Emulation and Frequency Differences: Good/Bad Emulators and Settings

**Tain** · 25 May 2011, 02:26 AM

Messing with the settings, I'm pretty happy with the filter. Looks good with light scanlines and a very tiny bit of defocusing and curvature.

Unfortunately, it crashes on games that change their resolution. I'm sure that'll be fixed.

**cka** · 26 May 2011, 05:21 PM

cool to see virtuanes being a "best of the best" when it comes to nintendo tape emulators, been using that for the longest time since everything else was shitty and it lets me record replays straight to AVI files

**Cheebs** · 27 May 2011, 02:52 PM

Originally Posted by cka

nintendo tape emulators

They're Intendo tapes, you philistine!

**epmode** · 27 May 2011, 05:10 PM

Originally Posted by Tain

Messing with the settings, I'm pretty happy with the filter. Looks good with light scanlines and a very tiny bit of defocusing and curvature.

Could you copy/paste the settings pls?

**Tain** · 27 May 2011, 05:58 PM

This is what I'm trying out. Pretty subtle all around, I think. I also run it in 1080p and have prescaling at 3, which means I'm passing pretty sharp pixels to the filter in the first place.

Also, my Oversample is at 2. I hear that that's one of the most demanding settings. At 3, I actually would sometimes slow down on my GTX 580 in higher res (CPS2) games.

Code:

#
# DIRECT3D POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS
#
hlsl_enable               1
hlslpath                  hlsl
shadow_mask_alpha         0.0
shadow_mask_texture       aperture.png
shadow_mask_x_count       640
shadow_mask_y_count       480
shadow_mask_usize         0.1875
shadow_mask_vsize         0.1875
oversample_x              2.0
oversample_y              2.0
curvature                 0.0
screen_scale_top          1.0
screen_scale_bottom       1.0
pincushion                0.025
scanline_alpha            0.25
scanline_size             1.0
scanline_bright_scale     1.0
scanline_bright_offset    0.6
scanline_jitter           0.0
defocus_x                 1.0
defocus_y                 1.0
red_converge_x            0.0
red_converge_y            0.0
green_converge_x          0.0
green_converge_y          0.0
blue_converge_x           0.0
blue_converge_y           0.0
red_radial_converge_x     0.0
red_radial_converge_y     0.0
green_radial_converge_x   0.0
green_radial_converge_y   0.0
blue_radial_converge_x    0.0
blue_radial_converge_y    0.0
red_from_r                1.0
red_from_g                0.0
red_from_b                0.0
green_from_r              0.0
green_from_g              1.0
green_from_b              0.0
blue_from_r               0.0
blue_from_g               0.0
blue_from_b               1.0
saturation                1.0
red_offset                0.0
green_offset              0.0
blue_offset               0.0
red_scale                 1.0
green_scale               1.0
blue_scale                1.0
red_power                 1.0
green_power               1.0
blue_power                1.0
red_floor                 0.0
green_floor               0.0
blue_floor                0.0
red_phosphor_life         0.0
green_phosphor_life       0.0
blue_phosphor_life        0.0
yiq_enable                0
yiq_w                     4.1187867
yiq_a                     0.5
yiq_b                     0.5
yiq_fsc                   1.5
yiq_fsc_scale             1.0
yiq_phase_count           2

**Cheebs** · 27 May 2011, 06:10 PM

Originally Posted by Diff-chan

Recap came.

You have no idea.

http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/viewtopic.php?id=600

**Tain** · 28 Jan 2013, 11:19 AM

Some new info, and I want to do a little recap.

It seems like some emulators I've tried recently (Dolphin, Supermodel, BSNES, demul) don't have support for exclusive full-screen modes. This means that, when in full screen, they essentially behave like a window that takes up the entirety of the desktop resolution and has no borders. I've seen some PC games offer options for this mode because it allows for seamless alt-tabbing and works well with multi-monitor setups.

Now, up to this point, I was under the impression that running in a windowed mode such as this will generate lag. Turns out I was only partially correct! In Windows, having Aero on will subject your application windows to the OS-wide window management vsync. Having Aero off (or running a program with the "disable desktop composition" flag) will in fact give you a tearing and presumably lagless image. Thanks to pizzaroll on GAF for making me realize that non-exclusive fullscreen applications would be affected by window management vsync!

So, to bring things up to speed, new in bold:

Running some emulators with no options set will often make for an image that has screen tearing.
Running some emulators and turning on something like "vsync" will often make a game stutter at set intervals.
We can get a perfectly smooth image in emulation by having emulators force games to run at our GPU's specific refresh rate (assuming you have one reasonably close to the original game) and applying vsync. When I say "applying vsync", I mean using D3DPRESENT_INTERVAL_ONE or not using D3DPRESENT_INTERVAL_IMMEDIATE, in D3D terms.
When we use vsync like this, we get lag. I'm not sure how much lag for everyone in all situations, but with the test I ran with MAME, I had three frames of lag. Using immediate mode and getting an image with tearing, however, is lagless.
Running an emulator in a window or in non-exclusive fullscreen mode (which is the only fullscreen option for certain emulators) while using Aero WILL make them run with OS-wide window management vsync.
Disabling desktop composition or using a non-aero theme might let you run these emulators laglessly with screen tearing. This can be used both ways: last time I tried Dolphin, the only way I could get a perfectly smooth image was by disabling throttling and relying on Aero window management vsync.

And lastly, something I recently found out:

bsnes is, so far, the only Windows emulator I've used that gives me a perfectly smooth and tearing-free image WHILE using the lagless D3D immediate presentation mode. bsnes does not have an exclusive fullscreen mode, meaning you HAVE to run it with Aero off. I need to look into how bsnes does this. I assume it measures your GPU's time to draw a frame and lines the drawing up with that frequency on its own.