General Emulation Discussion

The_B_Man

Doge wrote: »

Which systems do you plan on emulating?
You planning on emulating PS3? Inviere would probably have more detail for that platform.

Emulators like MAME and PCSX2 (PS2) are very CPU heavy and don't necessarily need a powerful graphics card.
If you plan on using CRT Shaders then it will use more GPU, id imagine the GPU will be a good investment for emulating CRT at high resolutions like 4K.

So its recommended to get a CPU with a high base clock per core for emulation since some emulators don't have the best multi-processor or hyper threading optimization. I personally wouldn't bother getting any more cores than a quad core.

PCSX2 in particular relies on Single Thread Performance so that base clock is going to be critical.

I like to use CPUBenchmark.net as a guide when comparing processors.
They have a Single Thread performance page where you can search for and compare models of CPU which is handy:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html


Also I'd recommend checking out 2 youtube channels in particular who cover this topic.

ETA PRIME
https://www.youtube.com/user/Mretaprime/search?query=emulation

LowSpecGamer
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQkd05iAYed2-LOmhjzDG6g/search?query=emulation

Cheers for that. Will give those videos a watch.

I'll be looking to emulate House of the Dead for use with this light gun. But also I'd want to emulate racing car games like the modern OutRun, Ridge Racer, SF Rush etc. Mainly the arcade racers as opposed to the simulation racers.

I've already got the Radeon R9 380X, and was looking at an Intel i5 6400 or i5 7500T. Is that enough?

Thanks again.

Steve X2

Inviere wrote: »

No experience with it Steve, & all I can see online for it are Launchbox icons and the likes...so someone out there uses it in that vein.

Yeah, sure I'll play around with it when it arrives and see if its any use. If nothing else it'll be handy for flight sims and that sort of thing.

Doge

The_B_Man wrote: »

Cheers for that. Will give those videos a watch.

I'll be looking to emulate House of the Dead for use with this light gun. But also I'd want to emulate racing car games like the modern OutRun, Ridge Racer, SF Rush etc. Mainly the arcade racers as opposed to the simulation racers.

I've already got the Radeon R9 380X, and was looking at an Intel i5 6400 or i5 7500T. Is that enough?

Thanks again.

It depends on how much you can buy them for.

Bare in mind that a brand new AMD Ryzen 3 3200G costs under €90 and it has a built in Vega 8 gpu core.
You may even be able to get along with that without your graphics card which you could sell, and it would open up the possibilities for building a smaller sized PC if you plan on having it next to your TV in your living room etc..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAkhIACuZyc

Inviere

Doge wrote: »

Bare in mind that a brand new AMD Ryzen 3 3200G

That and the new 3300X are little emulation monsters. You'd put together a very cheap little build that handle most anything except bleeding edge stuff like rpcs3 etc.

The_B_Man

I think the benefit of the R9 380X is that it has the Analog output for outputting to a CRT, which is a requirement. The Ryzen gpu doesn't have the RAMDAC, so might not play well.
I think the 2 systems I mentioned above are the same price, except the 7500 is in a mini case so won't fit the 380X. Might just go with that. Should still run Ridge Racer and Daytona etc.

Inviere

The_B_Man wrote: »

I think the benefit of the R9 380X is that it has the Analog output for outputting to a CRT, which is a requirement. The Ryzen gpu doesn't have the RAMDAC, so might not play well.
I think the 2 systems I mentioned above are the same price, except the 7500 is in a mini case so won't fit the 380X. Might just go with that. Should still run Ridge Racer and Daytona etc.

Ridge Racer & Daytona should be fine on those cpu's.

Doge

The Sinden Lightgun is up on Indiegogo for pre order / backing:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-sinden-lightgun

Inviere

Doge wrote: »

The Sinden Lightgun is up on Indiegogo for pre order / backing:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-sinden-lightgun

Hope he makes some money off these before they're inevitably copied & cheaper versions sold. I'd love to order the x2 Player Recoil pack...but just can't drop that kinda money this close to car insurance renewal time

Doge

Inviere wrote: »

Hope he makes some money off these before they're inevitably copied & cheaper versions sold. I'd love to order the x2 Player Recoil pack...but just can't drop that kinda money this close to car insurance renewal time

You can upgrade to recoil with a kit afterwards, just saying!

