Picodrive Vs Megadrive

[reiboul]

I did some screenshots of my favourite Genesis games, using GP2X' TV Out and my good old Megadrive 2!

I zipped the images and send them on my FTP

Obviously, the original Megadrive has waayyy better colors, and the ratio seems different...

Maybe those shots will give ideas to Notaz

MD vs PD

(right-click / save target as...)

 

[Samba Pa Ti]

had problems downloading the link by clicking it, works fine if you right click 'save target as'

 

[Alex.]

Yep, the download's screwed up. Make a link to it somewhere on your Lycos site and it will be fine. It's just that Lycos hates using its webspace as file storage, so direct downloads are not very accessible.

Your idea is great, I can't wait to see it

- Alex

 

[gaterooze]

Just enter this link into your browser:

http://membres.lycos.fr/reiboul/MDvsPD.zip

(warning for dialup: it's 14mb)

 

[reiboul]

Shinobi's screenshot are bad, but of all the 4 games, it was probably the 'ugliest-looking' using Picodrive

 

[gaterooze]

The PicoDrive screens seem scaled larger, I wonder how much effect that has?

 

[Alex.]

Excellent, it's downloading right now

- Alex

 

[PSyMastR]

It gives me errors. Anyone mind rehosting?

 

[Epicenter]

Graphics should be close to the real thing, but won't look exactly right as the original analog and digital MD video encoding hardware is not present. The bigger issue in emulation accuracy is audio, really. Since the CPU resources are quite limited on a machine like the GP2X, emulation accuracy is always sacrificed for the sake of speed. The only emulator I've seen that even comes sort of close to the quality of the original MD's audio, especially the parts produced by the YM2612, is KEGA Fusion, but porting that to the GP2X would result in terrible speed, I'm sure. It's just too big and beefy a program.

 

[YuanHao]

Have you heart Picodrive in its fullest? It sounds EXCELLENT, I'm a SEGA music lover (Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Sonic, Super Hang On, MUSHA Aleste, etc) and I must say that this emulator's sound is near perfect (again, at max), not like any other sega emu out there.

 

[reiboul]

yes I had all options on, as usual
Epicenter, you said GP2X is not powerfull enough to handle accurate emulation, but (nearly) every Genesis game is playable fullspeed less than 200Mhz using both cores, according each GP2X can go up to 240 min., that leaves a good potential for further enhancements
As soon as there is an option to deactivate accurate emulation, everyone will be fine

 

[Trip]

Hope you don't mind reiboul, but I stitched together the photos & uploaded them upto my site for easier viewing Here!
Credited you of course, but just let me know if you want them removing or changing.

p.s. I had to lower the resolution of each photo to 1024x768 before stitching together, but they should still be high enough resolution to make out any differences

 

[Godmil]

Nice one Tripmonkey.

That's pretty cool reiboul, nice idea. So I take it the Original is on the left and the emulation on the right? It's funny how the right one has so much richer colours. Wait, is it one tv or two... it looks just like two tv's where one has a higher brightness.

 

[reiboul]

no problem

 

[Trip]

Nice one Tripmonkey.

That's pretty cool reiboul, nice idea. So I take it the Original is on the left and the emulation on the right? It's funny how the right one has so much richer colours. Wait, is it one tv or two... it looks just like two tv's where one has a higher brightness.

Yep original on the left, emulated on the right
I think the richer colours are down to the higher gamma settings on the GP2X?
The GP2X versions seem to show off more detail too due to this.

