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RetroArch |OT| Emulation Heaven

Awakened

Awakened

Member
Oct 27, 2017
506
exodus said:
I should also point out that I'm testing with Super Mario Bros 3. The curtain opening is a really telltale sign as to how well paced the frames are. Is it possible SMB3 just has really poor frame pacing, essentially requiring some kind of frame buffering / vsync to smooth things out?
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The best way to test frame pacing are the various 240p test suite ROMs. The NES version is available here. You open 240pee.nes and use the hill zone scroll test on the second page. The bottom ground layer should scroll at a perfect 60fps. I just tested it with my Gsync setup and it looks dead smooth to me. The differences in my setup compared to yours is that I keep "Sync to Exact Content Refresh" on and I use the "Set Display Reported Refresh Rate" option in the video settings to set it to 119.998. My display can go up to 165hz if overclocked, but 120hz is a nice multiple of 30 and 60, so I figure it's better for watching video. Also I think there was some small issue with this monitor when running higher than 120hz, but I forget what it was.

Also, if your monitor has an OSD option to display the refresh rate, that can be a good way to make sure it's activating. There's also an option in the Nvidia control panel to display an icon indicating Gsync is active.
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,951
Awakened said:
The best way to test frame pacing are the various 240p test suite ROMs. The NES version is available here. You open 240pee.nes and use the hill zone scroll test on the second page. The bottom ground layer should scroll at a perfect 60fps. I just tested it with my Gsync setup and it looks dead smooth to me. The differences in my setup compared to yours is that I keep "Sync to Exact Content Refresh" on and I use the "Set Display Reported Refresh Rate" option in the video settings to set it to 119.998. My display can go up to 165hz if overclocked, but 120hz is a nice multiple of 30 and 60, so I figure it's better for watching video. Also I think there was some small issue with this monitor when running higher than 120hz, but I forget what it was.

Also, if your monitor has an OSD option to display the refresh rate, that can be a good way to make sure it's activating. There's also an option in the Nvidia control panel to display an icon indicating Gsync is active.
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Hmmm.

Tried 120Hz, Sync to Exact on on, and set the display refresh rate to 119.982 (what my display reports...also tried 119.998, 120.12, no noticeable change).

I can confirm that Gsync is working. I have the indicator displayed through the NVidia control panel.

Still not perfectly smooth. Only turning it off and setting Retroarch's reported refresh rate to ~60Hz gives me a smooth result. It do seem to get the occasional skipped frame though, which I guess would indicate some kind of buffering or frame swapping.
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,951
Running with the statistics overlay, I see a frametime deviation of ~20-25%. Frame times are >20 ms sometimes. That might explain something.
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,951
Okay...frame times are hovering at pretty much 20ms. The only thing that fixes the sutter is setting a 10ms frame delay which reduces my framerate to 50fps, and then it's perfectly smooth.

Am I forced into some PAL mode or something?

Here's with a frame delay of 0.
GdadBGC.jpg


Framerate reports 60 fps. But frame time reports ~20ms which corresponds to 50 fps.
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,951
Okay....it's related to the audio driver and audio latency. If I raise the latency things get better. Not perfect, but better.
 
Tizoc

Tizoc

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,792
Oman
Is there any way to 'fast forward' in some games, namely for rpgs? Say i am.playing ff9 via retroarch, and i want to speed up the animation of battles etc. Is there an option for that?
 
Awakened

Awakened

Member
Oct 27, 2017
506
Tizoc said:
Is there any way to 'fast forward' in some games, namely for rpgs? Say i am.playing ff9 via retroarch, and i want to speed up the animation of battles etc. Is there an option for that?
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Yeah, under Settings, Input, Hotkey Binds are Fast Forward toggle and hold. FF in RetroArch basically disables the framelimiter/vsync and lets the core run as fast as it can on your hardware. You can throttle it under Settings, Frame Throttle with Maximum Run Speed. I have it capped to 6x, since faster cores like snes9x can get a bit too fast.
 
Tizoc

Tizoc

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,792
Oman
Awakened said:
Yeah, under Settings, Input, Hotkey Binds are Fast Forward toggle and hold. FF in RetroArch basically disables the framelimiter/vsync and lets the core run as fast as it can on your hardware. You can throttle it under Settings, Frame Throttle with Maximum Run Speed. I have it capped to 6x, since faster cores like snes9x can get a bit too fast.
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Thansk ill try that.
 
androvsky

androvsky

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,507
In regards to the Retroarch Disc Project... I'll put it as gently as I can, but IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME. And they're even making sure Lakka supports it.

