/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.6606143]

What's your opinion on fpga emulation?

[Anonymous No.6606147]

Whatever floats your boat.

[Anonymous No.6606151]

utterly useless and doesn't hold a candle to PC cycle-accurate emulation with run ahead

[Anonymous No.6606154]

>>6606151
Awww, it's retarded

[Anonymous No.6606162]

Seems pretty neat, but I already have a powerful PC (which I'll be upgrading later this year), so I'd probably just stick with PC emulators myself.

[Anonymous No.6606164]

Pc emulators are superior

[Anonymous No.6606169]

>>6606154
hope you didn't buy one fammie

[Anonymous No.6606173]

>>6606164
>>6606151
[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.6606175]

For me, personally, it's the retron 5.

[Anonymous No.6606176]

>>6606143
Not really different from software emulation, but might be useful if some specific hardware is just not getting good performance on software emulators.

[Anonymous No.6606178]

>>6606143
nah I have a raspberry pi that can handle all my needs

[Anonymous No.6606191]

software emulation is great for everything fourth gen and before. It's not so great for 5th gen onwards.
It's a shame we don't have an FPGA for those consoles though, a PlayStation or N64 FPGA console would be very interesting

[Anonymous No.6606339]

>>6606191
Both PSX and N64 FPGA projects are early in the works, but there's a debate if they could fit on the widespread DE-10 Nano board.
I want to see some 2030s madman design an FPGA PS2.

[Anonymous No.6606357]

>>6606143
Neat but pricy for me.

[Anonymous No.6606467]

>>6606143
poorfags second worst nightmare.

[Anonymous No.6606502]

>>6606173
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/NeoGeo_MiSTer/issues/65

[Anonymous No.6606794]

>>6606339
When downies squeal at each other it's not called a debate

[Anonymous No.6606810]

>>6606502
The core is still new and in active development.

[Anonymous No.6607291]

its just software emulation with extra steps

[Anonymous No.6607314]

>>6606175
is it possible to hack the retron 5 so you could just run roms off an SD card?

[Anonymous No.6607318]

>controllers
>stolar
>x is best looking console
>sonic adventure games arent good
>sm64
>why didnt the dc/saturn succeed?
>kino
>mini console hacks
>psx
>zoomers
>off topic game from youtuber
>emulation

[Anonymous No.6607420]

>>6606143
a great way to reproduce retro hardware, ensuring preservation of to-spec hardware beyond the lifetime of their original runs once schematics are fully documented

[Anonymous No.6607552]

>>6607291
Human:
>Hmm, the spec says I need to implement an AND gate for this part of the circuit

CPU:
>Ok boss!
>But that instruction isn't in my cache!
>I first need to wait on the MMU to arbitrate multicore memory access
>MMU: FUCK YOU! PAGE FAULT!
>Shucks! Wait a sec, the OS put me to sleep and scheduled a new process to execute while I wait
>Oh, nice, the MMU woke me back up and is letting me access main memory!
>First, let me fetch the next 20 instructions
>Ok, now let's break those instructions down into a completely different microcode architecture than the one I was historically based one
>Gotta reorder those microops and issue them to the out-of-order instruction scheduler so it can dispatch them!
>Now that pipeline is flowing (after the 20 instruction latency to get that first instruction through)!!
>Sweet, now Registers RAXCSi2 and RDXSuckmyballs, please send your 64-bit data value to the ALU 35 so we can AND the first bit of your data together
>Speculative execution core, ya doin alright?
>SEC: *shits self (remarkably fast)*
>Ok! Pipe that result back to RAX and let's call it a day!

FPGA:
>wha? but senpai, you don't even need one logic block's full 4-bit look up table to do that! And I've got 100000 of them!

[Anonymous No.6607673]

I’m excited for the Analogue Pocket myself.

[Anonymous No.6607680]

Hmm let's read the account of a disgruntled FPGA owner who had the means to compare

[Anonymous No.6607728]

>>6607680
Shillpost

[Anonymous No.6607735]

>>6607728
copepost
who paid that shill I wonder, amd, intel, nvidia, maybe retroarch devs themselves?

