Current Wiz Emulator Situation

[trayvyz]

Hello there, I am new to this forum!

I am thinking about buying a Wiz mainly to play my old games on emulators, so I kind of need to know where the emulator scene is standing right now. I am mainly concerned about NES, SNES, GB/GBC, GBA and Genesis emulators. Do they run properly and full speed? Can you play all games? Also, is there any optimistic future? Because I keep reading that the release of the Pandora will cause the Wiz scene to die out... Sniffing around I just couldn't help noticing that the Wiz scene seems a bit "abandoned" (it's a harsh word to use, but you get what I mean).

I'm trying to decide between a Wiz and a Dingoo. Dingoo just seems too cheap and unreliable (people report it just dying out on them or getting bricked) and the Wiz seems to be more robust and have some good potential as far as hardware is concerned. But it all depends on the activity of the scene, right?

I also keep reading about that diagonal screen-tearing bug that really puts me off. If this is a hardware fault and cannot be fixed I think I'll just give up on the idea of getting a Wiz.

Please direct me to the right direction, because there is no one place where I can find all the information I need. I seem to get lost in forums with tons of contradictory posts.

Thanks a lot

 

[forces]

If i have to say, almost every game for SNES, NES, GB/GBC/GBA play at full-speed, i haven't tried Genesis yet.

For the diyng scene, i believe that Wiz will not fully die, cuz even GP2X is still partially alive. Some developers will still love the console, because it's smaller and cheaper than Pandora.

The screen tearing issue IS a hardware fault, but it can be fixed with software stuff. In firmware 1.2.1 it's barely noticable. And Dingoo has the tearing too (i think).

Wiz's screen is good if you want to play MAME, because it looks and acts like CRT. The touchscreen is good for SCUMMVM, but finally, Dingoo is almost the same device like Wiz, just it don't
have good shoulder buttons.

I generally think that Wiz is better if you want more than emulation, but for emulation, they are on the same level.

 

[zx-81]

... And Dingoo has the tearing too (i think).

I've no tearing issue on my Dingoo .

 

[trayvyz]

Well, I think I may sacrifice good NES emulation and tearing for the Wiz's stability and robustness.. Although the Dingoo looks adorable and is cheaper, I can't help feeling it's too unstable and unpredictable as opposed to the Wiz. Really, is there any future in better NES emulation for the Wiz? Also, what about GB and GBC? I'm really counting on these two.

 

[emphyrio]

snes and genesis emulation are excellent, with genesis/segaCD emulation tearing has been completely removed, and with snes it's hardly noticable. I don't know about the other systems, as I haven't tried them.

Imo the current software library is excellent. Also, if things seem a bit quiet, in my experience software for the wiz either is released at a trickle, or suddenly it seems as if everyone is releasing something new or an update to existing software.

 

[zaephen]

All the systems you listed are emulated perfectly or nearly so. GB, GBA, NES, MegaDrive(Genesis) are all flawless for me (the Genesis emulator PicoDrive is the best emulator on the system in my opinion). SNES is mostly great. There are some games that you have to fiddle with to get up to full speed.
Screen tearing is mostly gone. I notice it in AlexKidd2x (SMS) and PocketSNES (SNES) although not too much in SNES.
I'd highly recommend the WIZ !

 

[forces]

... And Dingoo has the tearing too (i think).

I've no tearing issue on my Dingoo .

Huh :huh: ... I've saw it somewhere on the net, so i expect not to believe everything i read

 

[Ravippe]

I have owned a wiz and ave played with it for about a year now.
GameBoy Advanced, snes, nes, sega, mame, final burn alpha (another arcade emulator), and most importantly
a small program called SCUMMVM all work perfectly.

The screen tearing is gone completely with the new firmware. Unless your using a magnifying glass or something.
it used to cause a line going sideways on the screen when it was moving at a high frame rate.

The wiz clocks at 533 but can do to about 700 safetly.

Most snes, sega games are fine at about 300 or 400 mhz

Try Scumm also, you can play old computer games like kyrandia 1 2 3, and indiana jones fate of atlantis
Even has a touch screen which is very good to use, very accurate.

