General Emulation Discussion

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)