[Anonymous No.6607737]

more like fpGAY

[Anonymous No.6607779]

>>6606143
FPGAs are pretty much the future in everything

t. embedded systems programmer

[Anonymous No.6607831]

>>6606143
Nothing makes it inherently more accurate than software emulation. Kind of boring to see FPGA emulation for consoles that can already be emulated with cycle accuracy on modern day PC hardware, like the SNES and Mega Drive. It would be way more interesting to see FPGA emulation for something difficult, like the N64, but apparently that's hard because of the speed and complexity of the N64. Guess what? That's what makes it hard with software emulation too... so what's the advantage of FPGAs?

[Anonymous No.6607834]

>>6607831
N64 emulation with paraLLEl is near perfect dude

[Anonymous No.6607860]

>>6607834
The ParaLLEI RDP plugin is only as accurate as Angrylion was, just faster. The core of Parallel N64 is just an old version of Mupen64Plus, and it definitely has bugs (in Pokemon Snap, for example.) Not saying ParaLLEI isn't pretty cool, but N64 emulation still isn't perfect.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, emulating a full N64 with cycle accuracy in software is probably too taxing for modern CPUs. If FPGAs really are better, it would be nice to see it done with an FPGA.

[Anonymous No.6607865]

>>6607673
Same here but the fuckers need to give a date and also not understock it

[Anonymous No.6607867]

>>6607860
Minor bugs aren't really a problem when you consider that parallels can remedy the shortcomings of an original N64 as dipping framerate or low resolution. Why would you want to play Conkers Bad Fur Day in its original form?

[Anonymous No.6607897]

>>6606143
faggotry invented for anti-emufags so they could claim "but it's hardware!" to feel better when they emulate
Also you pay money for something you could get for free at the exact same legality status

[Anonymous No.6607898]

>>6607867
The Snap bug isn't minor. It's fixed in Mupen64Plus-Next (the other emulator with ParaLLEI RDP,) but OoT randomly freezes. There is no N64 emulator that plays the entire library without "bad" glitches. Also, the thing about fixing bugs in emulators with inaccurate timing is that it can be like whack-a-mole. Fixing one timing bug can make another, and they can be subtle or hard to trigger, like freezing 10% of the time after beating the final boss, or something like that.

[Anonymous No.6607908]

>>6606151
this is implying that run ahead isn't possible on an fpga

[Anonymous No.6607910]

>>6607898
>There is no N64 emulator that plays the entire library without "bad" glitches
And? It only affects you when you're trying to play the game which has a glitch in it, and even then the glitch may be so minor that the improvements in gameplay which emulator offers outweigh it. For the 99% of N64 library which doesn't exhibit glitches it becomes the definitive way to play w/o any compromises.

[Anonymous No.6607917]

It's neat! I can finally play Adventures of Batman & Robin for the Genesis without glitches.

Once the PlayStation core for the MiSTer is finished, it's probably going to receive a lot of attention.

[Anonymous No.6607919]

>>6607910
You're copeposting, dude. I'm not saying ParaLLEI is bad, but you have to admit it's not literally 100% perfect. That's okay. I don't think any worse of you for using an emulator that isn't perfect. I use it too. It's one of the best ways to play N64 games today and it has several advantages over original hardware. But it's not perfect.

Literally all I'm saying is that it would be interesting if FPGAs were used to improve the state of N64 emulation, because I think it's boring that FPGAs are used for platforms where software emulation is already perfect. I am not attacking your choice of N64 emulator.

[Anonymous No.6607931]

>>6607919
Any emulator is imperfect by its very nature, it's a null argument. You're acting like a tiny fraction of titles exhibiting minor flaws diminishes the experience with 99%+ of the library which doesn't. If your only measurement of emuation quality is accuracy, then indeed FPGA can bring slight improvements, but when user experience is concerned then it's impossibile as it will be limited by its puny hardware.