The only things that dont have the best support, in my opinion is the amiga emulator

Some games work ok, but lots of the ones i want to play either load soo slow, or its too confusing to save your game, so dont think
of that as an asset.

Get a wiz over a dingo, your dingo will break in 1 year.

 

[thingley]

I own a Dingoo but not a wiz (yet! - yes I know I'm posting in the wrong section)

Basically there IS a diagonal tearing issue on some Dingoo units - mine has this issue in some circumstances but it is not usually that noticeable. I can't say whether a new unit bought now would have the issue as the hardware in this device changes from time to time and there are numerous different versions in circulation!

I'm not a snes expert - but the snes emu is still under development (updates appear on dingoonity regularly) and currently does not support many games that use additional hardware (like the superFX chips for example).

Since it is not running an ARM based CPU the emulators are also generally slower than the clock speed would have you believe. For example the genesis emulator is (In my opinion) slower than reesys excellent emulator for the GP32 was! i'm guessing that Mame4all performs better on the wiz as well. This is because there are more optimised processor cores available for the ARM processor that sits inside the Wiz.

It sounds like i'm slagging the dingoo off here - but I'm not. It is an excellent device for the price I paid for it and i am very happy with it! But obviously paying more money does get you more - it's just a question of how much you're willing to pay for the touch screen, brighter display, better performance and what look like slightly worse controls.

When I was buying, the wiz was nearly twice the price!

 

[trayvyz]

All the systems you listed are emulated perfectly or nearly so.

I have owned a wiz and ave played with it for about a year now.
GameBoy Advanced, snes, nes, sega, mame, final burn alpha (another arcade emulator), and most importantly
a small program called SCUMMVM all work perfectly.

I really can't see how emulation is "perfect"... I just searched for the "newest" emulators. All I found was the ones on openhandhelds (Lemonboy, gpSP, picodrive, ohboy) which date back to almost one year ago (June 2009) and people report serious sound issues, emulators freezing and stuff like that. NES emulator also appears to have been abandoned, left with a bad port with bugs like tearing and no sound. Openhandhelds was the only place where I found the emulators. Pretty surprised that each emu doesn't have it's own Wiz port page... So maybe I am looking in the wrong place? Well it's not like I looked somewhere irrelevant... Does the new (1.2.1 I believe) firmware come with the new and fixed emulators? Where are you supposed to get them?

I know about scummVM, I'm using it on my smartphone and I was thrilled to find out that it's actually being ported on the Wiz. But all I came across was "a dirty alpha release" in June 2009...

The screen tearing is gone completely with the new firmware. Unless your using a magnifying glass or something.

So it's not completely gone then, I guess... :blink:

 

[zaephen]

All the systems you listed are emulated perfectly or nearly so.

I have owned a wiz and ave played with it for about a year now.
GameBoy Advanced, snes, nes, sega, mame, final burn alpha (another arcade emulator), and most importantly
a small program called SCUMMVM all work perfectly.

I really can't see how emulation is "perfect"... I just searched for the "newest" emulators. All I found was the ones on openhandhelds (Lemonboy, gpSP, picodrive, ohboy) which date back to almost one year ago (June 2009) and people report serious sound issues, emulators freezing and stuff like that. NES emulator also appears to have been abandoned, left with a bad port with bugs like tearing and no sound. Openhandhelds was the only place where I found the emulators. Pretty surprised that each emu doesn't have it's own Wiz port page... So maybe I am looking in the wrong place? Well it's not like I looked somewhere irrelevant... Does the new (1.2.1 I believe) firmware come with the new and fixed emulators? Where are you supposed to get them?

I know about scummVM, I'm using it on my smartphone and I was thrilled to find out that it's actually being ported on the Wiz. But all I came across was "a dirty alpha release" in June 2009...

The screen tearing is gone completely with the new firmware. Unless your using a magnifying glass or something.

So it's not completely gone then, I guess... :blink:

I said perfectly or nearly.
SNES sound is a bit off I think.
All I know is all the games I play play perfectly or very nearly so.

