Release PCSX ReARMed, with a new GPU

[PokeParadox]

Pardon my ignorance, but I've done a quick flick through the thread and couldn't find an answer to my question: How well does this run on a 256MB Original Pandora? I'm in the market for a Pandora, and not too fussed about multi tasking, but PS1 emulation would be a massive draw for me.

It runs fine - even with the double resolution enabled - You will need to overclock though. (Around 850MHz)

 

[chewdiggy]

Thanks guys. Since writing this I have started reading the wiki (should have started there I know!) Anyone want to part with their OpenPandora? In all seriousness though, I'm going to be purchasing one as soon as I have the funds. Can't wait!

 

[PokeParadox]

The PS1 on the other hand has full 24 bit color and most of its games have a limited resolution.

But 24bpp is only used for videos, GPU can only draw primitives at 15bpp.

Also: would it be possible to render the 3D bits at double resolution and the 2D bits with some scaler?

Yeah, but the scaler should be able to work with 8x8 (or similar, like 32x32) tiles, as that's how the games draw 2D layers.

Ooh... if that's possible, that would be awesome - smoothed fonts in the menus and nice crisp edges in the 3d scenes!


As for the 15bit rendering - That may be so but the graphic style is different as PS games often use dithering - this also inconveniences algorithms like scale 2X.


That being said it still does manage to improve 2D games.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Thanks guys. Since writing this I have started reading the wiki (should have started there I know!) Anyone want to part with their OpenPandora? In all seriousness though, I'm going to be purchasing one as soon as I have the funds. Can't wait!

Where are you located ?

 

[Stainy]

Stupid question time, is it possible to change between the new hires rendere and the normal one on the fly (ie without going the menu)? that's be a cool party trick to show off the Pandora I think!

Yep, you can define it as hotkey in the config.

Hmmm where abouts in the config... Controls??

 

[chewdiggy]

Thanks guys. Since writing this I have started reading the wiki (should have started there I know!) Anyone want to part with their OpenPandora? In all seriousness though, I'm going to be purchasing one as soon as I have the funds. Can't wait!

Where are you located ?

I'm in the UK mate. But with Christmas around the corner have to be a bit frugal

 

[fusion_power]

I also once asked myself the question, and answered it dilettantish to myself:


I looked into this Wikipedia article and section and saw that SCPH1001 was only 1 after the original revision,


so I guess is the safest to take, in terms of backward compatibility (the manufacturer wants newer games to also work on the oldest revision to not piss of customers, I guess)


but at the same time avoiding the very first revision with possibly some "child diseases". (Just think of the CC Pandora ;-) )

So, shouldn't the newest BIOS files be used because of matured development, and maybe improved performance or whatever they put in over the years? ^^"

I confirm this bug. Tomb Raider, EU version, at the end of the tutorial level (in the swimming pool room) it crashes.


But the following level changes work, although sofar I only made it into level 2.


Workaround: Play the tutorial not at all. If you need it to familiarize yourself with the game concept and controls, then play the tutorial only until the swimming pool room, then abort the level, and start the real game, level 1.


UPDATE: Already noticed that issue in r15 !

I was talking about TombRaider 4, there you can't skip the tutorial, that's the problem. You also can't save theree ingame, you have to run the entire tutorial, typical Console crap imho. You can't even skip the ingame cut-scenes, how I hate this. (The other thing I hate is the fact, that TR4 needs all 4 Shoulder Buttons, damn I've hoped I never would need this on the Pandora but now I also have Diablo for PSX and this also needs 4 Shoulder buttons, unfair!)


So the only way is to play the entire tutorial and don't use quicksaves because like mentioned, these are broken. I tested the english EU and the german EU Version of TR4, both have the same behaviour. I'm waiting for a fixed Emu version, bevore I do the tutorial again. So if hopefully the savestates will working, and the level change bug is fixed, I can continue.


And I also hope, that the Pro Pinball games will run then, still no luck with the newest PCSX ReARMed, at least the images work, the game is loading but hangs up at the beginning, each one of the Series.


Fun fact, Tekken 3 works good and this was a former trouble maker to emulate.

But 24bpp is only used for videos, GPU can only draw primitives at 15bpp.

15bpp? I didn't even knew that such thing existed. Why not 16bpp? 15 sounds so uneven for me and somehow does not fit into the 8-bit rules.

 

[Scntrblob]

15bpp? I didn't even knew that such thing existed. Why not 16bpp? 15 sounds so uneven for me and somehow does not fit into the 8-bit rules.

Yes, because 16 is so easily divided by 3.

 

[porg]

How well does this run on a 256MB Original Pandora?

1) On the original Pandora (256MB, CC board) 2xRes runs

• full FPS (25 or 30) for some games (while on average consuming 60-90% CPU),
  
• quite good for many games (100% CPU load, but still producing 17of25 FPS or more),
  
• and a few were reported to have glitches (strange renderings, not starting, etc).
  

Feel free to see my detailed test reports.


2) For the Rebirth Pandora (512 MB, GC board) I again kindly ask someone from the community to


report the overall performance, and particular a comparison to my reference games/situations. Thanks!

 

[porg]

15bpp? I didn't even knew that such thing existed. Why not 16bpp? 15 sounds so uneven for me and somehow does not fit into the 8-bit rules.

Yes, because 16 is so easily divided by 3.

