New Video From Mweston

[wermy]

Wow, this is MUCH further along than I expected! I can't wait to see what moving stuff over to NEON does. The thought of Ikaruga and Toy Commander in my pocket is almost too exciting to bear.

 

[MDave]

Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 anybody? Phantasy Star Online?

 

[WizardStan]

GLEs at 800x480 - is this software scaling up to 800x480 at the moment, or does gles give you scaling in hardware (sorry, not following GL libary developments on the pandora)?

No scaling he says. It is rendering AT 800x480.
So, if I understand, there are two ways to get some speed boosts.
FPU->NEON is an obvious one.
It would also seem a speed benefit could be granted by rendering at 400x240 and then using hardware scaling to bring it up to full size. Only if needed, of course, as that would reduce the pretty pretty pictures

 

[fischju2000]

Brilliant. Or should I say, genius.

 

[conso]

I still wonder if fpu-> neon is the only bigger obvious optimization the nulldc-devs have in scope. I remember last time the list was quite a bit longer.

 

[drkIIRaziel]

Yep, there is no pixel scaling involved (the geometry is scaled instead on the vertex shader)

Since this is being developed for the Pandora now, is there a possibility of a generic x86 Linux release as well? Because that would be an awesome addition to my htpc.

There is already a version for x86 that works just fine with wine.There are also other Linux-native, open source dreamcast emulators that you can use.I don't think you'l want a limited-accuracy, optimized for speed emulation that uses gles instead of gl -- especially since x86 cpus aren't weak these days.There might be a release for x86 when this is done (for like older netbooks etc) but most likely windows only (supporting binary releases on linux is almost impossible ...)

I still wonder if fpu-> neon is the only bigger obvious optimization the nulldc-devs have in scope. I remember last time the list was quite a bit longer.

Implementing all the dynarec il opcodes on the arm backend is the next step (thats what i am working on now, and it involves NEON/NFP for fpu).There are many more things to do after it

 

[giovanni]

Very promising.... Thank you very much!

What about dangers in overclocking the CPU... I assume it's impossible to get this playable without increasing the CPU clock speed (700/800Mhz) but I remember someone saying that this kind of procedure can make problems to the hardware.... It would be boring playing and know that you're reduceing the life of your Pandora....

I'm speculating...
However you made an incredible work... Brilliant!

 

[purple_goat]

so many brix.

 

[conso]

Very promising.... Thank you very much!

What about dangers in overclocking the CPU... I assume it's impossible to get this playable without increasing the CPU clock speed (700/800Mhz) but I remember someone saying that this kind of procedure can make problems to the hardware.... It would be boring playing and know that you're reduceing the life of your Pandora....

I'm speculating...
However you made an incredible work... Brilliant!

I remember one of them saying "good" emulation on pandora's native speed is the goal of the project. Whoever said that was very aware of the dangers of overclocking. From what drkIIIRaziel said in this thread, I'm quite confident they can make it happen.

 

[Phawx]

@giovanni

I recall OP saying that when NEON was used, overclocking couldn't really be done.

 

[neko]

I would think HLE would be a likely candidate for sound, as I can't see much call for an Arm7 dynarec for Coretex-A8 outside this emu?

It might be useful. You'd need something similar for GBA/DS emulation.

 

[MonkeyChops]

Out of curiosity, why is the pandora in the video connected to a computer?

 

[lulzfish]

MWeston uses a special breakout board and his computer as a console, so he can enter commands and get text output even while a program is running fullscreen.

 

[MrBlais]

Wow... I'm really impressed. To think that this was even possible is still beyond me. I thought it was just a pipe dream, but you guys are making it possible. It's pure genius...

Really makes you wonder what the successor will do.

 

[TheRain]

Full speed DC emulation would be THE killer app for me. That would firmly put the nail in coffin of ever wanting to play the PSP just to get a higher end handheld gaming experience

 

[fusion_power]

The problem with the sound is that it includes a second cpu (arm7 , we need to run it at 11 mhz or so) and i don't have a dynarec for that.If an arm dynarec is made and the sound mixing work is moved to the dsp i' say ~ 10%.Another option is hle since most games use the same code on the ARM side.

Can there be an advantage of the fact, that the Pandora also has an ARM Processor (1:1 Emulation of this part???) and also a PoverVR unit like the DC has, or ist it again such a "emulation problem" that even similar Processors can't do similar things 1:1 onto a System which emulates another System?

Well, DC Emulation sounds phantastic but to be realistic, I think the DC Hardware sounds scary enough to make a playable Full-Speed Emulation onto the Pandora a very though task:
CPU: 128-Bit Hitachi SuperH4 RISC (360 Mips, 800MB/sec Data Throughput)
CPU speed: 200MHz
RAM: 26 Megabyte (16MB main/8MB video/2 MB sound)
Sound: 64 Voice Yamaha Super Intelligent Sound Processor (45MHz, 40Mips, 64 voices, 16-bit 48KHz, 3D audio support)
Graphics processor: NEC PowerVR Series II (100MHz, renders up to 3.5 million polygons/sec)
MIPS: 360 Mips
FLOPS: 1.4 Billion
Polygons per second: 3 Million

200(!!!) MHz CPU Speed emulated onto a "only" 600MHz System, wow, when I see, how complicated can be a "simple" SNES Emulation (CPU: around 3,5MHz :lol: )onto GP2X / Wiz ... then this here is truely a miracle emulator even onrto it's current state, RESPECT!

I hope to play "IKARUGA" some day onto the Pandora, but I would be happy with the DC "Super Puzzle Fighter" Version, Dead or Alive 2 would be also more than nice. ^_^

 

[WizardStan]

200(!!!) MHz CPU Speed emulated onto a "only" 600MHz System, wow

MWeston said he was overclocking to 800Mhz.

 

[amf66]

This looks great! For this early on I'm amazed that it looks so good! Keep up the good work!

 

[greendots]

Could someone confirm that neon with overclock will lock up the cpu? I have found some info in the beagleboard irc log but I wouldnt know if its out dated. Can we get info on the omap revision that was ordered and a changelog?

 

[HackModford]

WOW :blink:
I NEVER thought it could be that good... Sonic Adventure... here I come!...