I'm a bit annoyed at them that it took Polymega getting positive attention (it's what they're referencing in the intro post) to finally get around to doing this, but I'm glad it's happening. Maybe with a lot of luck they can use the MakeMKV libredrive firmware to read Dreamcast discs on some UHD drives.
 
chaobreaker

chaobreaker

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,545
Are there options to make snes games running on the snes9x core look less blurry and more crisp without fiddling with shaders? My phone can't run shaders without lagging.
 
Awakened

Awakened

Member
Oct 27, 2017
506
chaobreaker said:
Are there options to make snes games running on the snes9x core look less blurry and more crisp without fiddling with shaders? My phone can't run shaders without lagging.
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You can go into video options and turn off bilinear filtering. But, if you don't also enable integer scaling, you'll get uneven scaled pixels and shimering when scrolling. Depending on your phone res, you'll get different sized black borders on the top and bottom with integer scale enabled. A shader worth trying to fix the scaling issues without integer scaling and very minimal blur is sharp-bilinear, in the retro folder. That shader is pretty fast and might be fine on your phone.
 
chaobreaker

chaobreaker

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,545
Awakened said:
You can go into video options and turn off bilinear filtering. But, if you don't also enable integer scaling, you'll get uneven scaled pixels and shimering when scrolling. Depending on your phone res, you'll get different sized black borders on the top and bottom with integer scale enabled. A shader worth trying to fix the scaling issues without integer scaling and very minimal blur is sharp-bilinear, in the retro folder. That shader is pretty fast and might be fine on your phone.
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Wow both options worked. Thanks.

Almost makes me wonder why bilinear filtering is enabled by default.
 
BlockABoots

BlockABoots

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,548
Not sure why there making loading for a CD such a big deal!?, emulators have been doing that for years!....unless im missing something?
 
androvsky

androvsky

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,507
BlockABoots said:
Not sure why there making loading for a CD such a big deal!?, emulators have been doing that for years!....unless im missing something?
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Retroarch hasn't, and even the emulators that did haven't always been maintaining the ability. PCSX2, for example, has a disc plugin on Windows but nothing on linux. There's an older Saturn emulator that ran easiest from disc, but I'm not sure the newer ones do at all.

But because Retroarch is an all-in-one frontend that's used as the base for many popular emulation projects, Retroarch not supporting discs means a lot of other projects don't support discs. Also, none of the emulators used in Retroarch can support discs directly without this work, even if the stand-alone versions do.

It's also possibly the first time Retroarch has been able to support running console games from the original media on commonly available hardware. I've got a Retrode 2 that lets me play SNES and Genesis games directly, but that's hardly a common item. Otherwise, people were expected to rip their games, often on a different computer, or just download them. It's a nice step towards decoupling emulation and piracy.

It's not perfect because I don't imagine many people will be adding USB CD-ROM drives to their tiny Raspberry Pi setups, but they easily could now.

tldr; it's a big deal because it's Retroarch doing it.
 

Deleted member 31140

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 5, 2017
2,089
I've installed retroarch on my mac, but I can't install any cores from the online updater option.(it only states that my mac is downloading a zip). I have unarchiver installed on my mac, but it does not seem to be working with retroarch.Does anyone know what I can to remedy this issue?

Figured it out, but have no idea how to set up a controller lol; I give up
 
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Gloam

Gloam

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,493
I tried Retroarch for the first time over the weekend and it's been frustrating. I've been trying to play some Saturn games with not much luck. I am aware that in the past it was hard to emulate but I figured that things must have improved and there were a lot of cores to choose from.

The only core I've had success booting into a game is Kronos, but I've been reading that Retroarch has trouble with multi disc games and am a little concerned about getting into something only to find I can't progress beyond the first disc.

I figure I must be doing something wrong in the set-up process for the other cores Beetle and Yabause.

Maybe I'm better off using the binaries from their websites rather than going through Retroarch. But all the reading I've done assures me that once the initial teething period is over it's all golden.

Any general advice as to how to make things easier?
 
Aeana

Aeana

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,943
Gloam said:
I tried Retroarch for the first time over the weekend and it's been frustrating. I've been trying to play some Saturn games with not much luck. I am aware that in the past it was hard to emulate but I figured that things must have improved and there were a lot of cores to choose from.

The only core I've had success booting into a game is Kronos, but I've been reading that Retroarch has trouble with multi disc games and am a little concerned about getting into something only to find I can't progress beyond the first disc.

I figure I must be doing something wrong in the set-up process for the other cores Beetle and Yabause.

