nvidia Ion gpu 2 gb ddr.500Gb hard drive.
Its running windows 10 at the minute.
Whats the best front end to use in windows?
Not looking to emulate everything but snes genesis etc.Its runs them really well but Id like to be able to set it to boot up straight into the front end and just use a controller to control everything

Thanks

super_furry

I've always been a fan of Launchbox myself. https://www.launchbox-app.com

Hellrazer

super_furry wrote: »

I've always been a fan of Launchbox myself. https://www.launchbox-app.com

Thanks for that.Just spent the day setting it all up.
So far Ive Snes , Neo geo ,N64 and Mame linked through Launchbox and all working fine so far..
Great little program. Going to have to buy the premium for the bigscreen version now!!

Inviere

Hellrazer wrote: »

Going to have to buy the premium for the bigscreen version now!!

Controller support is also premium version if I recall correctly. Very worth it though, & they always have good discounts on Black Friday for when the time comes around.

Never knew the GPD Win2 was this beefy

CiDeRmAn

That's insane!

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

That's insane!

Then I seen the price, ouch

Inviere

Original Xbox emulation has always been a rather neglected, and perhaps un-needed system in terms of emulation. Most of its library was third party, with a handful of 1st party titles seemingly not being enough to attract anyone capable enough to work on its emulation. It's kinda changing of late though, there's been a bit of 'scene' interest in getting original Xbox emulation to the fray. Perhaps it's nostalgia, as some who grew up playing it now possess the skills to emulate it, or perhaps it's just seen as a kind of 'cool' thing to work on. Anyway, it's getting better!

Retr0gamer

The Xbox was the least essential system of that generation but there is some absolutely cracking exclusives on the system. Sega had some brilliant games, with Panzer Dragoon Orta being a highlight and the pinnacle of Rail shooters for me. And then Ninja Gaiden Black which is arguably a better character action games than even anything Capcom and Platinum have put out. Playing it now and it's so good it's kind of spoiled the new God of War on me as it's no where near as good.

I think the PS4 is kind of on the same level now as the Xbox was when it's run ended. Lots of third party stuff that was available on PC with a handful of exclusives. The PS4 only recently I feel I could say is worth purchasing but will probably surpass the Xbox by the end of this year and definitely in it's lifetime.

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The PS4 only recently I feel I could say is worth purchasing but will probably surpass the Xbox by the end of this year and definitely in it's lifetime.

It's been such a drab generation of consoles this eight generation. Sony have recently stated the PS4 has entered it's end-of-life cycle, and aside from a literal handful of exclusives, there's still no killer reason to own one. The Xbox One is the same (worse even!) in terms of worthwhile exclusives. Similarly, with decent gpu's bottlenecked by utterly gimped cpu's (I'm looking at you Xbox One X & PS4 Pro), we're still, in 2018, gaming for the most part at 30fps. Focus has been on resolution, rather than framerate, which aligns with the sub-par cpu architecture (I know they're APU's but you get my point).

The only thing I'm half excited about PS4 wise is my ESP8266 is en route, and when it arrives, I'll be able to exploit it & mess about with it. By all accounts, the upcoming 5.05 exploit is going to be a timed release, coinciding with Mira, a HEN that'll come with homebrew development tools...so people should be able to finally start coding for the PS4.

Retr0gamer

Yeah the One in particular has been so lacking it's the only big console since 2000 that I have no desire to buy. Maybe later I'll get a cheap one but only for the backwards compatibility.

CiDeRmAn

Outrun 2 on the Xbox, just sublime and matches the arcade hardware more or less.
It would interesting to see Steel Battalion emulated, with the keyboard and a pair of analogue sticks.
The Xbox also hosted the better version of Metal Arms too, as well as that gonzo mecha game that killed my Xbox Retr0!

Retr0gamer

You just weren't patriotic enough for Metal Wolf Chaos.

Tom Mann Centuria

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

It would interesting to see Steel Battalion emulated, with the keyboard and a pair of analogue sticks.

It would be a really pale imitation I'd have thought.

CiDeRmAn

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

It would be a really pale imitation I'd have thought.

Well, yes...
But if a person has no other way to play it....

And I think that is the central conceit to emulation, no?
It might look like the desired game onscreen but it will miss that certain something, be it the experience of the media, the host console and/or the controller.

Tom Mann Centuria

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Well, yes...
But if a person has no other way to play it....

And I think that is the central conceit to emulation, no?
It might look like the desired game onscreen but it will miss that certain something, be it the experience of the media, the host console and/or the controller.

I think in this particular example it's taken to the nth degree though. The only thing unique or interesting about that game are the controllers. You'd get as much out of watching someone else play with the proper set up on a YouTube video, imo.

CiDeRmAn

Oh, I don't know, the game is pretty impressive and, married to a VR headset even in big screen mode, it would be a cracking game to play.
That said, with one's noggin in a headset it would be hard to know if you were hitting the reload key or the one that washes the windows.

Retr0gamer

Xbox controllers are just USB, bastardised to a proprietary connector so I'm sure with emulation someone could write a driver for the controller.

