Caanoo Or Psp?

[Berserk]

Dosbox hasn't been ported on Caanoo

Noted.

 

[Exophase]

If MAME and homebrew are important to you, then the Caanoo may be the better option.

If superior SNES emulation, superior GBC\GBA emulation, perfect PS1 emulation, and PSP game library are important to you, then the PSP may be the better option.

Other factors:

+ PSP 2000 and up have the best dpad of any handheld
+ PSP has better and larger screen
+ PSP isn't missing rows of pixels like Caanoo
+ PSP's video player is light years better
+ Superior battery life, especially with 2200mAH battery kit (7-10 hours)
+ Huge aftermarket for parts and batteries
+ Speaker holes are in front, as opposed to in back where fingers can cover holes like Caanoo
+ Volume is controlled by buttons, as opposed to an always moving slider like Caanoo
+ Battery charger light turns off when finished charging
+ Controls\buttons don't seem to fail as often
+ Super Mario 64, Wave Race, Mario Kart 64, and a few other N64 titles run smooth on PSP
- PSP lacks touchscreen, pen, and tilt, but use is limited (pen works great with Warcraft 2)
- Caanoo's 3D nub seems better than PSP's
- Caanoo boots slightly faster (I think)
- Caanoo seems to have better homebrew support

One plus for the Wiz/Caanoo over PSP, at least IMO, is that they're more dev friendly on account of letting you SSH into them over standard USB gadget. After having this it's very hard to go back to PSP development. I know there's a shell for it but I really hard time getting it to work like I needed it to.

PSP has better emulation for some consoles, especially PS1 and N64 (PS1 is hardly "perfect" though, come on) but Wiz/Caanoo have the upper hand for others like Genesis/SegaCD and PC-Engine and I'm sure there are other obscure platforms that work better on one than the other (if even available). For Wiz/Caanoo this includes the GP2X library via ginge. Before buying it's best to look at exactly what interests you and go from there..

 

[Berserk]

One plus for the Wiz/Caanoo over PSP, at least IMO, is that they're more dev friendly on account of letting you SSH into them over standard USB gadget. After having this it's very hard to go back to PSP development. I know there's a shell for it but I really hard time getting it to work like I needed it to.

PSP has better emulation for some consoles, especially PS1 and N64 (PS1 is hardly "perfect" though, come on) but Wiz/Caanoo have the upper hand for others like Genesis/SegaCD and PC-Engine and I'm sure there are other obscure platforms that work better on one than the other (if even available). For Wiz/Caanoo this includes the GP2X library via ginge. Before buying it's best to look at exactly what interests you and go from there..

I forgot about that USB feature. That is definitely an added plus for the Caanoo.

Perfect may have been a poor word choice since there are some known issues with POPS, but I'd estimate that emulation and speed are well over the 90% barrier. In other words, it matches or surpasses most well known emulators. The fact that Vib Ribbon is perfectly playable underscores it's great compatibility.

There's a reason I didn't cite the Genesis\SegaCD\PCEngine as an advantage for either handheld. They're both in the same imperfect boat, AFAIC. While the PSP has the occasional fps issue, the Caanoo suffers from constant tearing issues. A momentary drop from 60 fps in some games isn't nearly as noticeable as the screen constantly tearing back and forth. I find frameskip 1 with vsync FAR more playable than frameskip 0 with no vsync.

 

[Exophase]

I dunno about Caanoo, but on Wiz Genesis/SegaCD/PC-Engine are fine at 60Hz w/o frameskipping and tearing. Probably GPH messed up the timings again and stuff ran through ginge isn't as smooth as it's supposed to be. FS0 vs FS1 is no contest.

That's probably the biggest problem with Caanoo: no Wiz compatibility out of the box but pretty much the same hardware made a lot of Wiz developers totally uninterested in porting stuff to it, so you end up with compromises.