[Anonymous No.6607959]

>>6607931
>Any emulator is imperfect by its very nature
Well, not "by its very nature." Video game consoles are deterministic systems, so in theory it's possible to emulate them with 100% accuracy.
>You're acting like a tiny fraction of titles exhibiting minor flaws
Nigga I want to play Pokemon Snap.
>If your only measurement of emuation quality is accuracy
I didn't say anything about my measurement of emulation quality. I literally just said it would be interesting. Accurate emulators are interesting, even if you don't use them. Someone might want to play an uncommon game that's glitchy in other emulators, or someone might want to know if their favourite game really crashes when they do a specific thing in a specific level, or if it's just an emulation bug. Maybe in 15 years it will be hard to get your hands on a working N64. In that case, they'd boot up an accurate emulator instead, even if they don't use one normally.
>then indeed FPGA can bring slight improvements,
If you read what I was posting, instead of misconstruing everything I said as an attack on your favourite emulator, you'd realise I'm implying that it won't, because it hasn't already, and apparently there are problems with implementing such a fast and complex console on currently available FPGA hardware like the MiSTer. I was hoping someone who knew more about FPGAs would tell me I was wrong. Instead, I got into an argument with someone trying to tell me that the emulator I already use is good.

[Anonymous No.6607964]

>>6606143
>What's your opinion on fpga emulation?
It's very good when done right. Mister allowed me to sell my consolized mvs, sega cd without ragrets.

[Anonymous No.6609056]

>>6607908
It isn't. FPGAs magically emulate hardware perfectly just like cycle accurate emulation magically emulates hardware perfectly so it's impossible that either can do it because original hardware can't.

[Anonymous No.6610270]

>>6607959
Some people are incredibly butthurt about more options existing and new possibilities getting explored. Likely emulator devs that were rolling in money from licensing their code to clone manufacturers. Cue the FUD spreading, straw manning, false flags with bullshit claims, applying some statement a commercial product made about FPGAs to the entirety of use cases, etc etc... It really hurts their feelings that something new exists that has the potential to surpass their life's work. No no no we can't have this, SHUT IT DOWN!!!

[Anonymous No.6610290]

>>6609056
Like this post here, nice straw man faggot. Worried you won't be able to afford your 0 bedroom apartment in Japan anymore with just the money earned from licensing your emulator to indie devs and IP owners dumping their shovelware on Steam? Must hurt to know that the documentation and years of hard work enabled these cores to mature at a much faster rate and that your work will eventually be surpassed. Have fun waiting in the welfare line.

[Anonymous No.6610295]

How does FPGA handle enhancements?
Say for example, you want to play a SNES title on a 4K monitor/television. Would a SNES FPGA be able to output at that resolution, or would you be relying on something else to scale the signal?
Also some games experience framedrops. Can FPGA attack with sufficient force that you no longer encounter slowdown that's part of the game, like if you're playing Earthbound and too many enemies appear on the screen? Could a GameBoy FPGA render SGB-exclusive colour palettes/borders?

[Anonymous No.6610390]

>>6610295
you can always modify the hardware description to add in any features that you want. of course, you are exceeding the original hardware spec by doing that. for instance, framedrops are proper behavior, but if you insist on them not happening, you just have to crank up your CPU clock frequency, which is trivial on an FPGA

[Anonymous No.6610393]

>>6610295
>The MiSTer platform uses a simple but effective image scaling algorithm which upscales the native video output by the selected system to fit a modern HDTV. Like several other simple upscaling solutions which use an FPGA, like the OSSC, the image is converted on the fly. The upscaling algorithm then displays it to the TV. Audio and video come together across the HDMI cable converted from their hardware emulated components and without the need of additional driver pipelines.

[Anonymous No.6610395]

>>6610295
>(1) MiSTer will never have 4k output on the current board. The highest pixel clock the hdmi chip and the scaler can both run at is around 200mhz.

[Anonymous No.6610403]

>>6610393
that's one way of doing it, but you could sub in a alternative scaling circuit to do it differently. i mentioned in another thread you could apply signal processing to (on the fly) compute the FFT of an image, pad the spectrum with zeros, and then IFFT to implement non-integer upscaling cleanly and quickly.

[Anonymous No.6610670]

>>6610395
ahahahah then what's the fucking point in these things

[Anonymous No.6610737]

>>6610670
200MHz is enough bandwidth for 2560x1440@50Hz or 1920x1440@60Hz
how much do you need for these kinds of games?