The_B_Man

I said I'd splash out, and got the 2 player recoil, with the holsters! £310!

They better be worth it now. At least I have until September to actually build my emulation PC now!

Inviere

The_B_Man wrote: »

I said I'd splash out, and got the 2 player recoil, with the holsters! £310!

I'm not at all jealous, nope, not one bit

They better be worth it now. At least I have until September to actually build my emulation PC now!

So what systems are you looking at running, classics, semi-recent, recent?
What display, crt 4:3, 16:9?
What emulation software/frontend are you looking at?

The_B_Man

I have a 2 player sit-down cab.
I am trying to restore it, but also have it running emulation at the same time by swapping around a few wires.
So as far as systems, I'll be looking to emulate some of the old SEGA model 2, like Daytona, but also Namco System 22 like Ridge Racer.

I'm aiming for the standard "Top 10" driving games like Cruisin USA, SF Rush and Outrun.

Then I'll be hoping to shoe-horn in the shooter games with this Sinden gun, like House of the Dead, Time Crisis, Gunblade etc.

The cab has dual 4:3 CRTs and I'll probably put on GroovyMAME with the calamity drivers.

Thats the plan anyway. I'll see what happens when I get all the hardware!
If I can't get it working in a nice clean way on the driver (coz of the seats blocking the view) then I'll build a bartop and drill it to the wall and use that instead.

Inviere

Sounds like a nice cab! You mention Outrun, but earlier you mentioned modern Outrun....obviously there's a huge difference there in terms of what's needed to emulate each...but yeah, driver emulator cabs can & have been done quite nicely

The_B_Man

Ye sorry, I'm just mentioning games in general. I'll probably throw Outrunners on too. I liked the Xbox Coast2Coast version of Outrun, or whatever it was called, so I'll be looking to get that modern one too.
There's a few other games I was looking at too, involving jet ski's so I'll see if they play well. Basically I'll be hoping to get anything that will run well, retro or modern.

80s Synth Pop

Then you need to look at the cab control inputs and outputs if steering it has force feed back.
Inputs is easy (UHID), outputs is a nightmare.

The CPUs mentioned in previous post play supermodel, demul m2, groovymame emulators with ease (daytona, sega rally, ridge racer). I've two of them in ridge racer twin cabs. Still working on getting force feedback going.

The_B_Man

I've looked at the cab controls. The all go into TAITO JVS PCB and connect to the game board via the "P2" USB port on the bottom right. Not sure if the "G" connector can plug directly into the UHID or not.

I've given up on Force Feedback in emulation tbh.
I saw guides where it says to replace the wheel and pedals with a cheap Logitech set, but I want everything on the outside to look stock.
I also want to be able to switch between the (hopefully working) original cab, and the emulation PC(s) easily by swapping out a cable or two, so I don't want any invasive surgery.

Also, on the UHID, I'm looking on Arcade World and its the bones of £60 each. Is there a "best" one for racers, or will any do? Like the Nano one is half the price. I presume the only difference is it only supports a few button inputs? Is there another website that sells them cheaper?



Cheers.

CiDeRmAn

Inviere wrote: »

That and the new 3300X are little emulation monsters. You'd put together a very cheap little build that handle most anything except bleeding edge stuff like rpcs3 etc.

Tell me how much one would be and I just might, need a new PC me!

80s Synth Pop

The_B_Man wrote: »

I've looked at the cab controls. The all go into TAITO JVS PCB and connect to the game board via the "P2" USB port on the bottom right. Not sure if the "G" connector can plug directly into the UHID or not.

I've given up on Force Feedback in emulation tbh.
I saw guides where it says to replace the wheel and pedals with a cheap Logitech set, but I want everything on the outside to look stock.
I also want to be able to switch between the (hopefully working) original cab, and the emulation PC(s) easily by swapping out a cable or two, so I don't want any invasive surgery.

Also, on the UHID, I'm looking on Arcade World and its the bones of £60 each. Is there a "best" one for racers, or will any do? Like the Nano one is half the price. I presume the only difference is it only supports a few button inputs? Is there another website that sells them cheaper?