 

[Crazyteknohed]

All the systems you listed are emulated perfectly or nearly so.

I have owned a wiz and ave played with it for about a year now.
GameBoy Advanced, snes, nes, sega, mame, final burn alpha (another arcade emulator), and most importantly
a small program called SCUMMVM all work perfectly.

I really can't see how emulation is "perfect"... I just searched for the "newest" emulators. All I found was the ones on openhandhelds (Lemonboy, gpSP, picodrive, ohboy) which date back to almost one year ago (June 2009) and people report serious sound issues, emulators freezing and stuff like that. NES emulator also appears to have been abandoned, left with a bad port with bugs like tearing and no sound. Openhandhelds was the only place where I found the emulators. Pretty surprised that each emu doesn't have it's own Wiz port page... So maybe I am looking in the wrong place? Well it's not like I looked somewhere irrelevant... Does the new (1.2.1 I believe) firmware come with the new and fixed emulators? Where are you supposed to get them?

I know about scummVM, I'm using it on my smartphone and I was thrilled to find out that it's actually being ported on the Wiz. But all I came across was "a dirty alpha release" in June 2009...

The screen tearing is gone completely with the new firmware. Unless your using a magnifying glass or something.

So it's not completely gone then, I guess... :blink:

People are talking jazz then. I think the NES emulator has problems -- can't say for sure as I never use it -- but other than that Picodive is perfect (yes, perfect), DrPocketSNES is near-perfect with some 90% of games and OhBoy and Lemonboy have both had recent updates, as well as MAME4All, so I'm guessing that either the new versions aren't up on Openhandhelds yet or those comments refer to older versions. The screen-tearing issue is non-existent with some emulators (Pico and MAME4All) and barely noticeable with others (DrPocketSNES and Temper) since the firmware update. Lastly, if you ever actually get to use ScummVM on a Wiz you'd find it anything but a "dirty" alpha release -- it is in fact very polished and even if it never got a full release I'd be more than happy with it. Having said this I think a new version was released very recently but off the top of my head I can't quite remember.

The Dingoo is cheaper but you might end up with a screen-tearing unit anyway. All the decent emulators for it require Dingux which has a habit of corrupting SD cards. Lastly, if you're unimpressed by the SNES emulation capabilities of the Wiz then you won't get on with the Dingoo much, which is under-powered by comparison.

I'd pick the Wiz over the Dingoo in every instance other than when cost is the deciding issue.

 

[Crazyteknohed]

Crap, forgot to mention that the FBA emulator runs perfect too. Shame you can't reconfigure the controls in it but, other than that, the quality of the emulation is spot-on.

 

[zaephen]

I'd pick the Wiz over the Dingoo in every instance other than when cost is the deciding issue.

Agreed !

 

[RodrigoCard]

Since it is not running an ARM based CPU the emulators are also generally slower than the clock speed would have you believe. For example the genesis emulator is (In my opinion) slower than reesys excellent emulator for the GP32 was! i'm guessing that Mame4all performs better on the wiz as well. This is because there are more optimised processor cores available for the ARM processor that sits inside the Wiz.

Not true, maybe you are using the native emu, dont use it! The picodrive port for Dingux runs Perfect!

 

[DaveC]

The screen tearing issue IS a hardware fault, but it can be fixed with software stuff. In firmware 1.2.1 it's barely noticable. And Dingoo has the tearing too (i think).

No screen tearing on the Wiz is not a hardware "fault". It is caused by the screen being rendered vertically rather than horizontally. That is not a fault it is just the way it works. If apps wrote to the screen correctly and rendered their graphics vertically there would be no problem at all. The issue comes up because apps ported from other systems are usually rendered horizontally on those and devs don't bother to re-write their app to render the other way because it is much more work.

Yes some dingoos have diagonal tearing and some have v-sync problems as there is a sync line on the LCD that is not connected or something like that.

The Wiz uses OLED which has better contrast and response time then the dingoos ordinary LCD. Plus the Wiz has double the RAM, 3D hardware, and the ability to use larger size SD cards. That is part of the reason it costs more.