Which means, 3 color channels getting 5bit each (32 colors, palette colors I guess).

 

[fusion_power]

15bpp? I didn't even knew that such thing existed. Why not 16bpp? 15 sounds so uneven for me and somehow does not fit into the 8-bit rules.

Yes, because 16 is so easily divided by 3.

but Mr. Monk says, it must be easily divided by 4, it must be an even number, it must! :lol:

 

[Michoko]

Great relase Notaz, as always!


FYI, I had rather slow performance with 2xRes, until I deleted all my settings and let the emu set the default values again. After that, even my 256 CC unit runs games beautifully with some overclocking.


Thank you!

 

[notaz]

So, shouldn't the newest BIOS files be used because of matured development, and maybe improved performance or whatever they put in over the years? ^^"

The BIOS doesn't really do that much (mostly interrupt management and some helper functions), Sony provided libraries that were compiled into the games themselves, so it's not that important.

So the only way is to play the entire tutorial and don't use quicksaves because like mentioned, these are broken. I tested the english EU and the german EU Version of TR4, both have the same behaviour. I'm waiting for a fixed Emu version, bevore I do the tutorial again. So if hopefully the savestates will working, and the level change bug is fixed, I can continue.

Note that EU games were often copy protected, you need .sub or .sbi to emulate that. redump.org is down so I don't know if those games were copy protected or not.

But 24bpp is only used for videos, GPU can only draw primitives at 15bpp.

15bpp? I didn't even knew that such thing existed. Why not 16bpp? 15 sounds so uneven for me and somehow does not fit into the 8-bit rules.

1 bit is not color and used for things like priority and transparency. Other consoles like 32X and even PSP have such modes.

 

[_wb_]

The PS1 on the other hand has full 24 bit color and most of its games have a limited resolution.

But 24bpp is only used for videos, GPU can only draw primitives at 15bpp.

I see. Well, 15bpp is still 128 times as many colors as the 8 bit palette pixel art Scale2x was designed for. Would it be possible (without too much performance penalty) to ignore, say, the 2 least significant bits of each color value, so effectively comparing 9 bit colors in the Scale2x algorithm?

Also: would it be possible to render the 3D bits at double resolution and the 2D bits with some scaler?

Yeah, but the scaler should be able to work with 8x8 (or similar, like 32x32) tiles, as that's how the games draw 2D layers.

That wouldn't really be a problem, right? Or could it introduce seams?


For games like FF it makes a lot of sense to render the 3D part at double resolution while doing some nice scaling with the 2D stuff (the background images and the interface stuff).


Another thing: how is text rendered? Would there be a way to use higher res fonts? Or is all text just images, with no way for the emulator to know what is text and what are images?

 

[chewdiggy]

Lovely. So I should look at the ReBirth ideally. Best get saving then!

 

[fusion_power]

Note that EU games were often copy protected, you need .sub or .sbi to emulate that. redump.org is down so I don't know if those games were copy protected or not.

Hmm, I have no experience with that. At least, the games do start. Would be a really mean copy protection if you don't recognize the protection right at the beginning. ^^" However, my one german Tomb Raider4 image has the notice "EDC", there is also one available without "EDC", could be some copy protection or whatever. I would use my original discs I have but no luck with a propper working image, so I've choosen the ready images that are "offered". ^^""

 

[Exophase]

That wouldn't really be a problem, right? Or could it introduce seams?

Filtering 2D that's broken into chunks will introduce noticeable artifacts between the chunks, that's completely unavoidable. That's what you mean by "nice scaling", right? Right now sprites are effectively getting directly scaled with nearest neighbor.


You could try rendering the 3D part (triangles/quads) and the 2D part (sprites) to separate framebuffers, with some ID to indicate draw order, then try combining the two, with the latter drawn at native resolution. It'd save on the big current expense of rendering the sprites directly at 2x resolution, although I don't know how expensive the scalers themselves are. But it breaks down when there's any dependency between the two, which happens when you draw one over the other with transparency or blending. So I think it'd be a go from the start.

Another thing: how is text rendered? Would there be a way to use higher res fonts? Or is all text just images, with no way for the emulator to know what is text and what are images?

There is absolutely no way for the emulator to know. A lot of text is drawn with sprites so you couldn't replace it with higher resolution textures (sprites don't allow scaling). And of course even if you could you'd need to have room for them in VRAM..

 

[_wb_]

That wouldn't really be a problem, right? Or could it introduce seams?

Filtering 2D that's broken into chunks will introduce noticeable artifacts between the chunks, that's completely unavoidable. That's what you mean by "nice scaling", right? Right now sprites are effectively getting directly scaled with nearest neighbor.

I have no idea how bad those artifacts would be, but I would think it cannot be that bad: if you don't touch the border pixels (which no scaling filter should do), at least the chunks will still match up at the seams. It would be like a chunk-sized grid (assuming the chunks are aligned regularly) of unfiltered (NN) pixels on top of a mostly filtered image.


For things like character sprites it matters even less, since those are typically transparent at the edges.

 

[Exophase]

You don't think having a grid of unfiltered pixels will be distracting?


Transparency often looks bad too when you have a chunky unfiltered outline over a filtered sprite..

 

[PokeParadox]

Scale2X is quite a clean filter, so I doubt the artefacts would be too bad. I wouldn't try this hybrid mode with Eagle2X though, it does some blurring, a surefire way of creating tiling artetfacts.