Emulation requests

[itami]

I think Mario Kart 64 is an excellent example. Note how both videos are basically in sync at the start while it's just menus, and then starts lagging like crazy when the 3D starts? Same with Ocarina of time: little lag while it was just the words, but then it cuts to the opening scene and starts falling back second by second. This is especially relevant because I think I remember someone figuring out that N64 wasn't CPU bound: overclocking didn't produce any noticeable speed increases, and the best way to improve performance was to improve the graphics rendering. Looks like the new processor may be doing that, very noticeably I might add.

Sounds right: both on 800Mhz and the 1Ghz version is faster

 

[Askarus]

Great video.


@ Anyone:


Jump to 5:40.


Isn't the screen different?


Is it because of a different angle of the lid or is it really a noticeable different as itami says here: http://boards.openpa...topic/9469-lcd/


(You can notice the difference anywhere but the SSB screen shows it verry noticeable)

I think Mario Kart 64 is an excellent example. Note how both videos are basically in sync at the start while it's just menus, and then starts lagging like crazy when the 3D starts? Same with Ocarina of time: little lag while it was just the words, but then it cuts to the opening scene and starts falling back second by second. This is especially relevant because I think I remember someone figuring out that N64 wasn't CPU bound: overclocking didn't produce any noticeable speed increases, and the best way to improve performance was to improve the graphics rendering. Looks like the new processor may be doing that, very noticeably I might add.

Sounds right: both on 800Mhz and the 1Ghz version is faster

Big hopes here for N64.

 

[foft]

Just tried 'Mortal Combat' under Mame4All. Much more playable. I'm still no good though!

 

[notaz]

Watched the video and one thing that came to mind is that faster software is better than faster hardware. It's a shame so little is done on optimization these days for non-commercial stuff, if it wasn't Ari64 showing up along with a few other cases, we'd have nothing here but ports of old GP2X software and slow PC stuff. Gone are the GP32 days with "we can do it!" spirit, where hardware was pushed to it's limits. Instead we now have software spending most of resources running inefficient code (instead of just doing the work that actually needs to be done) and the Android "scene" of pulling everything open in just to make profit.

 

[Jumpman]

Watched the video and one thing that came to mind is that faster software is better than faster hardware. It's a shame so little is done on optimization these days for non-commercial stuff, if it wasn't Ari64 showing up along with a few other cases, we'd have nothing here but ports of old GP2X software and slow PC stuff. Gone are the GP32 days with "we can do it!" spirit, where hardware was pushed to it's limits. Instead we now have software spending most of resources running inefficient code (instead of just doing the work that actually needs to be done) and the Android "scene" of pulling everything open in just to make profit.

Sadly, I agree Notaz!


Games looked better, but not enough for me to upgrade my OG Pandora. I'm still hoping for faster N64 emulation some day, but this dosn't appear to be the answer(at least for me).


Chris

 

[fusion_power]

Watched the video and one thing that came to mind is that faster software is better than faster hardware. It's a shame so little is done on optimization these days for non-commercial stuff, if it wasn't Ari64 showing up along with a few other cases, we'd have nothing here but ports of old GP2X software and slow PC stuff. Gone are the GP32 days with "we can do it!" spirit, where hardware was pushed to it's limits. Instead we now have software spending most of resources running inefficient code (instead of just doing the work that actually needs to be done) and the Android "scene" of pulling everything open in just to make profit.

True.


I suspect, as more powerful the hardware base is, as less do coders optimize their stuff. I remember I was able to play alot emulated and ported games on GP2X at 200-266MHz, but same programms needed much more power to run on the Pandora. It's possible that with the even more powerful "Pandora 2" it will just getting worse instead of getting better. ^^""


It really seems, as more limited the Hardware is, as more attention people pay at optimizing stuff. C64, Amiga...coders pulled out everything that was in there, and even stuff that was not in there. And this was also often non commercial stuff.