 

[foody]

The screen tearing issue IS a hardware fault, but it can be fixed with software stuff. In firmware 1.2.1 it's barely noticable. And Dingoo has the tearing too (i think).

No screen tearing on the Wiz is not a hardware "fault". It is caused by the screen being rendered vertically rather than horizontally. That is not a fault it is just the way it works. If apps wrote to the screen correctly and rendered their graphics vertically there would be no problem at all. The issue comes up because apps ported from other systems are usually rendered horizontally on those and devs don't bother to re-write their app to render the other way because it is much more work.

Yes some dingoos have diagonal tearing and some have v-sync problems as there is a sync line on the LCD that is not connected or something like that.

The Wiz uses OLED which has better contrast and response time then the dingoos ordinary LCD. Plus the Wiz has double the RAM, 3D hardware, and the ability to use larger size SD cards. That is part of the reason it costs more.

But all of this does not explain whether someone should get Wiz or not because of it's dying scene and no further support for it's emulation and software. So the question is, should a person simply wait for Pandora or get Wiz and if he gets Wiz, why?

 

[JayWhite]

Just buy a WiZ! Save money after buying the WiZ and if you still feel the want for a Pandora you should then be able to afford one by the time it 'finally' comes out :lol:

 

[foody]

The screen tearing issue IS a hardware fault, but it can be fixed with software stuff. In firmware 1.2.1 it's barely noticable. And Dingoo has the tearing too (i think).

No screen tearing on the Wiz is not a hardware "fault". It is caused by the screen being rendered vertically rather than horizontally. That is not a fault it is just the way it works. If apps wrote to the screen correctly and rendered their graphics vertically there would be no problem at all. The issue comes up because apps ported from other systems are usually rendered horizontally on those and devs don't bother to re-write their app to render the other way because it is much more work.

Yes some dingoos have diagonal tearing and some have v-sync problems as there is a sync line on the LCD that is not connected or something like that.

The Wiz uses OLED which has better contrast and response time then the dingoos ordinary LCD. Plus the Wiz has double the RAM, 3D hardware, and the ability to use larger size SD cards. That is part of the reason it costs more.

But all of this does not explain whether someone should get Wiz or not because of it's dying scene and no further support for it's emulation and software. So the question is, should a person simply wait for Pandora or get Wiz and if he gets Wiz, why?

I cannot do that, because after Pandora a new gadget is going to come out and another and another and another and another, no...it is a never ending cycle, it is a never ending buying. Here is what I want. I want to be able to buy this Wiz knowing there is going to be as much as support as possible for all these emulators and some awesome games to come out so that I can use it for those emulators and games and mostly watch videos and listen to MP3. That the Wiz will have great collections of applications to benefit me, I am too old (I am 30 years old) to constantly buy the newest gadget. I want to use whatever I buy for at least between 5 to 10 years before thinking of getting a new gadget. So the question is, is there going to be support for the current emulators as bug fixing, improvement in execution, are there going to be major support in native games for the Wiz and support for native applications for the Wiz (improvement in audio player and video player applications) or is it dead now? Is Wiz development seized where it stands?

If Wiz development have seized can you guys please tell me or teach me how to import applications and games from the gp2x to wiz (recompile them to Wiz format)? If you can give me this at least, recompile gp2x to Wiz or teach me to do this, I can at least make it my goal to compile EVER SINGLE application in the gp2x into the Wiz (if those applications are not on the Wiz already), by doing this I have such a stronger incentive to own a Wiz. The reason for that, because then software library will double and triple from it's current stage and at least I can say I have a gp2x library running on a Wiz hardware. Thanks in advance.

 

[torpor]

I've still got my Wiz and I plan on still doing stuff on it after I get my Pandora .. I'd do more for it now, but there is too much confusion about how to use the 3D libs to get OpenGL ES working on it. If this were sorted out, and we didn't have to resort to non-official sources for the necessary files/libs/headers, then I'm sure the Wiz would get a bit more developer love.

Might be also good if there were an effort to collect the various open-source apps that run on Wiz into a single collection, somehow .. this might prompt other developers to contribute a bit more often.