 

[Epicenter]

yes I had all options on, as usual
Epicenter, you said GP2X is not powerfull enough to handle accurate emulation, but (nearly) every Genesis game is playable fullspeed less than 200Mhz using both cores, according each GP2X can go up to 240 min., that leaves a good potential for further enhancements
As soon as there is an option to deactivate accurate emulation, everyone will be fine

Don't take my comments the wrong way; it's not a criticism of the GP2X. The laptop I am typing this message from has a Pentium M (Banias core) @ 1.4 GHz, rough equivalent in performance to a 2.4 GHz-2.8 GHz Pentium 4 or a bit slower than an Athlon 64 2800+ ... using Fusion (the emulator with the best audio emulation of the MegaDrive/Genesis at this point in time) with its audio settings maxed out (44100hz samplerate, SuperHQ/OverDrive YM2612 emulation settings), it is occupying *90%* of my CPU time to run at 60 FPS. If I give the emulator high priority, it will make typing in this window difficult. No portable device, even with the fastest ARM, MIPS, VIA or Transmeta processor will run an emulator this stressful properly. They can handle accurate GRAPHICS emulation of the system since the MD's VDP (video display processor) was a fairly simple unit, well documented and based on a part from the late 80s by TI. It sound hardware is a complex mix, with a full 4 MHz Zilog Z80 microprocessor, a programmable sound generator (PSG) and an digital/analog converter to worry about. It's much more work than you might imagine to emulate accurately than the graphics, especially with a beefy 8 Mhz 68000 CPU to emulate, too.

On the other side of the coin you have the SNES which has a weak and easy to emulate CPU and a fairly simple sound subsystem, but its graphics are far too complex to emulate properly on most handhelds. Handheld emulation ALWAYS entails comprimise on systems post-1986...

 

[reiboul]

Yep original on the left, emulated on the right
I think the richer colours are down to the higher gamma settings on the GP2X?
The GP2X versions seem to show off more detail too due to this.

They are both from the same TV, and I don't think the colors are in any way 'richer' on the GP2X... Actually I think it looks worse on the GP2X than on the Megadrive, maybe too much contrast and not enough luminosity? But simply lowering the contrast and adding luminosity will certainly cause some white 'fog' over the screen... I think it's more a Picodrive issue

For example Shinobi 3 looked quite bad compared to Megadrive version

 

[reiboul]

Don't take my comments the wrong way; it's not a criticism of the GP2X.

me either
I was not talking specifically about sound emulation, but as I said on another topic (3rd post) the GP2X has extra power that is not used in Megadrive emulation. I'm not good enough to code a single emulator, but I was just giving some tips if anybody like Notaz was bored and looking how to improve Picodrive

 

[Epicenter]

A lot of games looked better on a TV with 'shitty' composite/RF video because the graphics were dithered in such a way as to use color bleeding and dot crawl to intentionally form a sort of 'poor man's antialiasing' and simulate more colors. And in many cases, most dramatically Ecco the Dolphin 1/2 and Gunstar Heroes, it worked incredibly well. On a display that shows a digital frame 'pixel perfect', it just isn't the same. The picture will also lack the vibrancy and 'warmth' of the original analog signal as well. Just something inherent to emulation really.

 

[messiah]

Exactly - the same thing was in PS Tomb Raider wchic "did" transparency by displaying white dots on objects. On RF it mixes well and produces effect of trnsparency. on good SCART cable users reported worse graphics - in fact it was so sharp that many ot these "tricks" became too visible.

And we should remember that DAC on megadrives wasn't as accurate as for ex. Gp2x DAC. Those older types produced some more noise that was composed into output signal. Some people still like that "feeling" some don't. It is similar in some degrees to vinyl records compared to CD..

t sound hardware is a complex mix, with a full 4 MHz Zilog Z80 microprocessor, a programmable sound generator (PSG) and an digital/analog converter to worry about. It's much more work than you might imagine to emulate accurately than the graphics, especially with a beefy 8 Mhz 68000 CPU to emulate, too.

Epicenter, look at Neo Geo - system much much more powerful than MD. NG had Zilog Z80A for general sound operation, FM chip: Yamaha YM2610 15 Sound Channels - 7 Digital, 4 FM synthesis, 3 PSG, and 1 Noise Channel. This IS a bit more powerful and tricky to emulate, isnt it? So why we haven't problems with NG sound in emulators? neoragex, kawaks, even gp2x ng emu sounds wery well ?? With beefier 12mhz M68K CPU to emulate, not to mention much more advanced video processor...