The only place where this philosophy seems to have survived is the demo scene. Sadly, they usualy don't use their talents to do decent games. Oh, and Hackers/Crackers/virus writers pull alot of effort into their products too. I know there are already highly optimized, illegal bots for Diablo 3 out there that can farm, fight and level through the entire game automaticly. And D3 mostly runs on servers and not on the client, impressive. At the same time, many hobby projects of games do not even HAVE (friendly) computer bots where you can fight against for example...

 

[Trip]

Watched the video and one thing that came to mind is that faster software is better than faster hardware. It's a shame so little is done on optimization these days for non-commercial stuff, if it wasn't Ari64 showing up along with a few other cases, we'd have nothing here but ports of old GP2X software and slow PC stuff. Gone are the GP32 days with "we can do it!" spirit, where hardware was pushed to it's limits. Instead we now have software spending most of resources running inefficient code (instead of just doing the work that actually needs to be done) and the Android "scene" of pulling everything open in just to make profit.

True. That was the reason why I got into the GP2X/Pandora scene to start with.


I used to love it when someone brought out a clever bit of code that could improve a project no end. I still remember Squidge getting Snes up to speed, just by releasing a new version every other day with a couple of tweaked lines of code in it. Following the progress of something like that and seeing it take form was awesome


I really miss that. If I'd have known that the Pandora wasn't going to stick with those ideals and would eventually become more of a hardware project, It's doubtful that I would have put up my money to support it in the first place

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, one of the reasons is probably also the fact that a lot of tricks on the GP2X used the hardware directly - which is a lot harder to do with current systems.


The OMAP handbook certainly is a lot thicker than the MMSP2 handbook.


Nowadays, stuff stays more generic because it should run on many different systems. New developers learn Java and C++, Assembler is not used that much anymore as well. A lot of devs that did tricks like that on the old systems probably have a family now and no time to code.


All these financial crisis' today also don't help, people have to work a lot more to keep their family alive which gives them less time to code.


It's sad, but that seems how it is. Some cracks like Ari, Exophase and notaz are rarely seen nowadays, I also wish people would optimize more... but it seems, similar to the PCs, handhelds are now getting faster and faster and optimization is less and less needed.


Now someone needs to find the bottleneck on N64 and make it run full speed on the Pandora.


I'm pretty sure it's possible, but probably not easy.

 

[craigix]

I'm reasonably sure most of the emulators on the Pandora are pretty well optimised. Most use the ASM Z80 and 68k cores don't they?


I guess the rendering could be poor if it's done with SDL, but surely SDL just does the final screen copy?


The only one I can think of that isn't optimised, and this is only from reading threads on it, is the more up to date MAME.

 

[EvilDragon]

True, but almost all of these emulators and the ASM cores had been coded for the GP2X... so far, I think only PCSXReARMed and Mupen have been created for the Pandora.

 

[Exophase]

Most use the ASM Z80 and 68k cores don't they?

Only a small percentage of the emulated platforms use either Z80 or 68k.. particularly none of the more performance critical ones..

 

[craigix]

Most use the ASM Z80 and 68k cores don't they?

Only a small percentage of the emulated platforms use either Z80 or 68k.. particularly none of the more performance critical ones..

But we're talking about optimisation in the emulators, and most of the emulators are Z80 or 68k based.


Which ones don't contain either ASM or highly optimised C cores? The only one I can think of is MAME.


Oh, maybe the Amiga1200 uses a C core too, I don't think cyclone supports the 020 instructions.


When you say a small percentage contain a Z80 or 68k... really? Off the top of my head:


ST, Amiga, Megadrive/Genesis, Gameboy, GBColour, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, various MAME, Gamegear, SMS,


MSX, MegaCD/SegaCD, ZX81, ZX80, Sinclair QL, NeoGeo, Sam Coupe...

 

[Exophase]

But we're talking about optimisation in the emulators, and most of the emulators are Z80 or 68k based.

Which ones don't contain either ASM or highly optimised C cores? The only one I can think of is MAME.


Oh, maybe the Amiga1200 uses a C core too, I don't think cyclone supports the 020 instructions.