I've only played one game on POPS, FFT, and while it was overall pretty good it still had graphical glitches, which I hear is not at all uncommon for it. Hard to really give it "perfect" in that light, and I doubt it matches up well to say, PC PS1 emulators with software rendering.

 

[kayuz]

Exophase, you haven't a caanoo? :blink:

 

[Berserk]

I dunno about Caanoo, but on Wiz Genesis/SegaCD/PC-Engine are fine at 60Hz w/o frameskipping and tearing. Probably GPH messed up the timings again and stuff ran through ginge isn't as smooth as it's supposed to be. FS0 vs FS1 is no contest.

That's probably the biggest problem with Caanoo: no Wiz compatibility out of the box but pretty much the same hardware made a lot of Wiz developers totally uninterested in porting stuff to it, so you end up with compromises.

I've only played one game on POPS, FFT, and while it was overall pretty good it still had graphical glitches, which I hear is not at all uncommon for it. Hard to really give it "perfect" in that light, and I doubt it matches up well to say, PC PS1 emulators with software rendering.

From what I gather, the Wiz has better vsync than the Caanoo, but I've seen reports of diagonal tearing on the Wiz. I also disagree that screen tearing is preferable over frameskip 1. Frameskip 1 introduces a small amount of ghosting, which isn't quite as apparent as tearing, imo. Even so, most Picodrive games don't require frameskip on the PSP, but you can never get rid of the tearing on the Caanoo. No matter how much we nitpick which is worse, we won't get around the fact that they're both negatives for each device.

Also, I don't think it's really fair to criticize the overall compatibility or quality of POPS if you've only tested one game. If you're having trouble with FFT, perhaps you should try a different version. Try 3.30 or 5.00. Many games experience issues if you're running the wrong version.

 

[Exophase]

From what I gather, the Wiz has better vsync than the Caanoo, but I've seen reports of diagonal tearing on the Wiz. I also disagree that screen tearing is preferable over frameskip 1. Frameskip 1 introduces a small amount of ghosting, which isn't quite as apparent as tearing, imo. Even so, most Picodrive games don't require frameskip on the PSP, but you can never get rid of the tearing on the Caanoo. No matter how much we nitpick which is worse, we won't get around the fact that they're both negatives for each device.

Diagonal tearing is a problem for some things on Wiz, not everything - it's a matter of whether or not the code renders to 240x320 instead of 320x240. Most emulators did fix it, I know I didn't with Temper (but might eventually).

I never said that tearing is preferable to frameskip. Since you brought it up, ghosting is such a massive problem on my PSP-1000 that I'd easily pick a Wiz over it for anything the Wiz is good at (but I'd go for my Pandora over both, even though the Pandora has a bit of ghosting itself). I have a PSP-2000 that I wasn't able to hack because it's TA-088 or whatever, that situation is probably different now, but I'm not aware of the screen response time being any better like it allegedly is on PSP-3000 (that instead has interlacing problems). Then we have the resolutions of the devices, 320x240 is simply more suited to emulating a lot of platforms, although I feel PSP's display is more suited for GBA.

From what I recall regarding performance of Picodrive, you can usually get FS0 on Genesis games, usually not on Sega CD games.. so that's where the main advantage would be. Don't know about PC-Engine, except that it definitely has a little worse compatibility.

Also, I don't think it's really fair to criticize the overall compatibility or quality of POPS if you've only tested one game. If you're having trouble with FFT, perhaps you should try a different version. Try 3.30 or 5.00. Many games experience issues if you're running the wrong version.

I'm going more by what I heard back then from other people, but I'm familiar enough with PS1 GPU (and PSP's) to know that the glitches I encountered aren't going to be limited to that game. You're always making some compromise on edge cases when you force one hardware implementation on another, especially a pretty fixed function one like PSP's. I don't really know what Sony has done to improve the emulator, but just mentioning having to use the "right version" that goes beyond using one that universally fixes problems opens up a big can of worms - you're using a hacked emulator that was never meant to play games on a general basis and is going to be lacking in the features department. Maybe they hacked more into that since then though, I dunno.

The story isn't that different with SNES emulation.. it gets better performance where it can use the GPU but suffers glitches instead. Where it can't it gets worse performance (than Wiz). The situation on DS is kind of a very exaggerated version of this.

Exophase, you haven't a caanoo? :blink:

No, why should I have one?

 

[Berserk]

Sony's reduced the ghosting issues each time they've updated the PSP, so naturally, the PSP-1000 is going to have it the worst. With 0 frameskip, the PSP-2000 has little to no ghosting with most games. Perhaps you can see a minimal amount in a side by side test with another device, but it's so minimal that I don't notice it otherwise.

What glitches did you experience in FFT? How early in the game did they pop up? Perhaps I'll give it a go to see if the versions I recommended correct them. From personal experience, POPS compatibility has been outstanding.

About SNES...

SNES games that glitch are isolated cases. As I stated in the other thread, I've already beaten several games without glitching, so I don't believe your statement is entirely accurate. Sure, some games require some customization, but as long as the end result is glitch free, then I don't see a problem.

 

[zektor]

That's probably the biggest problem with Caanoo: no Wiz compatibility out of the box but pretty much the same hardware made a lot of Wiz developers totally uninterested in porting stuff to it, so you end up with compromises.

I do agree that this was a poor move. I own both the Wiz and Caanoo (and F100 and GP32 NLU as well!) and the Caanoo would have REALLY benefited if it were backward compatible with Wiz apps. But, it is not and we have to live with it. What it does do however is provide an excellent gaming experience in its own right. The controls are very nice, the screen is big and beautiful, and the overall quality of the device is a few steps up from what the Wiz is. If everyone just looks past the fact that it is not backward compatible and it is its own entity (and maybe the last GPH device to ever be released) maybe some good things can happen as a last "hoorah" so to speak for GPH excellent devices. Again, I own them all, but this one is certainly the best overall. It is worthy of developers work for sure.

 

[quasist]

Recently bought psp and got amazed that you do not have to spent weeks developing a game, to play some game

 

[jlenoconel]

I don't think the Caanoo is worth it in my opinion. I had a small accident where some sticky liquid spilled on my device and it caused the left trigger to stick. Play-Asia, the company I bought it from, wouldn't help me with repairs so had to try to open it myself. Now its screwed - buttons out of place, wire popped out, and a piece of plastic near the trigger I was trying to fix has broken off.

If you have any kind of accident with your device there is no way of getting it fixed, whereas at least if you buy a PSP with warranty you will it for a year and I believe you can have your warranty renewed too. PSP generally has less issues with software also as its supported by Sony, plus there is more support from the homebrew community so less faults in emulators and what not.

I did love my Caanoo for MAME and arcade emulators. Playing Streets of Rage Remake on the thing was brilliant. Still, get yourself a PSP so you can at least know its not going to break on you, and if it does, you can get it replaced.

 

[darklight1138]

I don't see how a product's warranty affects its quality. Sony probably wouldn't do much for your case since it was accidental, which the terms of their warranty explicitly state is not covered. Sony Warranty Info I don't know of any brand that would cover repairs for damage such as that. All of them that I know only protect against defects, not stuff that can happen to them.

 

[jlenoconel]

My PSP has been damaged before and I still got a new unit, no questions asked. I didn't just say the warranty either, I gave an overall opinion on why I don't think its worth it. The build quality leaves a lot to be desired, although I understand its better than previous homebrew consoles. If you try to open the console yourself for repairs it'll break easily. The plastic where the buttons are, especially the left and right triggers, is shoddy. The fact no company where you bought the console from will really help you, compounds the reasons the Caanoo isn't worth getting in the long run.

 

[RP912]

In my opinion, the caanoo suits my needs on the homebrew/emulator side. The psp is good for what it is but I found myself not really thrilled by i. I guess I have a soft spot for open source consoles.