Cheers.

There is a jvspac device that links the jvs io controls to the pc. Steering controls are planned but for now only does basic jotstick/button inputs so it's no good.

You can disconnect the inputs (steering, pedals, gears buttons etc) from the jvs io board and connect them to your pc interface.

Lots of options for pc interfaces and as long as you buy the matching connectors and crimped wires it's all plug and play between your interface and the original jvs io.


Uhid will work but will never have force feed back. It depends on how many buttons inputs you have in you can save with the nano option.
Steering + gas + break for analogue. start, view change x 4, coin, gears (up down or 1, 2, 3, 4). The nano uhid can only do 8 inputs...


You can also take the pcb out of a logitech wheel controller and solder wires to it just like a cheap uhid. Is the same basic connections for the analogue controls: 5v, gnd and wiper pot.


Some people have managed to get logitech force feed back outputs working with the cab ffb motor for sega model 2 cabs. Search for L2M2. If I had the choice again I'd probably buy a model 2 driver cab for this reason.

Then there is the global vr "immersion usb" pc interface board that not only links the driving controls to the pc but also provides native force feed back output for happ ffb motors. Problem is they cost €500+ from global vr.

The_B_Man

Ye I found it interesting looking up what people have done by crimping a few wires. It's beyond my knowledge, however. I have a friend who's good with this stuff. He was meant to help me but that was put on hold with the lockdown!

The issue I'm having with that JVS board is that the steering wheel is actually a separate cable that goes directly into the game board. I think its a 3-pin (see to the right of the VGA ports). So that means the UHID would need to take input from multiple different inputs. In this case, the wheel, the control panel buttons, and the seat (handbeake, up-down-neutral gear shifter).

I'm just counting them in my head now. 3 control panel buttons, accelerate, brake, handbrake, shifter (2 states?) and wheel. So I have no choice but to get the full flavoured UHID, since thats at least 9, depending on how many input states in the gear stick.

I think for me, the trickiest thing will be getting these wires into a crimped state to connect to the UHID.

Doge

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Tell me how much one would be and I just might, need a new PC me!

This is something similar to what The Last Bandit has albeit a different processor and what I plan on building.




The Asrock DeskMini A300 includes the Case, the Powersupply (external brick like a laptop power supply) and a Mini-ITX motherboard inside, which makes the whole thing absolutely great value and it’s absolutely tiny.
Think of a standard rectangular power supply in a PC Case - it’s smaller than that!





Great if you want something that takes up feckall space, not so great for upgrading i.e. you can’t fit a dedicated graphics card in there. (ETA Prime managed to connect one to the motherboard without out the case funnily enough though!)


All you’re short is adding an SSD drive, of which you can have 2 in the case, there’s also 2 M.2 slots for an M.2 SSD (they look like a stick of ram in case you haven’t see them and the “NVME” ones can achieve much faster speeds than your average SATA SSDs)


You can get a 128GB SATA drive frequently from my memory.co.uk for £20 so you’re talking the bones of €300 all in.

If you want WiFi you can get a WiFi upgrade kit on eBay. The card connects to m.2 slot on the motherboard and has 2 antennas that can be mounted through 2 holes in the case.

Remember this will be great as emulation machine but if you or ciderboy want to play any new games then you’d be better off with a normal PC which can take a PCI Express graphics card.

Doge

The processor Inviere is talking about the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X is different to the one above, and needs a dedicated graphics card to go with it.


I see Scan have it available to preorder for only £115 which is dirt cheap for what you’re getting.

Lets see some pictures of your twin cabs !

Will they be able to play in linked mode?
I've seen a guy on youtube with a twin driver working in linked mode with emulation.

Inviere

A pretty sensational development in PS1 'emulation' happening at the moment. Beetle PSX HW which is a RetroArch based PS1 emulation core will soon have the ability to use upscaled game textures. This will be on a per-game basis, and I imagine you'll need to obtain the upscaled textures separately (it won't be upscaling them on-the-fly in real time), but the results are jaw dropping....you'd never imagine this was a PS1 game

Similarly, in the land of N64 emulation, the recent Parallel LLE emulation core (again for RetroArch) now has the ability to increase internal resolution. This is the only way I can play N64 games these days, but basically it's tying in low level emulation of the N64 with some of the main benefits of high level emulation like upscaling. Again the results speak for themselves...