Most emulators are NOT Z80 or 68K based. Here are some examples:


NES: 6502


SNES: 65c816


PC-Engine: Hu6280


GBA: ARM


PS1: R3000A


N64: VR4300


Saturn: SH2


But all of these do have ARM ASM CPU cores or dynarecs. desmume comes to mind as an emulator that has no ARM/Pandora specific optimization, but that was only a quick port to quiet people..

 

[notaz]

I'm reasonably sure most of the emulators on the Pandora are pretty well optimised. Most use the ASM Z80 and 68k cores don't they?

I actually only see backwards trend. uae4all got Cyclone pulled out instead of fixing it (the problem is actually in glue code there, not Cyclone itself). Snes9x got asm cores pulled out too instead of fixing them. I'm not aware of any new uses, except maybe FBA, but that came from GP2X too AFAIK.


The hardware getting more complex (like the GPU) is a problem, yes. There could be some effort spent to understand how to use it in low level, more like it has been on PSP, but that's difficult of course. Still the same methods used to optimize in GP32/GP2X could still be used though, but it's not happening nearly as much as it could be.

 

[craigix]

Are you sure most are not

But we're talking about optimisation in the emulators, and most of the emulators are Z80 or 68k based.

Which ones don't contain either ASM or highly optimised C cores? The only one I can think of is MAME.


Oh, maybe the Amiga1200 uses a C core too, I don't think cyclone supports the 020 instructions.

Most emulators are NOT Z80 or 68K based. Here are some examples:


NES: 6502


SNES: 65c816


PC-Engine: Hu6280


GBA: ARM


PS1: R3000A


N64: VR4300


Saturn: SH2


But all of these do have ARM ASM CPU cores or dynarecs. desmume comes to mind as an emulator that has no ARM/Pandora specific optimization, but that was only a quick port to quiet people..

I think that most emulators are Z80/68k based on the Pandora. Look at my (incomplete) list.


If you bring individual MAME drivers in to it it could become interesting, but I'm just putting MAME down as containing 68k and z80 cores.


Adding to your list of non-z80/68k I can only think of a few more, C64 (C128 has a z80 afair), Dosbox, ...


More 68k based emulated systems I've thought of, Apple (not really sure which models or if we have an emulator), Sharp x68000. Loads and loads of Arcade hardware obviously. FBA covers much of it if MAME does not.


But anyhow, if the corresponding emulators are not using the ASM cores, it would be nice if they did.

 

[Exophase]

What list?


Probably a lot of old computers are Z80 or 68k based and there are variants floating around of many versions of the same models. At the very least I can guarantee you that 68K/Z80 systems don't come close to a majority of people's playtime on the console.


Probably the biggest deterrent to optimization on these consoles is that a lot of the old people who did that sort of thing just aren't around anymore.. hell, I don't even see Ari64 here anymore. Or Adventus. Pandora seems to attract more of the mainstream Linux crowd than the old GPH handhelds did and conversely has less console hacker types.


Of course a big component of it is that all the old emulators don't really need it and there aren't a lot on the cusp of fast enough to warrant it..

 

[craigix]

ST, Amiga, Megadrive/Genesis, Gameboy, GBColour, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, various MAME, Gamegear, SMS,


MSX, MegaCD/SegaCD, ZX81, ZX80, Sinclair QL, NeoGeo, Sam Coupe, X68000, a load more arcade hardware in FBA.


You're saying the above don't cover the majority of emulation playtime?


I know a huge part of our customer base essentially use the Pandora as an Amiga alone...

 

[Exophase]

Ah yeah, it's easy to make it look that way when you ONLY list Z80 or 68k ones. Here are others that aren't: Wonderswan, Lynx, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Jaguar, Apple II, PCE-CD, Virtual Boy, Acorn RISC-PC/Archimedes, Commodore 64, DOS PC, Intellivision..

 

[Link]

Just wanted to throw in a thank you for the video, well done!

 

[Exophase]

You're saying the above don't cover the majority of emulation playtime?

Yes. Do we need another poll?