Maybe I'm better off using the binaries from their websites rather than going through Retroarch. But all the reading I've done assures me that once the initial teething period is over it's all golden.

Any general advice as to how to make things easier?
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Beetle Saturn should work pretty well. You just need to make sure you have the BIOS in the system directory with the correct name.


This page should tell you what it's looking for.
 
Gloam

Gloam

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,493
Aeana said:
Beetle Saturn should work pretty well. You just need to make sure you have the BIOS in the system directory with the correct name.


This page should tell you what it's looking for.
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Thanks Aeana maybe I'll be reunited with the Golden Warrior after all.

Looking at this a bit more I might have ripped the disc incorrectly. I'm getting the Saturn's CD player on boot up. Which is neat, but odd.
 
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Awakened

Awakened

Member
Oct 27, 2017
506
Mesen-S is available on the Win64 buildbot for anyone interested in checking out a new SNES emulator. It doesn't have special chip support yet, but is making rapid progress.
 
Ostron

Ostron

Member
Mar 23, 2019
1,953
Sooo, is S-video out viable for PC to CRT emulation?

I've been tasked with setting up a CRT TV for a party and didn't want to spend a dime. Rummaged through my old piles of crap and found S-video and audio to SCART. Then I found my old 275 GTX which has S-video out, I had forgotten about it but that was indeed pretty common before.

Setting it up through NVIDIAs drivers was a breeze and now I have full color image with audio going from my PC to the CRT TV. NVIDIA couldn't detect a monitor of course but asked if I had a TV hooked up and asked if I wanted to send a signal to one. Then I got options for regions and resolutions to test until I found one that matched and had color. S-video to S-video and S-video to SCART work without issues. Way, way cheaper than any signal converter as it was all free (for me at least!).

But it was a bit too easy, you know? I mean do people use this method to run games on CRTs? I haven't tested it extensively, but it seemed to run fine with low latency. What are the drawbacks here apart from having to run an ancient power-hungry GPU? I assume most PC S-video connections won't be as smooth as NVIDIA, but ATI had them as well for a while. I know I am now considering ways to keep a PC running with a TV-out... perhaps for the lifelong dream of working lightguns.
 
TheMadTitan

TheMadTitan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
27,246
So I just discovered that I can't set up a controller hotkey and have the guide button remain operational at the same time.

That's.... annoying and stupid as shit. I just want the fast forward toggle mapped to a combo on my controller, that shouldn't prevent me from being able to mess with settings and exit games.
 
TheMadTitan

TheMadTitan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
27,246
So I finally got off my ass and set up dual analog for both Perfect Dark and Goldeneye. Shit works perfectly. Gotta fix my PD settings since everything is rendering wrong, but controls wise, shit works out great.
 
Rufus

Rufus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
402
Germany
You can do this within Retroarch. Where you choose the shader, there's an option further down called shader parameters where you can adjust all of these values.
 
Skyfireblaze

Skyfireblaze

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,257
Awakened said:
Yeah, you can change the parameters in the GUI and save a preset with those changes from there. If you wanted to edit the shader files directly, the first value is the default, so that's the one you'd change.
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I see thanks for the clarification but yeah having it as a separate preset is of course way preferable! So I edit, save and then the original Easymode will stay unaltered?
 
Rufus

Rufus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
402
Germany
Last commit to the core was 23 days ago. Should be fairly up to date? Issue list doesn't mention the problem, but that doesn't have to mean anything.

FWIW, The Dolphin wiki mentions two other issues which seem unrelated. I don't know if the libretro core exposes the options that fix them, though:

Which renderer are you using (settings > driver > video)? The Dolphin core supports OGL, DX11 and Vulkan, one or two of which might not exhibit the issue. OGL is usually the most accurate, but it's also what Retroarch defaults to, I believe.
 

Deleted member 16136

User requested account closure
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Oct 27, 2017
4,196
Will check tonight, but I typically keep most things on default (except for billinear filtering, that goes off immediately, ewww), so I guess OGL, will let you know, thanks :)
 

Deleted member 16136

User requested account closure
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Oct 27, 2017
4,196
Was set to OGL, so I started trying a few of them, most black screened, DX11 actually seemed to fix it, almost looked like software rendering with how sharp the backgrounds looked and pixellated the characters were, but no signs of that weird effect. Vulkan also didnt have that effect, but everything looked very blurry.

Can happily play it now anyway :)
 
TheMadTitan

TheMadTitan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
27,246
Anyone know how the Citra core compares to the standalone? I just want some CRT filters, or would I be better off using reshade?
 
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