Tom Mann Centuria

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Xbox controllers are just USB, bastardised to a proprietary connector so I'm sure with emulation someone could write a driver for the controller.

Then you'd be talking, for the lucky few who have one.(this is not an invitation for you lucky feckers who own one to post pictures:))

CiDeRmAn

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

Then you'd be talking, for the lucky few who have one.

(this is not an invitation for you lucky feckers who own one to post pictures)

:eek:

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

But if a person has no other way to play it....

And I think that is the central conceit to emulation, no?

Not in all cases, definitely no. I greatly downsized my physical collection, and favored an emulation setup. I do own the original consoles, I do (did) own the games, I do own a CRT, and yet, I made the decision to largely 'get out'. Collecting is great, it's a wonderful hobby, and is the de facto way to experience the media in question. It does come with some caveats though, it's stupidly and artificially expensive, there's a lot of trivial willy waving that goes on with it, it can become obsessional and compulsive, you need space (potentially a lot of it), there's usually maintenance, and there's a large placebo effect going on for many people.

What I mean by that is, well, I'll ask the question of myself by choosing a random game. Was my experience of Super Metroid negatively affected, in any sense at all, by playing it via an emulator, versus playing it on actual hardware? Owning the game and console physically, I can safely say no, it wasn't. There was no middle man between me, and the games code. The games code runs flawlessly on real hardware, as it does via something like a cycle exact Snes emulator. I played with a Snes style USB controller, so no difference there. I played it with some heavy duty shader action, which gave me a very close approximation of a crt tv. All in all, a very gratifying experience.

Retr0gamer

Infidel...

(Goes back to playing on an everdrive on a lcd monitor)

The Last Bandit

Migrating my big screen emulation onto Nvidia Shield TV at the moment from my old RetronPi setup. Its always plugged in, better controllers, more power etc so much more convenient - when its not busy with Youtube Kids or Netflix that is..

Combination of ARC Browser & Retroarch works very well and the hardware is plenty powerful for the consoles I'm emulating (up to PS1). Still fiddling about with the various shaders and hotkeys but its coming together nicely.

Inviere

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Migrating my big screen emulation onto Nvidia Shield TV at the moment from my old RetronPi setup. Its always plugged in, better controllers, more power etc so much more convenient - when its not busy with Youtube Kids or Netflix that is..

Combination of ARC Browser & Retroarch works very well and the hardware is plenty powerful for the consoles I'm emulating (up to PS1). Still fiddling about with the various shaders and hotkeys but its coming together nicely.

Have heard great things about the Shield, apparently it's the absolute business for playing 4k HDR practically fuss free too.

The Last Bandit

They're impressive devices alright and expensive compared to other Android TV boxes, similar specs as the Switch.

I've converted over to using Plex for all media sharing in the house and the Shield works great with it. Ability to play android games is handy too

Inviere

The Last Bandit wrote: »

I've converted over to using Plex for all media sharing in the house

NAS?

The Last Bandit

Yep QNAP TS251+ tucked away hosting all the media and running the Plex server, Shield can also act as a server but I'm only using it as a client. Having the download client and media server on the same box is handy

NAS also supports DLNA and its own streaming services but they are dark age stuff compared to Plex with all its lovely metadata.

Inviere

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Yep QNAP TS251+ tucked away hosting all the media and running the Plex server, Shield can also act as a server but I'm only using it as a client. Having the download client and media server on the same box is handy

NAS also supports DLNA and its own streaming services but they are dark age stuff compared to Plex with all its lovely metadata.

Very nice. Do you find transcoding reduces quality at all?

The Last Bandit

Not that I've noticed, the Shield should be able to handle the vast majority of the video codecs so its only audio containers that get transcoded, sometimes 5.1 to stereo can be muffled unless the profile is tweaked a bit.

You can have Plex 'optimize' media where it will transcode them offline to that ever profile you like if the NAS can't handle concurrent transcoded streams. Mine is only doing software transcoding at the moment but I'll probably pay for the premium package and I think that includes the hardware transcoding option.

Might get video transcoding on tablets/ipad but not noticed any quality issues.

Inviere

I see Cannonball has been ported to Retroarch. Weird looking at Outrun with double the framrate & double the gfx resolution

This is a reverse engineered version of Outrun written by Reassembler. It sports several enhancements over the original Outrun game, such as a 60fps framerate (original ran at 30fps), high-resolution rendering, and widescreen mode support. There are also several additional modes which were never there in the arcade game, such as time trial modes and whatnot.

Doge

So strange seeing it run at 60 FPS. Almost makes it look like a modern game.

Andrew76

Looks cack with no scanlines.

Inviere

Andrew76 wrote: »

Looks cack with no scanlines.

Indeed, but so does everything running through an LCD..original hardware included. Thankfully Retroarch has the best shader system around, must give it a go later on with crt-royale turned on & see how it looks. I'm a huge stickler for framerate, but for something like Outrun, I think I'd prefer it at the original 30fps :eek: