Yet Another "Got A Pandora" Thread


A

aidenn

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Hello!

So, I've finally caved in and got me my very own Pandora. I gotta say, it's one heck of a machine.

I've wanted it since the first announcement, but the price was way too much. Or so I thought, because then came the last batch info, no more Pandoras ever, Pyra still a long way into the future... what the heck, there goes my cash.

First impressions were a bit weak, the keyboard was squeaky and gooey, nubs too sensitive (I'm spoiled by the 3DS' circle pads) and there was tearing all over the screen, not to mention small graphical glitches with icons in XFCE. On top of that, the first game I tried (GNURobbo) was stuttering, the second (F-1 Spirit) had slowdowns and Doom wasn't running that great.

But then I started using MiniMenu and spent a whole day just playing with various emulators. Boy, it's pure heaven. I even got used to the nubs (NubNub! is a fantastic game too).

I'm extremely satisfied now, even if I don't know what to do because there's so many options.

PS. Which Doom port (if any) can be set up to run @ full 60 FPS without slowdowns? ;)
 
aidenn said:
But then I started using MiniMenu and spent a whole day just playing with various emulators. Boy, it's pure heaven. I even got used to the nubs (NubNub! is a fantastic game too).
Click to expand...
Thank you :)

It may be interesting to point out that NubNub was coded completely on the Pandora itself, using the Pandora keyboard. It takes some time to get used to the keyboard, but once it's in your fingers, you can be really productive with it, at least for a handheld.
 
Whee, thanks for that game. :)

As for the keyboard, well, maybe I'll get used to it, but so far I'm typing much faster on my Xperia Mini Pro's keyboard, and it's much smaller, so it's not size that's the issue. The problem in Pandora's keyboard for me lies mostly in how high the buttons are, I think making them flat would be better. Other than that I have a few gripes about placement of CTRL, ALT, SHIFT and, especially, TAB - why isn't it to the left of Q? And a second shift to the right of P, that would be awesome. I would also switch SPACE with < and >. :)

-- edit --

Scratch that CTRL and SHIFT gripe, I have been told on IRC that I can use shoulder buttons for that. :D
 
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It does in new ports and I dig it :) . Anyway, the problem is not actually the FPS, I tried both Cocoa and Chocolate and they both have small slowdowns, it's noticeable when you stand in place and rotate continuously - scrolling is not perfectly smooth.

Zdoom refuses to run unfortunately, I point it to my DOOM2.WAD, push run, it thinks for a few seconds and displays a log, which says everything's OK, but the game itself doesn't run. I'll have to do more research later.

Binky, I already set it to my liking. It doesn't change the fact that distance between center and the edge is just too short for accurate movement, especially with just 32 levels. I'll get used to it, at least it's better than PSP stick.
 
@aidenn

On a Gigahertz model, I haven't noticed slowdown on F1-Spirit. At what level do you notice that?

Zdoom runs with no issue.

Are you sure your Firmware is up-to-date? And do the version are the latest from the repo?
 
My firmware is 1.60, latest versions of software.

By "slowdown" I mean dropping a few frames once in a while, not slowing down the gameplay. I'm one of those people who notice the difference between, for example, 55 FPS and 60 FPS with a naked eye and it tends to bug me, so I understand if you don't see it. And don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the device at all, it's just that more should be expected with all that power, especially when there are other games which look much better and run perfect.

In F-1 Spirit it's going on all the time on top of non-60 FPS framerate to start with. It's much better at 1.3 GHz, but it still dips when there are a lot of cars on the screen at once. Tested on the first level you can choose without any menu navigation, just confirm everything after hitting play. :)

It's not bad in any way, it's perfectly playable, the game looks great and handles great, it's just that scrolling is not silky-smooth.

In Doom it's better, there's only a few drops here and there, but I feel that it's wrong for Doom to have ANY frame drops whatsoever, especially if, for example, DS Doom does not do that, and NDS has such a weak hardware.

-- edit --

Ok, got to run Zdoom, had to switch the SDL driver to x11 because it was refusing to run with omapdss. x11 performance was terrible as expected (went under 35 FPS a few times, which made it slower than DOS Doom), but then I switched back to omapdss just because, and, strangely, it worked this time. Something is afoot with that SDL driver chooser, but anyway - finally, 60 FPS with Doom, case closed. :)

It does need 1+ GHz, which is slightly disappointing, but at least it works. And now I can wait for a properly optimized Doom while playing Doom. :)
 
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I didn't mess with it at the beginning, so it was using default all the time. Later, I tried 4.10 too, but nothing changed. Apparently, I'm not the only one with this issue, as seen in the Zdoom thread. However, like I said, switching to x11 and back fixed it and now it works both with 4.10 and default drivers. As far as I see, this issue has nothing to do with SGX driver and is most likely related to how the front-end writes configuration files, because now the start-up log actually mentions omapsdl, whereas before it didn't.
 
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I talked about this on IRC briefly and it seems all of them break something in one way or another, so it's best to set them on a per-app basis, especially since switching is fast and painless. For example, apparently Reicast works best with 4.10.
 
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aidenn said:
apparently Reicast works best with 4.10.
Click to expand...
Based on what i have heard it does not increase performance, just reduces some 3D glitches.

aidenn said:
especially since switching is fast and painless.
Click to expand...
Not sure what you mean here, launching a PND to install another driver that takes about 30s with sudo rights is far from what I'd call an "on the fly" solution :p
 
aidenn said:
My firmware is 1.60, latest versions of software.

By "slowdown" I mean dropping a few frames once in a while, not slowing down the gameplay. I'm one of those people who notice the difference between, for example, 55 FPS and 60 FPS with a naked eye and it tends to bug me, so I understand if you don't see it. And don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the device at all, it's just that more should be expected with all that power, especially when there are other games which look much better and run perfect.

In F-1 Spirit it's going on all the time on top of non-60 FPS framerate to start with. It's much better at 1.3 GHz, but it still dips when there are a lot of cars on the screen at once. Tested on the first level you can choose without any menu navigation, just confirm everything after hitting play. :)

It's not bad in any way, it's perfectly playable, the game looks great and handles great, it's just that scrolling is not silky-smooth.

In Doom it's better, there's only a few drops here and there, but I feel that it's wrong for Doom to have ANY frame drops whatsoever, especially if, for example, DS Doom does not do that, and NDS has such a weak hardware.

-- edit --

Ok, got to run Zdoom, had to switch the SDL driver to x11 because it was refusing to run with omapdss. x11 performance was terrible as expected (went under 35 FPS a few times, which made it slower than DOS Doom), but then I switched back to omapdss just because, and, strangely, it worked this time. Something is afoot with that SDL driver chooser, but anyway - finally, 60 FPS with Doom, case closed. :)

It does need 1+ GHz, which is slightly disappointing, but at least it works. And now I can wait for a properly optimized Doom while playing Doom. :)
Click to expand...
Ok. Indeed, F1-Spirit is not at a steady 50fps (this one use 50fps and not 60fps, so I switch LCD Refresh rate to 50fps to smoother the scrollings). There are frameskip, especialy on the Rally Track. I optimized it quite a lot, but it's still not enough.

But there should be no-slowdown. That's why I was surprised.

For ZDoom, the x11/omapdss selection bug is quite strange yes. My code still need some improvement it seems. (35fps may be slower than DOS Doom, that's right, but don't forget it's render @ 800x480x16bits, so much much beter than 320x200x8bits of DOS Doom  :p )
 
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ekianjo said:
Based on what i have heard it does not increase performance, just reduces some 3D glitches.
Click to expand...
Well, AFAIK changing the driver doesn't increase performance in anything, so the sole purpose of switching is to reduce the amount of glitches and crashes. I wouldn't expect better performance anywhere. :)

ekianjo said:
Not sure what you mean here, launching a PND to install another driver that takes about 30s with sudo rights is far from what I'd call an "on the fly" solution :p
Click to expand...
Sudo can be set to not require password. Other than that it's really not bad, for one - it doesn't require a reboot, which makes it as much on-the-fly as possible I think.

ptitSeb said:
35fps may be slower than DOS Doom, that's right, but don't forget it's render @ 800x480x16bits, so much much beter than 320x200x8bits of DOS Doom :p
Click to expand...
Quite true, however I'm not surprised at x11 performance, x11 is notoriously awful for anything other than displaying static images :p . Nonetheless, I would expect GPU-accellerated Doom to run @ 60 FPS with lower MHz requirements.

And F-1 Spirit does reach 50 FPS with 1.3 GHz, only not all the time. :)
 
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F1-Spirit is still GPU-limited. If you like overclocking, try also uping (a little) the sysspeed, you will gain fps on this one with that (there are very few GPU limited game on the Pandora).

And yeah, ZDoom using x11 is not lightning fast, but when you want to use nub as mouse or a real mouse, the current omapdss driver doesn't go very well, as it's more tuned for TouchScreen (and using dual-nubs config and Brutal Doom makes a very interesting combo, even if not a smooth one)
 
Maybe I'll try some sysspeed OC later on.

And yeah, the nubs in Zdoom using omapdss are sooo crazy. :D
 
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