[Anonymous No.6610796]

>>6610737
I would need it to go as high as my monitor/tv native resolution, because you see, scalers in displays use bilinear filtering instead of nearest neighbor when being presented with signal below their native res, so it would smear the pixelized picture all over. Apparenty miser in its current form isn't even suitable for 1440p monitors, let alone 4k display. What kind of retard buys that shit?

[Anonymous No.6610806]

>>6610796
my friends' UHD tv displays 1080p signals with point scaling
i've never used a UHD or 4k computer monitor, so i don't know if this is unusual or what

[Anonymous No.6610808]

>>6610806
point scaling? you mean nearest neighbor? that is the first time I'm hearing of a tv that supports it, what model is it?

[Anonymous No.6610810]

>>6610808
yea, you know what i mean
it's some cheap 65" chinese tv, i can go upstairs and check it if you're really curious, maybe get him to put up a 1080p game
the reason i know is because i've gone up to it to have a look when he's playing games, and it's always just displayed each pixel as a 2x2 square, no linear interpolation

[Anonymous No.6610812]

Whenever a friend says to me they really liked a game, but I find out they played it on an emulator, you know what I say?

I say "how do you know you liked it? You haven't played it."

And they haven't. They've played some artificial code which tries to replicate what the game is.

[Anonymous No.6610815]

>>6610812
1/10, made me read it

[Anonymous No.6610865]

>>6610290

[Anonymous No.6611086]

>>6610865
>no argument so he resorts to wojakposting
you need to be 18 to post here,

[Anonymous No.6611248]

It may be for a stupid reason, but my SuperNT reignited my love for the system
Starting an emulator just doesn't feel right to me.
Savestates are nice and such, but for some autistic reason I feel better not having the option

[Anonymous No.6611287]

>>6606502
https://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=1731.1035

[Anonymous No.6611364]

>>6611248
>just doesn't feel right
FPGA users everyone

[Anonymous No.6611371]

>>6611364
It's not about the emulation
Frankly I can't tell the difference
It feels better, because it's a dedicated system I turn on and works with original controllers/cartridges
It also plays well with my modern TV

[Anonymous No.6611378]

>>6611371
if you have to justify your purchase with feels you're either a woman or coping hard
there's nothing gratifying in a separate console, it's cumbersome if anything

[Anonymous No.6611382]

>>6611378
If you have to justify your purchases to anonymous strangers on the internet you're hopelessly insecure. As such I don't really care about your opinion. It's worth about as much to me as a fpga is to you. Get a life get a bitch.

[Anonymous No.6611385]

>>6611378
People are different
I know that I play more than before I got the NT

[Anonymous No.6611389]

>>6611382
wow easy there
I cannot be possibly justifying any purchase because emulators and roms are free

[Anonymous No.6611414]

>>6611389
NT anon here, not the agro anon
You can use roms and patches with the NT
actually it makes more sense this way, since the NT doesn't hold cartridges very well, since it is so flat. Very frustrating to have a game glitch out this way, especially in vs multiplayer games

[Anonymous No.6611423]

>>6611389
That's really neat anon I bet you're really proud of yourself for making an off topic post about it in a thread about free emulators that run on development boards. Retard.

[Anonymous No.6611432]

>>6606143
Very interested where this developments will take us.

[Anonymous No.6611456]

It's a neat idea, but not there yet. Price is too high, system selection too restricted,... It sits at a weird place where it's still not as accurate as real hardware, and not as practical as software emulation. Only retro enthusiasts should care nowadays, but as a concept it's probably the ultimate /vr/ solution. Look forward to it in 10 years.

[Anonymous No.6612602]

>>6611086

[Anonymous No.6612646]

>>6607897

[Anonymous No.6613527]

>>6607897
I don't want to be a bitch, but with the SuperNT you can use original hard- and software

[Anonymous No.6613871]

>>6613527
dude just feels extremely threatened by FPGAs for some reason. best just to ignore him

[Anonymous No.6613915]

>>6613527
Are they still making Super NTs? I wanted to get one with the rona bonus but they are all sold out.