Pixel-Accurate N64 Software Video Plugin

[ReyVGM]

Originally Posted by HatCat

That implies your settings for the RSP were at fault.

You should know how unstable saved states are. The emulator has problems re-synching everything completely, especially when things are emulated at an op-code-accurate level in LLE.

z64 RSP = old RSP code with HLE audio enforced.
So to mimic that in my plugin you would simply check the second config option to send audio lists to audio plugin.

Thanks, that did the trick! No more freezes

[GPDP]

Originally Posted by HatCat

That isn't really internal to anything. All full screen essentially does is just take away the window border, hide the mouse cursor and run the screen at your monitor's size. If you notice faster speed, it's a coincidence because of something implemented alongside that.

Well, for one, desktop compositing in Windows tends to screw with Vsync and/or cause worse performance. It is possible to turn it off, but sometimes even that doesn't fix the issue. On other emulators, particularly intense ones, running in windowed mode gives me worse performance than running fullscreen, and this was no exception.

[HatCat]

Dunno much about vsync and tearing, but don't think I've noticed it in this plugin either.

I agree that a full-screen feature would be ideal, but it was more important to me to maintain the originality of this plugin. It's actually more accurate running at 640x480. I'd like to have full screen myself, but if that was the most important thing, why insist on using a pixel-accurate plugin?

[GPDP]

Well, if you have a CRT monitor on the side (like me), you wouldn't lose out on accuracy in full screen mode. Just saiyan.

[HatCat]

Originally Posted by GPDP

Well, if you have a CRT monitor on the side (like me), you wouldn't lose out on accuracy in full screen mode.

^ only accurate in full-screen mode

Originally Posted by GPDP

Just saiyan.

[ReyVGM]

I've encountered this vertical line of garbage on several games now. It appears on either the left, right or both edges of the screen.

Is this normal behavior or is it a bug in the plugin?

[HatCat]

While it may be possible that the real N64 had this too (out of the TV screen border range), it wouldn't exactly surprise me if there was a regression in one of angrylion's commits. So maybe it just is a bug with the original code.

It would help if the screenshots you gave were in the original resolution though. They look like widescreen, stretched or something. It should be either 320x240 or 640x480, unless this question is about a different plugin?

[ReyVGM]

They are 320x240, it's just that they are all pasted into a single image. I've noticed that garbage border on every single game. It could be something with the plugin because otherwise the games would have a black border like they do on the top & bottom.

Here they are independently, but it's hard to tell the garbage border unless you save the image and increase their size.









*edit*
I checked the softplugin and it has the same garbage lines, so I don't know now.

[ReyVGM]

I was playing Goldeneye with the SoftPlugin and I took a native screenshot (F3) during the credits and the resolution wasn't 320x240 or 640x480... it was 440x326!

The reason I was testing with another plugin is because I noticed that while playing in 320x240 mode with Angrylion's plugin (which I have to use that res to be able to take accurate screenshots) the text seemed like it jerked around, that's usually a sign that the text is in high res mode, so I just switched to 640x480 to capture the image correctly.

However, even at that res, the text still seemed weird and jerky. So I switched to the Softplugin using 640x480 and the text still looked weird. So I took a native screenshot (F3) and the resulting image had PERFECT text, but the res was 440x326!

What's happening here? The N64 has yet another resolution? That 440x326 is the native resolution during those scenes due to the fact that the text looks perfect. But when the plugins forces it to go lower (320) or higher (640), that's when the text looks bad.

Maybe if angrylion's plugin had a native screenshot function we could see the correct resolution with a screenshot?


Angrylion's 320x240, taken with an external screenshot program:




Angrylion's 640x480, taken with an external screenshot program:




Softplugin 640x480, taken with an external screenshot program:




Softplugin native screenshot (440x326). See how the text is crystal clear?




Here's a PJ64 save state right before the credits so you can test it yourself:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vx6dfj

[HatCat]

No it's fine; I recognize what you mean now actually.
And yeah, I've always had that issue when loading up Bomberman 64 as well.

What it seems to be actually is an afterburn of frame buffer pixels stored from previous screens. If you shut down the emulator process and start the emulator and game from scratch that trailing column of pixels should go away from what I've seen. Also using an emulator that's not Project64 might help, too.