There's still work to be done, but N64 is seeing a lot of love lately in the emulation community and is arguably the best it has ever been.

The Last Bandit

Been fiddling about the my (spare) PS3 recently as a way to play PS1 & PS2 over HDMI, its slim version modded it ages ago but never really done much with it.

Had a spare 1TB drive so lashed it in and started exploring options, things have improved a lot since I last looked at the PS3 scene
Most of the PSN store games seem to have been dumped and its a very simple process to install them and the required licence, several PS1 and PS2 games are available in this PKG format - this is definitely the preferred format as it installs directly into the PS3 xmb.

For you own discs (PS1,PS2,PS3) they can all be ripped to ISO and installed to the harddrive as well, ISOs are not as well integrated into the xmb but you can also convert these ISOs into the PKG format. Its a bit more work faffing about to get the preview images and stuff sorted but the games look a whole lot better and can also be sorted into the xmb folders etc.

Emulation of PS1 and PS2 seems to be decent, not come across any compatibility issues yet and can't go wrong with using a Dualshock 3.

Mr.Fantastic

After ordering a rk2020 , seems to have gone missing. Seems to be a clone of the odroid but no faffing about with self assembly either.

Inviere

Pilotwings 64 now rendering correctly in RetroArch, and at a glorious x4 upscale

I gather this new version is still a bit unstable for some games at the mo, but progressing very nicely

Inviere

Some of these modern emulator devs & dev teams are pulling in a LOT of Patreon money these days.

Where do people stand on the idea of sponsoring development for what was always traditionally free (done as a hobby)? I have no issue with it...these guys & gals are spending their free time working on emulators for us all to enjoy, and we're at a level of technical development where making/improving these emulators falls to a very very small bunch of people (ie, those with the skills to do it AND who have an actual interest in doing it)...further to that, the donations actually help the devs buy needed equipment, spend more doing programming/debugging, and keeps progress going.

Citra is making €468 per month
cxbx-reloaded is making €929 per month
rpcs3 currently pulls about €3000 per month
Cemu is pulling €4700 per month
Yuzu is pulling €18,500 per month!!! That's over four and a half grand a week! To be fair, it is making massive strides really quickly.

Tom Mann Centuria

Inviere wrote: »

Some of these modern emulator devs & dev teams are pulling in a LOT of Patreon money these days.

Where do people stand on the idea of sponsoring development for what was always traditionally free (done as a hobby)? I have no issue with it...these guys & gals are spending their free time working on emulators for us all to enjoy, and we're at a level of technical development where making/improving these emulators falls to a very very small bunch of people (ie, those with the skills to do it AND who have an actual interest in doing it)...further to that, the donations actually help the devs buy needed equipment, spend more doing programming/debugging, and keeps progress going.

Citra is making €468 per month
cxbx-reloaded is making €929 per month
rpcs3 currently pulls about €3000 per month
Cemu is pulling €4700 per month
Yuzu is pulling €18,500 per month!!! That's over four and a half grand a week! To be fair, it is making massive strides really quickly.

More general point, I'd presume Patreon take a cut of that? Or are those figures after that.

Regarding this post, I think there's more value in backing these guys than a large chunk of no effort YouTubers whose only " thing" is playing games, or showing you what they've bought.(or been given for free)

Retr0gamer

Well it might allow these people to get proper bug testing and allow them to leave their job and focus on something they have a passion for an enjoy so I say fair play to them.

I know a few are also using it for clean room analysis of the actual chips, acid washing them and using an electron microscope to figure out how the chip works at a transistor level which isn't cheap.

Inviere

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

More general point, I'd presume Patreon take a cut of that? Or are those figures after that.

I'd imagine there's a percentage cut yeah, there'd have to be really. I'm a Patreon of Libretro & Cxbx-Reloaded...and Patreon whack on VAT on top of the pledge too...so €1 becomes €1.22 for the subscriber....I'm not sure how much of that gets to the owner though...